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Message delivered. Message received? It certainly appears that way … for now.
Last night, Israel defied Joe Biden’s “Don’t II: Craven Boogaloo” advice and hit an airbase near Isfahan, as Jazz wrote a short time ago. Initial reports made it appear that Israel had opted for the nuclear option, as in ‘hitting all the identified nuclear sites in Iran.’ Instead, Israel opted for a ‘proof of concept’ model, demonstrating that they could penetrate Iranian air defenses at will.
That demonstration has apparently convinced the Iranians to back down. Not only are they signaling that they won’t respond, they’re claiming that the Israelis weren’t there in the first place:
Iranian media and officials described a small number of explosions, which they said resulted from Iran’s air defenses hitting three drones over the city of Isfahan. Notably, they referred to the incident as an attack by “infiltrators,” rather than by Israel, obviating the need for retaliation.
An Iranian official told Reuters there were no plans to respond against Israel for the incident.
“The foreign source of the incident has not been confirmed. We have not received any external attack, and the discussion leans more towards infiltration than attack,” the official said.
Uh … sure, pal. Even if that were the case, it would be a humiliation to the mullahs. They launched well over 300 missiles and drones in their first-ever attack on Israel and only a handful made it through regional defenses, doing minimal damage. A couple of “infiltrators” managed to surprise Iran badly enough to damage their key air base and frighten the regime enough to ground all air traffic?
Well … that’s better than admitting that they’re vulnerable to even a casual Israeli military attack. But even if they’re not admitting it, they certainly know it now — and know how bad it could have been:
Sources have confirmed to the Jerusalem Post that the attack on Iran at Isfahan, attributed by sources in the New York Times to Israel, hit Iranian air force assets at Isfahan, almost right next door to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear site in the same area.
