Iran targeted Star of David in ballistic missile test, Israel says

Israel complains to UN as satellite imagery shows impact crater from weapons test next to Jewish symbol target carved in the desert

Times of Israel

Iran used a Star of David as a target for missile test last year, Israel said Wednesday, distributing satellite images of the site to the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday.

“This use of the Star of David as target practice is hateful and unacceptable,” Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon wrote in a complaint to the Council.

Grainy photos provided to UN members showed what Danon said was the Jewish and Israeli symbol as the target in a test of a ballistic missile carried out last year with the impact crater visible next to it.

“The missile launch is not only a direct violation of UNSCR 2231, but is also a clear evidence of Iran’s continued intention to harm the State of Israel,” Danon said, adding that “the targeting of a sacred symbol of Judaism is abhorrent.”

“It is the Iranians who prop up the Assad regime as hundreds of thousands are killed, finance the terrorists of Hezbollah as they threaten the citizens of Israel, and support extremists and tyrants throughout the Middle East and around the world,” he added.

Earlier this month Iran fired missiles at Syria, targeting Islamic State positions in the first missile attack by Iran outside its own territory in 30 years, since the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988.

The medium-range ballistic missiles Iran said it fired at the eastern Syria’s Deir el-Zour region were ostensibly in retaliation for the twin terror attacks carried out by the group on June 7 in Tehran’s parliament, and at the grave of Ayatollah Khomeini in which 17 people were killed. Revolutionary Guards officials warned that other assaults on Iran would lead to similar retaliatory attacks, describing the missiles as a message to its enemies.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the attack, “I have one message for Iran: Don’t threaten Israel.”

Iran has in the past test-fired missiles with anti-Israel messages written on them in Hebrew. In March 2016, it test-fired two ballistic missiles, which an Iranian news agency said were inscribed with the phrase “Israel must be wiped out.”

After Iran test-fired a ballistic missile in January, the US-imposed sanctions on a number of entities involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program, and US President Donald Trump warned the Islamic Republic it had been “put on notice.”

Although Iran maintains that the testing of ballistic missiles is not banned by the 2015 nuclear deal designed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, the US said that the sanctions were imposed for Iran’s violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2331, which calls upon Iran “not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.”

Since January’s test-firing of a ballistic missile, Iran has carried out a number of other tests of cruise and submarine-based missiles.