The humiliation of Iran

In attacking Iranian military sites this weekend, Israel broke through its fear barrier. For years, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have planned to strike Iran using aircraft but they have always backed out at the last minute. IDF war planners feared the worst-case scenario: downed planes, pilots captured and Israeli citizens hung as spies in Tehran’s central squares.

Yet at two a.m. on Saturday morning more than 60 US made F-35, F-16, and F-15s, accompanied by Boeing mid-air fuelling planes and early warning air intelligence aircraft, took off from several Israeli air bases. Aboard were 150 air crew. They flew 1,600 kilometres for two hours, passing over Syria and Iraq, and entered Iranian air space. 

Within three hours, with precision guided missiles, they hit 20 targets in five regions across Iran. The targets included several Russian made S-300 air defence batteries, radars, ballistic missile and drones production lines and store houses, as well as Parchin base, near Tehran, where in the past Iran has conducted secret nuclear experiments. This was the first time since the Iran-Iraq war in 1988 that a strike has hit the outskirts of Tehran. 

The ramifications for Iran, Israel, its Shiite proxies in the region and the West are enormous. Iran, for all its rhetoric, has been proven to be a paper tiger. It will take at least two years for its anti-aircraft defences to be resupplied by Russia, which is already suffering from production difficulties due to the war in Ukraine.

Until that happens, Iran is blind, deaf and has been humiliated. And with less than two weeks until the US elections, it will hesitate from retaliating against Israel, fearing that this will aid Trump’s election prospects. Israel, meanwhile, has once again proven its aerial and intelligence superiority.

Israel’s attack was designed to achieve several goals, some military and some psychological. 

It has sent a clear message to Iranian leaders and commanders: that it knows about Iran’s military bases, its headquarters, air defence systems and missile depots, as well as its command-and-control centres. Despite the regime’s empty boasts, Iran’s leaders and much of the public know this as well. They know that most of their secret military and nuclear sites have been exposed, infiltrated and hacked. Their secrets are an open book to Israeli and American intelligence, which have been collaborating and devising plans against the Islamic regime for years.

No less important, Israel has managed to break apart the Iranian plan to surround the Jewish state with a ring of fire – an Iranian strategy which culminated in the terrible event of October 7th, when Gaza-based Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, and in an orgy of blood, tortured, raped, killed and kidnapped 1,200 Israelis.

Iran has tried to strangle Israel for nearly two decades on several fronts, using Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, Yemeni Houthis, and above all Hezbollah in Lebanon. These proxies, especially in the last year, have challenged and engaged Israel in a war of attrition using missiles and rockets as well as guerrilla style warfare. 

Nevertheless, the threat facing Israel is still very acute. Its forces are bogged down in Gaza and Lebanon. And while it has dealt blows to both Hamas and Hezbollah, both groups are resolved to keep on fighting. The human cost of this has been immense, with Israel accused of killing 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

With its stubborn refusal to compromise, Israel’s extreme right-wing government, led by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is fighting a war seemingly with no end. In the process it is alienating Israel’s closest allies, including the US, the UK and the EU.

This weekend’s strike may have been a victory for Israel, but the country will not be safe until the war in Lebanon and Gaza ends.