CNN’s Jake Tapper appeared to take a swipe at his colleague Christiane Amanpour on over her insistence that Iran was not taking escalatory action even as it launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday.
During an interview with Israel Defense Forces spokesman Col. Nadav Shoshani, Tapper said he had “heard analysts say that Iran does not actually want to escalate matters.”
“And the proof of that — according to this argument, which I am not making — is that casualties are so low and so few of these missiles hit,” he continued before asking Shoshani to “respond to that analysis.”
Earlier in the day, Amanpour had argued that “Nobody, nobody, not the Lebanese nor the Iranians want this to escalate even further,” pointing to Iran does not want an Israeli or a U.S. war against it. It is unlikely to be able to resist that, it does not want it. So we are going to see whether this is targeted and how much actual damage beyond what Israel believes other targets, is actually done. And I think that is what’s going to determine potentially the next steps like it did last time.”
She also submitted that Iranians were seeking to de-escalate the conflict before the Israelis took out Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, last Friday.
“So then comes the assassination of their client, Hassan Nasrallah. Now, Hezbollah is not there, you know, Iran is not there to protect Hezbollah. It’s the opposite. Hezbollah is meant to be the frontline troops of Iran. So this response from Iran is more likely because it feels it has been left no choice,” added Amanpour.
In his response to Tapper’s question, Shoshani said that “the only reason” the attack had not yielded “tragic and catastrophic” results was that the Israelis had retreated to bomb shelters and the joint U.S.-Israeli defense system prevailed.
“I’ll tell you this: No other country in the world would accept ten ballistic missiles. And I can’t imagine anyone taking 180 ballistic missiles to our country,” he concluded. “Our country has a right to defend itself. And I think the U.S. has also made it clear that they stood next to us today, by our sides protecting ourselves from this outrageous attack by the Iranian regime. And and we will not accept this. And this is definitely an escalatory move, definitely a move to try and hurt, and harm, and kill civilians.”
Watch above via CNN.
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