AMIR Tsfarti, a well-connected pro-Israel “Messianic Jew” followed by more than 800,000 western Christians on YouTube alone, was busy with a livestream to his followers the morning after Iran’s drone and missile attack, suggesting Israel “could attack and disable” Iran’s oil industry, hydro dams, nuclear plants and missile silos.
But Tsfarti, a strident Christian Zionist, apparently isn’t aware, or doesn’t care about the effects such an attack would have on the already fragile global economy, let alone the people of Iran. “So there’s a lot of things we can do,” said Tsfarti, quite casually, near the end of the livestream.
But Tsfarti admitted earlier that the drone and missile attack was a relatively inexpensive operation for Iran, while the one-night interception operation cost Israel about a billion dollars. In effect Tsfarti admitted to Israel’s very vulnerable position, which has also been pointed out by by former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter.
Tsfarti then went on to explain how many of the missiles launched by Iran among the drones were old Russian Scud missiles that had been “kind of improved”. He estimated their cost at between $100,000 and $200,000 each – basically “huge pipes full of explosives and fuel” he said.
“But the interceptors that Israel was shooting … we spent over a billion dollars last night. So you understand that’s another way to exhaust us, financially and to empty our cache of, you know…” Tsfarti said in an edited segment. Ritter put the Israel and allied expenditure at around $2 billion, which he said was “clearly not sustainable”.
Ritter’s post-attack analysis aligns with Tsfarti’s concerns. He said after the attack that the Iranians didn’t intend widespread destruction and death against Israel, but were simply letting Israel and the Americans know that they had the capacity to destroy airfields or other infrastructure.
At least one of the Iranian missiles hit Israel’s main military airbase in the south of the country, which was notable because Israel has the most heavily defended airspace in the world, with its Iron Dome system, David’s Slingshot and Arrow 3 for high-level missiles. Iron Dome and Arrow 3 were used during the attack.
But according to Ritter, Iran has several different delivery systems designed to meet those Israeli defensive systems and the airfield strike was proof they could evade it with the least sophisticated of their drones and missiles.
“If they were looking for a lethal attack, why announce it five hours in advance. Why give Israel a chance to withdraw its high-valued assets from its bases that are vulnerable. Why give the US, Great Britain and France the chance to move resources up – ships, air forces over Jordan to intercept these missiles. Iran was saying ‘here we come, shoot us down’.
Ritter, who said he had previously worked with Israeli intelligence operatives, said they would know Iran’s capabilities but would have to convince the Netanyahu and the politicians running on emotion and political hype it was time to back off.
“Now they have the hard data, the photograph put on the table, the air defence guy saying ‘boss we gave it our best shot, there’s nothing we can do to stop them, and the Americans ringing up and saying … we can’t stop this. And now the Israeli politicians are waking up to the harsh reality that the fiction they have been living under is not even close to reality, is a fantasy…” said Ritter.
Meanwhile, in the live stream from his home Tsfarti, appearing rather stressed and not cocky like the night before, called for an immediate and forceful Israeli response “before it becomes a habit of the Iranians to exhaust our air defence”.
But Joe Biden, as Ritter predicted, had already sent Israel a definite “no” to a reprisal, no doubt aware of the grave and far-reaching consequences. The US has deployed aircraft carriers and other vessels with UK and French naval ships in the Gulf. But now their bases in Syria and Jordan are clearly vulnerable.
Tsfarti has direct connections to the Israeli military and Netanyahu government via his non-profit organisation Behold Israel, whose mission is “to provide reliable and accurate reporting on developments in Israel and the region”. It is also part of Israel’s PR apparatus targeting the millions of US evangelicals who traditionally vote Republican and demand US support for Israel.
Tsfarti earlier said it was the first direct Iranian attack on Israel since it was formed in 1948 and this had changed the game, with Iran making itself an actual participant in war against Israel rather than a sideline observer.
Tsfarti has hero status among these mostly evangelical Christians who adhere to the controversial teaching called dispensationalism, that places modern Israel at the center of a prophesied “end-times/second coming of Christ” scenario.
This belief goes back to the mid-19th Century writings of English Anglican John Darby who became part of the Brethren break-away sect. According to various historians, it was actually Darby and others who spawned the idea of Zionism among English Jews, about half a century before the first Zionist Conference in Basel in 1897.
Christian Zionism spread rapidly around the Anglo-American world after Cyrus Scofield, a shady Mid-western lawyer-turned-preacher, linked up with Samuel Untermeyer, a wealthy Jewish Zionist in New York. and had Oxford University Press publish his Scofield Reference Bible, with extensive marginal notes promoting the “end time Jewish homeland” narrative.
