Pentagon: Iran’s Strike Was Not About Messaging, They Wanted to Kill Civilians

During an interview on CNN on Monday, Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh stated that Iran’s strike on Israel over the weekend “was not some type of signaling or message from Iran. This was meant to really inflict damage, to inflict civilian casualties.”

Host Anderson Cooper asked, “Can you characterize the nature of the strike…by Iran? The fact that the Iranian strike didn’t do much damage, nearly every missile and drone was intercepted, is that simply because it was a military failure on the part of Iran because of the capabilities of Israel and the U.S. and other partners, or was this attack in some way designed to send a message rather than do damage? Is there a way to assess that?”

Singh answered, “We assessed that this attack was not some type of signaling or message from Iran. This was meant to really inflict damage, to inflict civilian casualties. But they failed in doing that. And what you saw was the U.S. and Israel and our coalition partners in the region come together. We really knitted together our air defenses in preventing these attacks from being successful. We were able to shoot down and stop almost 99% of what Iran shot towards Israel. So, that really says something about the Israeli military capabilities, about our U.S. military’s capabilities, and of course, it really sends a strong signal to the world that Iran is not the military power that it projects itself to be.”

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