{"id":1611880,"date":"2024-04-15T20:17:48","date_gmt":"2024-04-15T20:17:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therealnews.com\/?p=312018"},"modified":"2024-04-15T20:17:48","modified_gmt":"2024-04-15T20:17:48","slug":"irans-retaliatory-attack-on-israel-is-more-than-just-military-theater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/04\/15\/irans-retaliatory-attack-on-israel-is-more-than-just-military-theater\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s retaliatory attack on Israel is more than just \u2018military theater"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>
\n

This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss<\/a> on Apr. 14, 2024. It is shared here with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after Iran\u2019s\u00a0retaliatory strike<\/a>\u00a0on Israel concluded seemingly without incident, the full-throated proclamations of Israel\u2019s defensive feats followed. Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0that Iran\u2019s retaliation had \u201cfailed\u201d after 99% of the launched missiles and drones were intercepted by Israeli air defense systems. U.S. President Biden\u00a0hailed<\/a>\u00a0Israel\u2019s \u201cremarkable capacity\u201d to defend against such \u201cunprecedented attacks,\u201d sending a message to Iran that it \u201ccannot effectively threaten the security of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israeli military analyst\u00a0Amos Harel<\/a>\u00a0added more meat to these statements, regarding the \u201cincredible operational capabilities\u201d of the Israeli Air Force and its allies to have averted an ostensible disaster by preventing the targeting of key military bases. He even goes so far as to say that \u201cone can assume that Tehran is extremely disappointed,\u201d because the intention of the attack, according to Harel, was to showcase its capabilities by hitting military targets like Netavim Air Base:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cIt appears that the Iranians planned to destroy the base and the advanced F-35 fighter jets stationed there, which are the crown jewel of American aid to Israel. Iran failed completely.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Such assessments are mistaken on two counts: first, they confuse (or intentionally obfuscate) Iran\u2019s intentions behind the attack, and second, they incorrectly interpret the attack\u2019s results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first point is fairly uncontroversial. Virtually no one but Israeli talking heads believes that Iran launched the attack with the objective of widening the confrontation. Iran\u2019s constant preparation of the international community by vociferously declaring its intentions\u00a0a week in advance<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0promising the U.S.<\/a>\u00a0that its attack would be \u201cunder control\u201d and conducted in a way that \u201cavoids escalation\u201d confirms that Iran was displaying considerable restraint in its strikes. Even Arab detractors of Iran mocked the attacks as an impotent exercise in political and military \u201ctheater.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second point though has been less talked about because interpreting the attack\u2019s results has been filtered through the various propaganda prisms of different actors. It\u2019s fairly obvious why Israelis like Harel \u2014 who for the past six months has inflected his military analysis with journalistic psy-ops directed at his fellow Israelis \u2014 would want to inflate Israeli military achievements. After\u00a0declining confidence in the army\u2019s ability to protect<\/a>\u00a0its citizens following October 7, Israel has made a point of projecting an image of impregnability in the face of regional aggressors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several activists and military and political analysts have offered a different interpretation of the results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Avaaz campaign director Fadi Quran\u00a0posted on X<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cthe scale of Iran\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Iranians did not use any weapons Israel didn\u2019t know it had, it just used a lot of them,\u201d Quran added. \u201cBut the Iranians likely now have almost a full map of what Israel\u2019s missile defence system looks like, as well as where in Jordan and the Gulf the US has installations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Quran, what this means is that Iran can now \u201creverse engineer\u201d the intelligence it gathered, while Israel and the U.S. \u201cwill have to re-design away from their current model,\u201d making the the cost of the \u201csuccess\u201d in stopping the attack very high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnyone assuming this is just theatrics is missing the context of how militaries assess strategy versus tactics,\u201d Quran elaborated, emphasizing that gathering intelligence is a key component of long wars of attrition, which is a model that Iran prefers to all-out war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beirut-based military analyst and Al-Mayadeen contributor Ali Jezzini offered a similar analysis of the Iranian strikes, arguing that they were \u201cvery successful\u201d and that more missiles likely hit their target than Israel has been letting on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This seems to have been corroborated by video evidence recorded by Palestinians in the case of the Netivim military base, showing several missiles apparently hitting their targets, although there has been no confirmation of the extent of the damage<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe cost of this night\u2019s interceptions certainly exceeds a billion dollars between the Americans and the Israelis,\u201d Jezzini added, a claim that seems to be echoed by\u00a0Israeli sources<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jezzini said that in the context of a full-scale war, Israel would not be able to keep up this level of air defense for more than a few days before missiles started to overwhelm Israel\u2019s defense capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political analyst Sari Orabi echoed this analysis on his\u00a0Telegram channel<\/a>, arguing that the \u201csuccess\u201d of Israel in intercepting Iranian missiles is \u201cconditional upon the presence of regional layers of protection provided by the United States,\u201d which exposes Israel\u2019s reliance on its network of allies and forces it to give away its various defensive positions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orabi added that the Iranian intention behind the strike was \u201cextremely cautious\u201d and \u201csought to create a new deterrence stance that does not evolve into war,\u201d which creates a new precedent for Iranian action that increases the regional cost of continuing belligerent action toward Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Biden administration has also made this cost clear to Israel, reportedly\u00a0telling Netanyahu<\/a>\u00a0that the U.S. would not back an Israeli counterattack and that Israel should \u201ctake the win.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this context, Iran has consciously and delicately raised the stakes of a wider confrontation, further straining U.S.-Israeli relations and creating renewed pressure to diffuse regional tensions. Possibly, it might also lead to pressure to end the genocidal war on Gaza.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on The Real News Network<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inflated claims of Israel’s remarkable military success in thwarting Iran’s strikes ignores the fact that Iran was deliberately restrained to avoid regional war, while the strikes forced Israel to give away its defensive positions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29840,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1775,287,25,82,473,5582,5585,55805],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611880"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29840"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1611880"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1616236,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611880\/revisions\/1616236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1611880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1611880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1611880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}