Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood at an Israeli Arrow missile-defence battery on Sunday and warned Iran in plain words: "Do not test us." In a video statement released two days before Israelis vote, Netanyahu said Israel has intelligence indications that Iran and its proxies may try to challenge Israel with attacks in order to disrupt Tuesday's election — and promised that any such attack would be answered with "blows of a magnitude far beyond proportion, far beyond what you imagine. It will be a decisive blow against you."
Netanyahu gave no public specifics — no attack type, no launch point, no named source beyond Israeli intelligence — but he stressed that the IDF is prepared for both defence and offence. The setting was the message: the Arrow (Hetz) system is the upper tier of Israel's multi-layered air defences, built to intercept the long-range ballistic missiles Iran would use in exactly the kind of strike he was describing, and the prime minister delivered the warning in front of the launchers with Israeli flags behind him.
Iran and its proxies had issued no direct public response to the warning in the immediate coverage. Tehran's standing line, restated by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday, is that its policies will not change. The warning also lands in a weekend of visible military movement: U.S. Central Command has been repositioning aircraft out of Middle East bases and a third American carrier is heading toward the region, so any Iranian move against Israel's vote would be made under American eyes as well.
Tuesday's election decides all 120 seats in the Knesset. Netanyahu's main challenger is former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party, and the race is tight in the final polls. By putting the Iranian threat at the centre of the campaign's last 48 hours, Netanyahu has made election security itself the closing argument — and told Tehran, on camera, what an attack on the vote would cost.
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