A few days after Iran's unprecedented drone and missile attack against Israel, FRANCE 24 spoke to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. The Iranian attack was largely repelled and as such is a "dramatic failure", Barak said. As a result, he believes "there is no need and no will to go into full-scale war" with Iran. "Israel will very probably respond on Iranian soil", he predicted, but "in a way that will be calibrated in order to avoid it from deteriorating into full-scale war".
Ehud Barak, who was prime minister from 1999 to 2001, also served as defence minister and Israel's army chief of staff. Speaking to FRANCE 24 from Tel Aviv, he strongly criticised the current Israeli leadership over its strategy both vis-à-vis Iran and Gaza.
Iran said Saturday night's attack was a response to the suspected Israeli missile strike on Iran's consulate in Damascus on April 1, in which a total of seven Revolutionary Guards were killed, including Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander of the Guards' elite Quds Force.
Israeli authorities and intelligence "failed in the assessment or underestimated what might be the Iranian response to such an attack on a high-level individual", Barak claimed.
Read moreIran’s reprisal against Israel: A failed attack or a veiled warning?
Hostages risk 'coming back in coffins'
For Barak, "the most urgent issue" is the fate of the hostages held captive in Gaza since their kidnapping on October 7. "Even now, about half of the hostages are probably not alive anymore. If we wait another six months, most of them, if not all of them, will come back in coffins," he warned.
"We need much more determined negotiations to reach an agreement about the hostages," the former premier insisted.
On the ground in Gaza, Barak believes the Israeli military is operating "with significant achievements".
"But the [Israeli] political leadership did not take any strategic decisions from day one," he said, denouncing what he called a "strategic paralysis".
