Was the three-hour Iranian attack on Israel on the night from Saturday to Sunday a prelude to a new escalation of the conflict and a great war in the Middle East, as it appeared in the media the next morning? Or was it a tactical maneuver agreed upon between the USA and Iran, as more serious analysts of Middle Eastern events warned before the evening? And is this first direct attack by Iran on Israel actually a prelude to de-escalation of the conflict and stronger American oversight over the further course of the Israeli-Palestinian war?
By morning, everyone was celebrating
In any case, it was one of the more unusual wars in the history of warfare, not just in the Middle East. Unlike the Hamas attack and massacre on October 7, which was a complete surprise and shock, not just for Israel, the large Iranian attack was announced, very precisely timed, several days in advance. And so, on the night from Saturday to Sunday, Israelis interested in following the war sat in front of their televisions and watched news about the three hundred rockets and drones that Iran launched towards Israel.
By morning, everyone was already celebrating victory. Iran celebrated because with the large attack on Israel, it avenged the Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus in early April, in which several high-ranking officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were killed, including General Mohamad Reza Zahedi, who, according to Iranian sources, was the mastermind of the Hamas attack on October 7. Israel celebrated because not a single Iranian rocket or drone hit its target. As much as 99 percent of them were destroyed by Israeli air defense with significant allied assistance (USA, UK, France, Jordan, Saudi Arabia), even before they entered Israeli airspace. Palestinians in Gaza celebrated interpreting this Iranian attack as a sign that Iran had not forgotten them. Western political realists would add – after being pushed into war with Israel, in which they are paying a very high price in human lives.
But what actually happened and what are the possible consequences? It seems to me that a very rational explanation of this Iranian-Israeli blitzkrieg was given by Yigal Carmon, a former Israeli military intelligence officer and advisor on counterintelligence issues to several Israeli prime ministers, who now heads MEMRI, a research institute for Middle Eastern media. According to his opinion, it is an agreed American-Iranian operation that is actually a replica of the operation in which Iran ‘avenged’ the USA for the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, responsible for Middle Eastern operations. Namely, after the USA eliminated General Qasem as mastermind of Iranian terrorist operations in January 2020, Iran had to symbolically react to save face. The target was the American airbase Ain al-Asad in Iraq.
