Tehran crosses old red lines and sets ‘new equation’
Launches direct attacks on its foe for the first time
With its first-ever direct military attack on Israel, Iran crossed old red lines and created a precedent in its decadeslong shadow war with the Jewish state.
Iran “decided to create a new equation,” said the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, General Hossein Salami, in an interview with state-run television Sunday. “From now on, if Israel attacks Iranian interests, figures and citizens anywhere, we will retaliate from Iran.”
As a show of force, the attack was unprecedented in scope, involving more than 300 drones and missiles combined, but analysts said it was also carefully choreographed, giving Israel and its allies time to prepare, and providing the Israeli government a possible off-ramp amid fears of a widening war.
The assault was designed with the knowledge that Israel’s “multi-layer systems would prevent most of the weapons from reaching a target,” said Sima Shine, head of the Iran program at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “That outcome made space for Netanyahu and senior leaders to strike a more measured tone than they could if one of the missiles had taken out an apartment building or barracks.”
Since the war in Gaza began in October, Iranian proxies from Lebanon to Yemen have launched attacks against Israeli and US military installations, but Tehran has consistently signaled it has no desire for a headon conflict. However, after an Israeli airstrike on a diplomatic compound in Damascus killed two Iranian generals this month, the country felt compelled to respond from its own territory, according to analysts and Iranian officials.
“We showed restraint for six months, considering the conditions of the region and considering that we are not seeking to expand the scope of tension,” Foreign Minister Hossein AmirAbdollahian of Iran told reporters Sunday. “It seems that the Israeli regime received the wrong signal from Iran’s restraint.”
After a January attack by an Iran-aligned militant group in Iraq killed three US service members in Jordan, Iran dispatched emissaries to Iraq and Lebanon to cool tensions and deliver guidance that attacks on US bases and interests in the region should stop. The attacks subsided almost immediately and the informal truce has held.
But over the past few months, Israel has stepped up its strikes on Iranian interests across the region. The attack in Damascus was especially provocative because of its target — a diplomatic compound, traditionally exempted from hostilities — and because it killed two senior generals in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps.
There was a sense that “Iran’s passivity had encouraged Israel to push the envelope too far,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. Vaez said Iran’s rulers were under increasing pressure to respond to Israel directly. “You would even see commentators on state TV criticizing Iran’s strategy of restraint,” Vaez said. These pressures are new, Vaez said, and speak to the growing strength of ultra-hardline elements within Iran.
In the two weeks since the Damascus strike, Iranian leaders publicly and repeatedly telegraphed that its forces would respond. The country’s supreme leader pledged that Israel would “regret” its actions.
US and Israeli officials began to warn over the past several days that an attack was imminent. Iran announced on social media that the barrage had been unleashed while the drones and missiles were still airborne.
General Mohammad Bagheri, Iran’s joint chief of staff, said Sunday the operation was “completely successful,” in an interview with state-run media. Bagheri said the strikes destroyed an “intelligence center and air base”; Israel said 99 percent of drones and missiles had been intercepted, many outside Israeli territory, and there had been only minor damage to a base in the south.
Analysts said the attack was probably designed to look spectacular — a viral video showed projectiles being intercepted by Israel’s air defense system over the al-Aqsa Mosque complex in Jerusalem — while keeping death and destruction to a minimum.
“Iran didn’t inflict maximum damage,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at London’s Chatham House think tank. Yet “this was important for them symbolically,” she added, as a signal to domestic hawks and its regional proxies.
In the hours after the attack, leaders in Tehran were quick to emphasize that the response was measured and contained. “Thank God we see this mission as a successful one that brought the necessary results, so we see no need to pursue it any further,” said Bagheri, Iran’s joint chief of staff.
But Iran must now wait for Israel’s next move. While US officials are urging their Israeli counterparts to refrain from a major escalation, analysts said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government was unlikely to let the Iranian assault pass without a response. War cabinet member Benny Gantz said Sunday that Israel would “exact a price” at a time and place of its choosing.