While it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of the operation launched by Hamas and the factions of the Palestinian Resistance on October 7, a feat that forever annihilated the prestige of the Israeli army, the strikes launched by Iran on the night of 13 to 14 April are truly historic, and perhaps even more significant. For the first time, the backbone and only State of the Axis of Resistance targeted Israel directly from its territory, launching the largest missile attack ever recorded against Israel, and the largest drone attack in history. We have entered a whole new phase in the Arab-Israeli and Persian-Israeli conflict, and this is the final one, as all the taboos have now been broken and new equations have been established.

Here are the main achievements of this unprecedented attack:

  • Israel’s deterrence capacity no longer exists: since October 7, Hamas, Hezbollah, AnsarAllah and the Iraqi Resistance had shattered it, but these were Resistance movements, not a State with much more to lose; and this direct action by Iran is all the more significant as Israel has been threatening to bomb Iran for decades without ever daring to do so, while the Islamic Republic very quickly carried out its threats;
  • Iran launched its strike despite US and Western threats, demonstrating unparalleled courage and a readiness to enter into a regional war, going as far as directly threatening the United States and its Arab vassals in the region with direct strikes in the event of complicity with any kind of reaction from Israel: this audacity foiled the bluff of the Biden administration, which officially declared that it would not support an Israeli response from which it disassociated itself in advance;
  • Iran’s military prowess was clearly demonstrated: despite the fact that this attack was known in advance, and that the capabilities, aviation and/or anti-missile defenses of no less than 5 powers were directly assisting Israel (the United States, Great Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and perhaps even Egypt), Israel’s defense systems were saturated, hundreds of sirens sounded from north to south for hours and ten to twenty direct hits were recorded;
  • Iran also demonstrated its moral superiority: it strictly applied Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which authorizes the use of force in self-defense, targeted only military targets (three air bases that were destroyed according to Iran, and damaged according to Israel), and gave advance warning of its strike, which enabled the neighboring countries to close their airspace, thus protecting the civilian airliners that Israel had been endangering for days by massively jamming GPS signals throughout the region;
  • finally, as Marwa Osman put it, the failure of Israel’s 5 layers of defense was compensated for by a 6th layer of media defense, with journalists repeating that Israel and its allies were able to intercept 99% of the projectiles: in view of the direct impacts recorded, this would mean that Iran fired 1,000 to 2,000 drones and missiles, whereas all the data puts the figure below 500; the aim of this deceit was obviously to save Israel’s face and enable it to claim an illusory victory.

“Those who make threats should have realized that military threats or attacks against Iran – in the sense of hit-and-run attacks – are no longer possible. Those who invade us will have to suffer from the devastating consequences of their actions”, said Sayed Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, back in 2007. While this statement has been mocked many times, particularly in view of the numerous Israeli attacks on Iranian bases in Syria that have cost the lives of many members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with relative impunity, no one today doubts the seriousness of this assertion: when its territory is hit, as was the case with the blatant Israeli strike against its consulate in Damascus on April 1st, the aggressor is hit directly. And from now on, as Hossein Salami, the Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC, has stated, any open attack against Iranian interests will be met with the same retribution: “We have established a new equation with the Zionist entity, responding directly from Iranian territory to any aggression on its part against Iranian interests, property, personalities and citizens in any part of the world. We have opened a new chapter in the confrontation with the enemy”. This is a truly tectonic shift in the equations of power and deterrence.

Those who play down the importance of the Iranian attack ignore its long-term political and strategic significance, which is in line with Iran’s vision, shared by the entire Axis of Resistance, of the form, scale and timing of the struggle against Israel. As Fadi Quran points out,

“the scale of Iran’s attack, the diversity of locations it targeted, and weapons it used, forced Israel to uncover the majority of anti-missile technologies the US and it have across the region. The Iranians did not use any weapons Israel didn’t know it had, it just used a lot of them. But the Iranians likely now have almost a full map of what Israel’s missile defence system looks like, as well as where in Jordan and the Gulf the US has installations. It also knows how long it takes to prepare them, how Israeli society responds…etc This is a huge strategic cost to Israel, while Arab regimes now are being blasted by their peoples, particularly the Jordanian monarchy, for not doing anything to protect Gazans but then going all out to protect Israel. Crucially, Iran can now reverse engineer all the intel gathered from this attack to make a much more deadly one credible. While the US and Israel will have to re-design away from their current model which has been compromised. Its success in stopping this choreographed attack is thus still very costly.”

While Israel proved barely capable of defending itself (at an exorbitant cost of two billion dollars) against an attack that was limited in scope and lacked the element of surprise, and cost Iran a measly 35 million, there is no longer any doubt in anyone’s mind that in the event of a regional war, Israel’s defense capabilities would quickly be saturated, leaving its territory devastated and its population decimated. The Israeli population is now clearly aware of this, and the de-population process that has already cost the occupying entity hundreds of thousands of nationals since October 7 is only set to increase.

For their part, the Palestinian people, abandoned by the whole world, and the Arab regimes in particular, were able to enjoy a brief respite, Gaza having experienced its first hours of calm since October 7 during this unforgettable night. The Palestinians were able to let their joy burst forth when they saw the epic images of the Iranian missiles flying over the Knesset and the Al-Aqsa mosque before striking the heart of the Zionist entity. Like the psychological shock of October 7, that of the night of April 13 is engraved forever on people’s consciences, and will galvanize the Resistance while speeding up the process of “reverse migration” of the Israeli settlers who have lived through a night of terror and nightmare, and are now convinced that their army is incapable of protecting them. The myth of the “land of milk and honey” is gone for ever, replaced by an unspoken promise of “blood, toil, tears and sweat” without any prospect of victory.

With the senseless act of attacking the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Netanyahu sought to escape the ineluctable reality of the bitter military failure of the army of occupation, despite 6 months of unfathomable genocide and destruction, and to restore Israel’s illusion of power. The result is the opposite of what was expected, with Israel weaker and more isolated than ever, and its Western backers disgraced beyond return, Biden having already lost the next election because of his unwillingness to end the massacre in Gaza. Israel now has only one alternative: end the war or go forward with a suicidal escalation that will set the whole of West Asia ablaze. The United States has clearly announced its desire to calm tensions and reach a ceasefire, even if the US taxpayer money & military industry keeps fueling the conflict. The question now is whether Netanyahu will put the interests of Israel, whose very future is at stake, before his own personal instinct for self-preservation, as his political career will be over the minute the war ends.

Sayed Hasan

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