A highly choreographed show of force in the skies
WASHINGTON — Iran’s much-anticipated retaliation for Israel’s killing of senior military leaders produced a fiery aerial display in the skies over Israel and the West Bank.
But in important ways, military analysts say, it was just that: a highly choreographed spectacle.
The more than 300 drones and missiles that hurtled through Iraqi and Jordanian airspace Saturday night before they were brought down seemed designed to create maximum drama while inflicting minimal damage, defense officials and military experts say. Just as they did back in 2020 when retaliating for the U.S. killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iranian leaders this weekend gave plenty of warning that they were launching strikes.
Iran also sequenced the attack, a retaliation for airstrikes on an Iranian Embassy building in Syria on April 1, in such a way that both Israelis and Americans were able to adjust their aerial defenses once the Iranian missiles and drones were in the air.
The result: a lot of bang, but relatively little destruction on the ground.
Few of Iran’s drones and missiles found their intended targets, an inaccuracy level military experts and defense officials say was probably by design.
Iran planned the attacks in a way that would send a warning to Israel and create deterrence but avoid sparking a war, according to two members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, said Iran gave countries in the region about 72 hours’ advance warning.
“I think Iran is very concerned about what comes next if they were too effective,” said Gen. Joseph Votel, a former leader of the U.S. military’s Central Command. “The early notification of what they were doing seems a little interesting to me.”
The repercussions of such an immense aerial attack could still push Israel, Iran and even the U.S. closer to the wider war President Joe Biden has been trying to avoid. It was Iran’s first direct attack on Israel after decades of a shadow war, and Israeli leaders were considering a possible response.
Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, which became operational in 2011, intercepts rockets. But this weekend, Israel primarily used fighter jets and its Arrow 3 system, which is designed to intercept ballistic missiles outside the Earth’s atmosphere, including those armed with nuclear and other nonconventional warheads, a defense official said.
Iron Dome’s interceptors are 6 inches wide and 10 feet long. They rely on sensors and computerized guidance to target short-range rockets. The Arrow system can fly longer distances to go after bigger threats.
Jacob Nagel, a former acting Israeli national security adviser, said Israel also used a system called David’s Sling, which shoots down drones, missiles and rockets, and interceptions from Israeli warplanes.
The strikes were proof of concept for the Arrow 3 system, which had mostly been used to take down the occasional incoming missile fired by Houthi militia forces in Yemen. During the Iranian assault, the long-range system saw “more use than during the rest of its time since its invention put together,” Nagel said. “And we saw that it works.”
“The achievement as a whole is surprising,” he added. “The Iranians never dreamed that we would intercept so many. They must have anticipated that a large chunk would be shot down, but they did not realize that 99% would be intercepted.”
Nagel strongly rebuffed the idea, however, that Iran had not sought to inflict damage on their targets in Israel.
“Symbolism is when you fire three or four rockets, not 320” drones and missiles, he said. “They fired all the varieties in their arsenal.”