Iran’s Saturday attack on Israel was a military failure. But things could still get a lot worse.
When Iran launched a large retaliatory drone and missile assault on Israel on Saturday night, it raised fears that the Middle East was on the precipice of a regional war. But by Sunday morning, the situation looked far less dire.
Iran had telegraphed elements of its attack and its willingness to end the two-week period of hostilities there. And assisted by the United States and its Arab neighbors, Israel shot down 99 percent of the drones and missiles heading in its direction. Those strikes that got through did not kill anyone, doing minor damage to a military base and injuring a child.
If this sounds like an Israeli victory, that’s because it was.
Two weeks earlier, Israel escalated its several-year-old assassination campaign against top Iranian security figures by killing a senior Iranian general at the country’s embassy in Syria — a brazen move given that states generally treat embassies as militarily out-of-bounds. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei billed Tehran’s response as “punishment” for that attack, but the failure to do significant harm illustrated that Israel is fairly well shielded from Iran’s vaunted drone and missile fleet.
Iran “had to realize that any strike on Israel would benefit Israel’s end game far more than Iran’s. That they chose to attack anyway shows one again that strategy is always the victim of emotion,” writes Afshon Ostovar, an expert on the Iranian military at the Naval Postgraduate School.
Israel hit Iran in an especially harsh way and more or less got away with it. But this does not mean things are stable between Israel and Iran. Far from it.
The immediate question is whether Israel’s leadership understands when to leave well enough alone. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proven himself reckless during the Gaza war and depends on some exceptionally extreme governing partners to stay in power. The United States is trying to restrain him — with President Joe Biden reportedly telling Netanyahu to “take the win” — but it’s unclear if he will.
And even if Israel chooses restraint for now this episode may have permanently raised the risk of a wider war between Jerusalem and Tehran.What was Iran thinking?
When news of Iran’s attack broke Saturday night, a former US military officer who studies Iran texted me skeptically. “None of these drones get through,” he correctly predicted.
Iran had indeed chosen a curious strategy. Tehran had been telegraphing a response targeting Israeli territory for weeks, giving Israel and its allies plenty of time to prepare. The drones it chose to launch were slow-moving, taking hours to reach Israeli airspace and passing over neighboring countries (notably Jordan) that shot them down.
