A “full-scale war” may be imminent in the Middle East if Israel doesn’t restrain its response to Tuesday's Iranian missile strikes, former Obama administration secretary of defense and Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta has warned.
“There’s going to be tough talk on all sides right now, but the bottom line is going to be what happens militarily and whether or not Israel can possibly limit its response, or whether it goes all out,” Panetta said in an MSNBC interview.
“If it goes all out, then Iran is going to respond as well,” Panetta warned.
Israel, the former official said, “has never been able to achieve militarily the goals that its been after,” and awareness of that fact “could impact future actions,” according to Panetta, who also served as White House chief of staff between 1994 and 1997 during the Clinton presidency.
Separately, on Saturday, former Clinton administration secretary of defense William Cohen told Fox News that Netanyahu “does not have any confidence with President Biden,” and is “not eager to share” information about Tel Aviv’s potential actions “for fear we might disclose it in advance and undermine or sabotage the event.”
“I think that is wrong thinking on his part, but there is such a strain in the relationship that I think it complicates it,” Cohen said.
Biden expressed opposition to reported Israeli plans to attack Iran’s nuclear program on Wednesday.
Netanyahu has vowed to make Iran “pay” for the “big mistake” it made by attacking Israel with a barrage of ballistic missiles October 1, suggesting “the regime in Tehran does not understand our determination to defend our selves and to exact a price from our enemies.”
Iranian leaders warned Israel not to test its luck, saying Tehran's response to any further aggression would be even more decisive than Tuesday’s missile barrage, which targeted the Nevatim and Tel Nof air bases and the headquarters of Mossad and Israeli intelligence corps Unit 8200.
“The brilliant work of our armed forces was completely legal and legitimate. What our armed forces did was the least punishment for the usurping Zionist regime over the astonishing crimes of this wolf-like regime and rabid dog of America,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said at a Friday prayer event in Tehran attended by hundreds of thousands.
Iran has characterized its October 1 strikes as retaliation for the Israeli assassination of Hamas Political Bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, and the September 27 airstrike assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and IRGC deputy of operations Abbas Nilforoushan in Beirut, Lebanon.
Israeli and US officials have sought to downplay the success of the Iranian strikes, although satellite images published by US media have revealed that “dozens” of Iranian missiles struck their targets, raising doubts about Israel’s powerful, multilayered air and missile defense network, built over the decades with US help, which has proven far more effective against simple, garage-built rockets and artillery than it has against swarms of Iranian ballistic missiles.