Israel woke up this Sunday with a feeling of euphoria after having intercepted – with the help of the United States, the United Kingdom and neighboring Jordan – 99% of the more than 300 drones and cruise and ballistic missiles launched since Saturday night by Iran, in an unprecedented attack that plunges the Middle East into unknown territory. It was their announced retaliation for the Israeli murder of seven of its military commanders, two weeks ago in a bombing against a consular building in Damascus (Syria), and the first attack from its territory against the Jewish State after years of hidden war. Its allies in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq also launched projectiles, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said earlier in the day. Israel has not officially concluded it, but it has reopened its airspace – which closed before midnight – and the fighter-bombers that shot down dozens of missiles outside Israeli territory are returning to base.
The attack – announced, with drones that take hours to arrive and with the GPS signal altered to prevent the guidance of the projectiles – has caused no deaths (a girl is seriously injured) and hardly any material damage. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted about this with a brief message with the text: “We intercept, we block, together we will win.” Tehran considers “the matter closed” and threatens “considerably more severe” action if Israel “commits another mistake,” underlined the Chief of the Iranian General Staff, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, in an interview with the official Iranian agency. IRNA. Bagheri has justified the Iranian retaliation by stating that Israel crossed several “red lines” with the bombing of the Iranian diplomatic complex in Damascus, and that his country could not tolerate it “in any way.”
Bagheri then alluded to how, despite Iran’s “ten times greater capacity to (launch) missiles and drones”, the attack was “attempted to be carried out” in such a way that the population and economic centers were not affected. ”. Iran, he said, has communicated to the United States, through the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, that if Washington participates in the “next aggressive actions of the Zionists, its bases and American personnel (in the region) will not be safe.” .
All eyes are now on the foreseeable retaliation by Netanyahu, who had already made it clear that he would go directly after Iran if it was attacked on its territory, and the role of the United States, dragged into getting involved in a conflict it did not want.
The Israeli military spokesman has indicated that no drone entered Israeli territory. Just a handful of missiles. He insisted that Iran’s revenge was not measured, because it launched up to 110 ballistic missiles, which represents an “escalation factor” that sought to cause “much more significant” damage than it achieved. At around 2:00 a.m. local time (1:00 a.m. Spanish peninsular time), projectile trails were seen in Jerusalem and other parts of the country, anti-aircraft alarms sounded and explosions were heard, such as those usually caused by interceptions by the anti-missile shield.
The attack has served as glue between US President Joe Biden and Netanyahu, just when their differences over the management of the war in Gaza were broader and more public. They have spoken by phone and Biden has told Netanyahu that Israel – his great ally in the Middle East – “has sent a key message to its enemies that they cannot effectively threaten” his security, by demonstrating “a remarkable ability to defend itself and even defeat unprecedented attacks.” He has also announced that he will convene the rest of the G-7 leaders “to coordinate a united diplomatic response” to the attack, which comes in the midst of the largest crisis in the region in half a century: after six months of bloody war in Gaza and skirmishes , increasingly violent, between Israel and the Lebanese militia of Hezbollah, an ally of Tehran.
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However, according to the American media Axios, which quotes an unnamed White House official, in that call, Biden has told the Israeli prime minister that his country will not support Israel in any retaliatory attack against Iran. “He has a victory. Stay with her,” Biden told Netanyahu, according to that official.
In Iran, this Sunday, a working day in the country, an atmosphere of normality prevails, explains Raffaele Mauriello, professor at Allameh Tabataba’i University, from Tehran. “Almost all my students have come to class. The Iranian response has been more or less what everyone expected. Now we have to see what the Israelis will do,” says the professor.
In addition to reopening its airspace, which it had closed before midnight, Israel has also lifted the order for residents to stay near protected spaces in places such as Nevatim (with an air base that was one of the targets), Dimona (which houses the nuclear power plant where it is presumed to develop atomic weapons) or Eilat, in the southern tip of the country, against which the Houthis had launched drones from Yemen in the previous months. Neighboring Jordan, a US ally that has had diplomatic relations with Israel for three decades, has intercepted dozens of the drones as they entered its airspace.
The measures that the Israeli army decreed late on Saturday remain in place: the modification of the instructions for the population, with the cancellation of educational activities throughout the country and the limitation of meetings in green areas to 1,000 people. Shortly after, Netanyahu appeared before the nation. “In recent years, and especially in recent weeks, Israel has been preparing for a direct attack from Iran. Our defensive systems are deployed. We are prepared for any scenario, both defensively and offensively. The State of Israel is strong. His army is strong. “Its population is strong,” he noted shortly before the announcement of the drone attack. “We have determined a clear principle: whoever harms us, we will harm. “We will defend ourselves against any threat and we will do so sensibly and determinedly,” he added.
The calls in recent days for containment and the forceful “Don’t (do it)”, pronounced on Friday by Biden as a warning to Tehran, did not prevent the attack. The day had begun with a measured action by Iran without causing injuries or attacking Israeli territory. The Revolutionary Guard boarded a ship with 25 crew members in the Strait of Hormuz, one of whose owners is an Israeli businessman. It gave him two advantages: it showed his ability to inflict economic damage in the Strait of Hormuz – an important maritime passage between Iran, Oman and the United Arab Emirates – and it left the question of whether it was only a first step, in an important ambiguity in the psychological war resolved hours later.
It was, however, a very weak blow compared to an attack as provocative (against senior military commanders and a consular building in another country) as the one carried out by Israel. Tehran had been signaling that it did not want a war, but neither did it completely let the attack pass. He would make him appear weak or cowed, which left him with a bunch of bad options. The chosen one, an unprecedented direct attack, has unpredictable and predictable consequences: the forceful Israeli retaliation in Iranian territory, beyond the ramifications in other territories in the area where it has allies.
Israel, in fact, until now has mainly managed its confrontation with Tehran through assassinations of nuclear scientists, cyberattacks or bombings against its forces or allies in other countries, such as Syria or Lebanon. And Iran used to shy away from direct conflict to act through its allies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, other militias in Iraq and Syria, the Houthis in Yemen and – although with less strong ties – Hamas, the Islamist group that launched the 7/7 attack. October.
After October 7, its deadliest day in 75 years of history, Israel has shown signs of wanting to transform the “security equation” (as it usually calls it) in the Middle East. It had already been stepping on the accelerator against Hezbollah, bordering on unleashing a total war, when it launched the bombing in Damascus two weeks ago, which significantly increased the risk of conflict. After Saturday’s attack, the unknown is where it will consider it has “restored its deterrence” and where it wants to take the “security equation.”