“A Small Nuclear Bomb”: How Israeli Officials Describe Iran’s Missile Capabilities

According to Khabaronline, an Iranian news agency, According to Hebrew-language media reports, an Israeli official said on Thursday in an interview with the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that if the United States fails to reach an agreement to halt Iran’s ballistic missile program, a military confrontation with Iran could become unavoidable.

Describing the ballistic missile threat as “extremely serious,” the official claimed that the launch of a large number of such missiles toward Israel could inflict damage equivalent to the effects of a small nuclear weapon. He added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to present “sensitive” information on this issue to Donald Trump in the near future.

At the same time, senior officials at Israel’s Ministry of Finance have acknowledged that any renewed war with Iran would impose tens of billions of shekels in additional costs on the country’s security institutions. According to internal estimates, if Iran were to adopt a strategy of mass missile launches toward the occupied territories, the Israeli government would be forced to pay billions of shekels in compensation for damage to buildings and infrastructure.

Limited images released by Hebrew media also indicate significant damage to the “Kirya” area in Tel Aviv, which houses Israel’s main military headquarters. Reports suggest that the shockwaves from missile strikes caused severe destruction to nearby residential towers, pushing some of them to the brink of total collapse. The Israeli network Israel 24 and the newspaper Maariv have reported that the luxury “Da Vinci” towers—located in direct proximity to the Kirya—sustained such extensive damage that at least one of the buildings is no longer repairable and must be completely rebuilt.

In a related development, the Hebrew-language website Walla quoted an Israeli security official as saying that the Israeli army had failed to destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles or dismantle all of the country’s military-industrial facilities. While acknowledging that Iran has returned to its missile production cycle, the official claimed that Tehran has not yet reached the production volume it seeks, despite focusing heavily on expanding its manufacturing capacity on a large scale.

According to Israeli security assessments, the Iranian front remains the “most dangerous” challenge facing Israel. At the same time, Lebanon is viewed as the “most likely” front for the immediate outbreak of hostilities—an assessment that underscores growing concern in Tel Aviv over the prospect of a multi-front conflict in the region.