Iran attack a total dud
Missiles shot down, but experts fear failure may accelerate nuke program
The footage shown by Iranian state television of missiles and drones setting Israel alight could not have been more apocalyptic. “A promise fulfilled,” read the banner headine, claiming Tehran had exacted dreadful revenge for the strike on its consulate in Damascus on April 1, for which it blamed Israel.
Trouble was, it was old footage of Chilean vineyards in flames – and Iran’s so-called retribution had consisted of telegraphing its intensions for days before launching a slowmotion attack with propellerdriven drones that gave Israel and the US hours to track and intercept the weapons.
The Iranians claim to have accomplished their stated goal – a face-saving retaliation to the Damascus attack, which killed seven Revolutionary Guards soldiers, including two generals. “The matter can be deemed concluded,” Iran’s mission to the UN said – although it is unlikely the more hawkish members of Israel’s government will agree.
For months there have been concerns that the war in Gaza, fought between Israel and Iran’s proxy Hamas, would escalate into a regional conflict. Saturday night was the moment everyone had feared. It was also the first direct and declared action by Iran against Israel after decades of hostility and years of shadow warfare waged by both sides across the Middle East.
But it has also proved how robust the Israeli and US defences in the region are against this sort of Iranian attack. Of the 300 drones and missiles fired, the vast majority were intercepted by the US and Israel outside the country’s airspace. A fraction entered Israel, providing the Iranians with footage of their missiles flying over the alAqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and some appear to have hit a military base in Israel, causing minor damage. The lone casualty was a seriously injured Arab-Israeli child.
President Joe Biden is said to have told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call to leave it at that, and avoid retaliating. “You got a win, take the win,” website Axios reported him as saying.
Israel had previously vowed to retaliate against Iran for any attack, but what form that might take remains to be seen.
In Iran, the attack that the state media there is embellishing will play directly to the unpopular regime’s still sizeable support base. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, there has been opposition to the regime’s draconian religious rule and its often corrupt clerics and oligarchs.
Whether or not Israel retaliates, there remains the risk of further violence – either from Iran itself or through its proxies Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen.
The failed attack by Tehran also shows the limits of Iran’s conventional military power and might prompt it to speed up its nuclear weapons program to establish deterrence, said Ali Vaez, director of the Iran project at the NGO Crisis Group. “One consequence of this that could be very dangerous regardless of the triumphalist rhetoric coming out of Tehran today is that if their regional deterrence is diminished … Iran is likely to consider the ultimate deterrent, which comes in the form of nuclear weapons. They’ve never been closer,” he said.
Following the repelled attack, Israel and Iran accused one another at the UN of being the main threat to peace in the Middle East, each calling on the Security Council to impose sanctions on the other.
“The mask is off – Iran, the No.1 global sponsor of terror, has exposed its true face as the destabiliser of the region and the world,” Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, said.
In response, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeid Iravani, on Sunday insisted the Islamic republic was merely exercising its “inherent right to self-defence”.