STUNNING VICTORY CREATES AN OPENING FOR ISRAEL
After six frustrating months in Gaza, Israel finally won a decisive victory against its adversaries by blunting Iran’s all-out missile attack Saturday night with an astonishing display of high-tech military prowess.
“A good defense is the best offense” is a truism in sports. Israel demonstrated that this precept might apply to modern warfare, as well. In neutering an Iranian barrage — which included more than 100 ballistic missiles, 150 drones and 30 cruise missiles — Israel showed that in combat, the shield can be as powerful as the sword.
“It was a worst-case scenario in what Iran launched, but a best case in terms of the outcome,” Brett McGurk, the Middle East director for the National Security Council, said in an interview. He was one of the top officials who worked closely with President Biden during what officials described as a nerve-racking 12 minutes when the ballistic missiles were on their way to targets in Israel and nobody knew if the defenses would hold.
The missile war this weekend was the bookend to Israel’s bold but risky April 1 airstrike on Tehran’s consulate in Damascus, which killed seven officers in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including two senior leaders. Now, Israel’s stunning success at fending off Iran’s reprisal for that attack could mark a psychological turning point in the trauma of the Gaza war. Israel has felt weak and embattled since Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, and increasingly isolated internationally as it tried to crush Hamas in its lairs underneath a desperate Palestinian civilian population. But the symbolic imagery reversed Saturday night.
With its Iron Dome missile defense systems, Israel became the implacable defender, shielding Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem as well as its own population. Israel, for a change, seemed to have the world on its side as it countered the Iranian assault. Britain and France joined the United States in shooting down the Iranian volley. Sources said Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other Arab countries quietly joined in the integrated air defense, too. And Group of Seven Western nations talked Sunday morning about possible joint sanctions against Iran.
Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately after the “tense moments” when most of the 100 Iranian ballistic missiles heading toward Israeli targets were successfully intercepted. “We were feeling pretty good about where we were,” the official said. Biden told Netanyahu that “Israel really came out far ahead in this exchange” but cautioned him that “we do have to think carefully and strategically about risks of escalation,” the official recalled.
“Slow things down, think through things,” Biden admonished the Israeli leader. That’s classic Biden, and he seems likely to emerge from missile weekend in a stronger position, at home and abroad. While criticizing Netanyahu’s “mistakes” on Gaza and pressing for de-escalation and humanitarian assistance, Biden has also made good on his pledge of “ironclad” support for Israel’s defense in crisis.
“Biden is the first American president to directly defend Israel,” the senior official noted. U.S. guidedmissile destroyers shot down four to six Iranian missiles, a U.S. Patriot missile in Iraq destroyed another, and two squadrons of U.S. fighter jets shot down many Iranian drones, officials said.
Military success likely creates space for other actions. Some Israelis will doubtless want to go harder on the offensive now that Iran’s rocket attack has been routed. But perhaps the show of force will create an opportunity for defusing a conflict that had, until this weekend, seemed damaging and demoralizing for Israel. After Saturday night’s fireworks, that momentum may have shifted.