During the June conflict, Iran managed to breach Israel’s
sophisticated air-defense systems and strike core facilities: Beersheba’s
medical center, the Bazan oil refinery in Haifa, and crucial laboratories at
the Weizmann Institute. These were not incidental targets—they were pillars of
Israel’s medical, energy, and scientific infrastructure. Their exposure
underscored a deeper structural failure.
Comptroller
Matanyahu Englman’s report shows that warnings about these vulnerabilities date
back to 2011. A detailed assessment issued in 2020 was also ignored. Despite
years of alerts, the Defense Ministry, IDF, National Security Council, and
Finance Ministry never created a coherent legal or operational framework to
physically protect these sites. Instead, bureaucratic turf wars and funding
disputes ensured that little to nothing was done.
Englman stressed a fundamental distinction: Israel’s
air-defense umbrella—Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow—may intercept threats, but
no system is airtight. Once a missile breaks through, physical defenses must
protect critical installations. Yet these were virtually nonexistent. Hamas,
Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran all managed to exploit this weakness during
the war.
Even after large-scale attacks began, the Defense Ministry
continued to delay decisions. Committees met without purpose, deadlines were
missed, and responsibility was shuffled between agencies. It was only in late
2024—when senior officials were preparing to depart—that any meaningful action
started.
Once Iranian missiles struck strategic sites, Israeli
leaders recognized that further escalation risked even more damaging hits. The
country could not afford to expose additional “underdeclared” facilities, nor
could its leadership sustain the political and economic fallout of deeper
infrastructure disruption.
Israel did not choose ceasefire out of compassion for Gaza.
It chose it because Iranian pressure exposed vulnerabilities its leadership
could no longer hide.
