Mick Hartley

Some reactions to the Israeli hit inside Iran.

Yossi Kupperwasser in the JC:

The presumed Israeli attack on Iran was a message that was delivered very precisely, in the exact strength that was necessary. It clarified to the Iranians that whereas we are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Sean Rayment in the Spectator:

Symbolism is important. Israel’s overnight missile attack against Iran was a warning to the ayatollahs residing in Tehran that it can hit any target, wherever and whenever it wants.

The missile is believed to have struck a military airfield near Isfahan, a city in central Iran, which is also the location of a major missile production complex and several nuclear facilities.

The messaging here was simple: in the future nothing will be off the table – including Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The fact that the attack took place on the 85th birthday of Iran’s ailing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei should not be overlooked either, given that it was the diplomatic equivalent of a two fingered salute.

Israel was also keen to demonstrate, not just to the US, but also to the UK and every other country calling for restraint, that it, and no one else, will decide how Israel responds to hostile threats.

And some analysis from Jonathan Spyer, again in the Spectator:

Israel appears to have wished to remind the Iranian regime in that it possesses an asset on the ground which the Iranians cannot match or counter: namely a network, clearly involving local partners, which is able to organise successful attacks on Iranian soil. The S-300 batteries, a sophisticated air defence system provided by Russia to Iran, is deployed in the Isfahan area. Israel evidently wanted to demonstrate that while Iran was unable to penetrate Israel’s air defences, it can activate the means to get past those of Iran at will.

The question, however, is whether this modest and not entirely novel display of Israeli capacities should be seen as an adequate response to the 13 April attacks. There is no doubt that its limited nature is, in part, the product of the Israeli government’s awareness of US determination to avoid escalation to open war in the Middle East at the present time. But this is not the heart of the matter.

It is important to remember the series of events that led to the current crisis. On 1 April, Israel signalled a clear intention to change its modus operandi regarding Iran’s campaign against it. The killing of IRGC/Quds Force General Mohammed Reza Zahedi indicated an Israeli decision that the previous accepted rule according to which Israel would focus its responses on Iran’s proxies, rather than their Iranian patron, no longer applied.

This reflected a conviction held widely in Israel’s defence establishment that Iran is the real sovereign in the land area between the Iraq-Iran border and Syria and Lebanon’s borders with Israel. They view the ‘states’ of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon as today largely fictions, with Iran either in effective control of the government (Iraq, Lebanon) or possessing freedom of operation (Syria).

From within this large area of control (and elsewhere), Iran is pursuing a strategy intended to lead to the slow bleeding to death of the Jewish state, via the activation of Islamist proxy armies. The killing of Zahedi was an announcement that Israel would now not only strike at the clients, but also directly at the patrons, including the most senior among them, where they think they are most safe….

There is, of course, a much larger question surrounding all this: namely, why are western countries acquiescing to a process whereby Iran appears to be slowly swallowing up the Middle East? With its proxies and clients, Teheran is now in control of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. It is able to disrupt shipping on a daily basis on a key global maritime trade route (the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden), and it has, via Hamas and Islamic Jihad, largely achieved ownership of the Palestinian cause. But in the round of escalation that began on 1 April with the killing of Zahedi, the final word remains to be said.

The western acquiescence to Iran's Middle Eastern dominance goes back to Obama, and his shift of US foreign policy away from Israel towards some kind of fantasy rapprochement with Iran via the hopelessly flawed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – meanwhile abandoning Syria to Iran and the Russians.