Admiration for the Iron Dome
Since the Six Day War (June 1967), Israel has known that its existence depended on its defensive capabilities and decided to develop its military industry by incorporating technological innovations and scientific advances.
Since then, on average, Israel has spent 5% of its GDP on defence while developing a strict military training and service programme for all men and women who, from a young age, must comply with the government's mandatory call-up.
After neutralising the attack, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu embraced his Cabinet and rejoiced at what they had just demonstrated to Iran and the world.
The Iron Dome began construction in 2007 with an initial budget of $210 million, part of which was financed by the United States. It was tested in 2011 and over the years has been used many more times to neutralise missiles launched from Lebanon by Hezbollah and by Hamas from the Gaza Strip.
In recent years, Iron Dome has been upgraded through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to destroy all Iranian HESA Shahed 136 kamikaze drones. AI has enabled the Israeli army to add new algorithms that help it to much better track missiles and other threats that might be low-flying and smaller in size, identify them on radar and perform targeting calculations to destroy them with very high accuracy. Hence Netanyahu's jubilation that the AI has made Iron Dome an impassable mechanism at least against the battery of weapons launched by Iran.
This weekend we saw how forty years of investment in long-range missile defence, through Israel's Star Wars programme, has paid off. In 1991, Iraq attacked Israel with long-range Scud missiles, which was the watershed for the Israeli government's decision to develop a mechanism to shield its citizens.
On the subject
It is clear to me that Iran has been seeking war with Israel. This is no longer about the wars of the last century: capitalism versus communism. Today's wars are about defending democracy and freedom against tyranny, oppression and a dictatorship that subsumes archaic regimes where civil rights do not exist and women are worth less than dogs.
Neither Russia wants free, democratic, prosperous Europe; nor Iran wants progress and peace in the Middle East; it was enough that it was leaked that Saudi Arabia and Israel would sign the peace pipe in 2024 and that Riyadh would recognise the existence of the State of Israel for Iran to prepare, together with Hamas, the cruel attack of 7 October 2023 that massacred, raped, mutilated, savagely kidnapped Israeli citizens and also tourists who were enjoying a concert.
The regime of the Ayatollahs is a dictatorship that not only oppresses its citizens, but wants to spread terror and chaos in the region and in the world; they are a destabilising enemy that this year could have the atomic bomb.
A couple of months ago, the CIA revealed that Takeshi Ebisawa, one of the Yakuza leaders, tried to sell plutonium to Iran. US intelligence is proving that, after 11 September 2001, it has corrected its mistakes and has become the world's great spy.
Iran's achievement of a nuclear bomb would be a huge concern in the Middle East and for the future of the world. What if the missiles launched by Iran had nuclear warheads?
On the programme "De cara al mundo", hosted by my colleague and friend Javier Fernández Arribas, on Onda Madrid, during the talk show on 5 April, Fernández Arribas asked me if I believed that Iran would carry out its threats to retaliate against Israel for the attack on the Iranian Consulate in Syria in which seven people were killed, including a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards; I replied that I had no doubt that there would be a strong response because Iran has decided to take off its mask and is manoeuvring against Israel through Hamas; through the Houthis in Yemen; from Lebanon with Hezbollah and by financing terrorism.
There is no doubt in my mind that the regime of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei is ready to move into another phase after six months of continuous provocations in which it has even sought to boycott world trade by terrorising the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. And, Netanyahu, with his Cabinet that is the most right-wing of all possible governments, is prepared to fall into the Iranian trap and respond to provocations.
I have seen Netanyahu emboldened. The response Israel prepares, this uncertainty, is going to hit the markets, especially oil prices, which could break through the 100-dollar barrier and pull global growth down again and push up inflation. These days we are once again holding our breath in the face of China, which continues to take a low profile; of Saudi Arabia, which says this is not my problem; of a Europe that is already too worried that Ukraine will not fall to Russia; and of a Joe Biden who continues to have his hands full of these conflicts, which do nothing more than destroy his votes.