After threatening to wreak terrible vengeance on Israel, all Iran appears to have achieved by launching its drone and missile attacks is to reveal the true extent of the Islamic Republic’s military impotence.
Only one of the three hundred drones and missiles the Iranians fired at Israel managed to hit its targets, with the Israeli military reporting that only one had “lightly hit” the Nevatim air base in the southern Negev desert of Israel. As for the rest, the majority were destroyed well before arriving near Israeli territory, intercepted by anti-missile systems deployed by an impressive coalition of allies – including the United States and the United Kingdom – which jumped to Israel’s defense in its hour of need.
No one should be surprised that Iran’s much-anticipated attempt to launch a direct attack on Israel – the first time the Islamic Republic has directly confronted Israel since its 1979 revolution – has failed to have a significant impact.
Russia’s inability to achieve its war objectives in Ukraine is partly due to the ineffectiveness of the Iranian drones that Tehran has supplied to Moscow in significant quantities, but which have not proven to match the superiority of the Ukrainian air defense, a large part of which is provided. by the West.
The same story happened Saturday night with the drone and ballistic missile attack on Israel. A combination of Israeli defense systems and interceptions by the American, British, Jordanian and French armies meant that almost all of the 110 ballistic missiles, 30 cruise missiles and 170 drones fired failed to hit their targets, which were mainly Israeli planes and planes. early warning bases.
Thus, far from respecting the commitment made by the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the end of Ramadan last week, that Israel was to be “punished”, the drone and missile bombardments only exposed the fundamental weakness of the Iranian military threat. What’s more, the Iranians have demonstrated to the rest of the world their true status as a hostile state that not only sponsors a global network of Islamist terrorist groups, but is determined to wage war against the West and its allies.
So far, Iran has managed to cover its tracks by avoiding direct confrontation with Israel, preferring to rely on a deadly network of terrorist groups, such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, to carry out its dirty work.
This allowed Iran to maintain a veil of denial about its true intentions, which persuaded naive Western leaders to engage with the Iranians in the belief that compromise was possible. It was this mindset that persuaded former US President Barack Obama – with the tacit support of David Cameron’s government – to negotiate the flawed nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, which made no meaningful provision for curb Tehran’s terrorist activities.
Today, the mask has fallen and Iran’s attack on Israel has revealed for all to see the true intentions of the Islamic Republic, a watershed moment that will likely have a profound impact on how the world’s major democracies will perceive the ayatollahs in the future.
Iran will no longer be seen simply as a challenge to Western policymakers, but as a tangible threat to Western security that must be tackled head-on, whether by thwarting its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons or dismantle its terrorist infrastructure, both in the Middle East and in the Middle East. the East and the rest of the world. Tehran is, after all, a central player in the developing alliance of autocratic regimes, which includes Russia, China and North Korea, and which is contrary to the values of Western democracy.
From now on, Iran should no longer be given the benefit of the doubt when it attempts to cover up its truly malicious activities, as was the case with its protests against the missile attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1, which Tehran used it as a casus belli for its failed assault on Israel.
Far from being engaged in diplomatic activity, the consulate served as a command and control center used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to oversee their terrorist activities throughout the region. This is why no Iranian diplomats were killed in this attack, which was widely attributed to the Israelis. Those who died were high-ranking members of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force, a unit that reports directly to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The unit was created by the ayatollahs with the aim of exporting the Iranian Islamic revolution to the Muslim world. Even today, a banner depicting Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force assassinated in a drone strike undertaken by the Trump administration in 2020, adorns the security fence guarding the diplomatic complex.
By finally finding the courage to attack Israel directly, Iran has finally called its bluff, so much so that, rather than constantly giving Tehran the benefit of the doubt, Western leaders should accept that they are now at war with Iran and act accordingly.
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