Iran has just launched the largest ever drone strike in the world, and the biggest missile attack in its history.
Tehran, Iran – Iran’s use of hundreds of drones and missiles to directly target Israel overnight on Sunday in retaliation for an Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus set some major political and military precedents.
It was the single largest drone attack ever carried out by any country, and it was the first time Iran directly attacked Israel after almost a half-century of being archenemies.
The politics
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) dubbed the operation “True Promise” to show that top leaders in Tehran, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, intend to make good on their vows of “punishment” for attacks by Israel and others.
The attack was in response to the April 1 Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed seven IRGC members, including two generals in charge of leading operations in Syria and Lebanon, along with six other people.
It was mainly aimed at strengthening Iran’s deterrence, which critics said had been compromised after increasingly confrontational policies and military strikes by the United States and its allies across the region, especially following the January 2020 assassination of top general Qassem Soleimani in Iraq.
Iranian officials also appeared to have exercised a degree of “strategic patience” after the late December assassination of another top IRGC commander in Syria, Razi Mousavi, in an Israeli air raid amid the fallout of the war on Gaza.
Inaction, lower-grade strikes, or being content with military action through the “axis of resistance” of aligned groups across the region would in this vein be viewed as too costly for Iran both locally and abroad.
That is true even as Tehran recognises that Israel and the embattled government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may see benefits in escalating tensions across the region and forcing the US military into taking more action against Iran.
On the other hand, the unprecedented Iranian attacks may have briefly shifted the world’s attention from the deaths of tens of thousands of women and children in the Gaza Strip, but they could translate into soft power gains for Iran in the Muslim world in the long run, when compared with other regional powers.
Saudi Arabia has not ruled out normalising relations with Israel despite the carnage in Gaza, and Turkey only started limiting some exports to Israel earlier this week after the Israeli government refused to allow it to airdrop aid over the besieged enclave, where infants are dying of starvation. Both Saudi Arabia and Turkey have, however, been deeply — and vocally — critical of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Iran would also have plausible arguments at the United Nations Security Council since attacks on diplomatic missions signal a violation of the Vienna Convention, and since Article 51 of the UN Charter enshrines the “inherent right” of self-defence, something Israel has been heavily leaning on since the start of the Gaza war.
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