In an interview last week with the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, Salehi said, “If the Israelis had wanted to attack us—and if they could have done so—they would have done so long ago. In 1981, they destroyed an Iraqi reactor without warning. But they have been threatening us for years, and publicly.”
Some military analysts say Israel cannot conduct an air attack on Israel because its planes do not have sufficient range both to reach Iran and return home without aerial refueling. They say Israel has too few air tankers and the few they have would need to be stationed over Arab states to do the refueling, which would make them very vulnerable.