Official comptroller: Israel fails to protect vital facilities from Iranian missiles during war
Israel’s official comptroller on Tuesday accused the military of failing to protect vital facilities and institutes from Iranian missiles launched to retaliate the regime’s aggression in June.
Several critical Israeli sites were struck by Iranian ballistic missiles during the war, including the Haifa Bazan oil refinery, which suffered damage to pipelines and transmission lines, and various important laboratories at Rehovot’s Weizmann University among others.
The missile attacks were in response to Israel’s unprovoked war, during which dozens of high-ranking Iranian military commanders and nuclear scientists, as well as hundreds of ordinary civilians were killed.
According to comptroller Matanyahu Englman, the issue of physical defenses was first flagged in 2011 by a division of the Defense Ministry and his office in a detailed report in 2020 had highlighted the structures’ vulnerabilities. However, he said all efforts to date on the issue had been ignored.
The physical defenses are distinct from Israeli air defenses such as the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, the Arrow, and the Iron Beam. Those batteries are designed to prevent an aerial threat from crossing into Israeli airspace or getting anywhere near a variety of Israeli installations or residential areas.
In contrast, the comptroller took various authorities to task for not providing specific physical defenses to specific critical infrastructure installations in the event that a missile breaks through the air defenses and strikes that installation.
Israeli air defenses were not hermetic, and Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansarullah, and Iran all succeeded in harming different critical sites at points in the war, sites which had no physical defenses, Englman said.
During the June aggression, Iran demonstrated the precision and effectiveness of its ballistic and hypersonic missile capabilities, striking multiple critical Israeli sites that had long been considered secure.