“We are unprepared for an attack” –

A few hours following Israel’s attack on Iran, the Minister of Defense, Guido Crosetto, speaks. Tel Aviv’s counteroffensive “was something expected. The important thing was to see the intensity of the response. All in all it was a response that was not excessive. A response that might in some way close the issue that had opened with the bomb in Syria The subsequent declarations also give us hope that this front can be closed here”, explains the representative of Gioria Meloni’s government on Giù la maschera on Radio Uno. In short, “it was an acceptable response also from the Iranian point of view”. As for the possible repercussions on the Gaza issue, for Crosetto “they are two distinct chapters. I think that the Israeli determination is to move forward and there is no change of strategy. The idea of ​​eradicating Hamas and making the Gaza Strip safer continues to be a priority for the Israeli government.”

And the West? What countermoves to adopt? If a European country suffered an attack like the one Iran launched once morest Israel, would it be able to defend itself? The minister’s answer is “no”. “Not like this, no – he told Rai Radio 1 – In two or three years we might be. Israel itself needed the help of the Americans, the English, the French and the Jordanians. Planes from these four nations took off to intercept drones or missiles that were headed to Israel, also because there are different types of attacks that Israel has suffered. A drone leaves – he explained – and takes six hours to reach the target, a cruise missile leaves and takes two hours , a ballistic missile takes less than ten minutes. A hypersonic missile takes less than a minute, so – said Crosetto – depending on the severity of the attack, reaction times are increasingly difficult to maintain”.

The West would be willing to provide the air defense invoked by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensyj once morest Russia, but it is “totally unprepared”, explains Crosetto. The willingness to give him air defense – explained the minister – would definitely be there, because I think the priority is to defend the citizens. I cannot differentiate, as some do, between Ukrainian civilians, Palestinian civilians or Israeli civilians. They are all the same, so the need to defend civilians from air attacks must be satisfied somehow. The problem is – said the Defense Minister – having things to give. We have a West which, with the exception of the United States, arrived totally unprepared because for 40-50 years it thought that the word war was no longer in use, it thought that the armed forces should be dismantled, that the armaments reserves were useless and therefore – he concluded – now let us reap the fruits of what we have sown”.