JERUSALEM – Of the IAF attack on Iran only a few things are certain, Israeli aircraft spent more than an hour – largely unmolested over the skies of Iran – and all the planes made it back safely to their home bases. Until open sources become available it will not be clear the level of the damage, and perhaps the humiliation, which was meted out to the Islamic Republic.
This was an operation Israel undertook alone, and was thought to include between a third to a half of Israel’s entire air force. The Biden administration was informed of the attack, and U.S. planes were reportedly airborne at the time of the action, purely in a supervisory capacity.
Israel’s jets flew through both friendly and enemy air space, indeed air-defense batteries in both Iraq and Syria were taken out in the initial stages of the attack. There was thought to be a high level of intelligence cooperation between Israel and CENTCOM partners to the extent they were made aware of what was happening in real-time, although they were not part of the operation.
The reaction in Israel was somewhat muted, with people assuming the length of time the response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Oct. 1 was in the pipeline, might have produced greater fireworks – and more seemingly tangible results. However, a number of factors are at play and should be taken into consideration.
There are credible reports, which strongly suggest a strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities was not on the menu at this stage – and it was quickly ruled out as a possibility at an early cabinet meeting in the wake of the Iranian attack. Israel’s military and political leaders would have had to confront the probability of direct retaliation from Iran on a large scale if it had gone after these in the first instance. There is also the issue of the Biden administration and whether it would have sanctioned such an action, mere weeks – at the time – from the November presidential election.
Several elements are at play here and it is necessary to parse them to get a better understanding of what occurred in the Middle East over the last 48 hours or so.
It should be said upfront there are some schools of thought, which argue the Pentagon intel leak last week actually brought Israel’s response forward, rather than delay it. There is no sense yet whether the options set out in that document were changed or it was merely the timetable, which was expedient.
In this tit-for-tat game of strike and counter-strike, appearances and posturing play an enormously important role – both for the domestic audiences in the respective countries of Israel and Iran, but also the extent of the damage the governments of those countries will permit to be public through official channels. (There is a completely different and important issue of the use of open intelligence sources and how these are part of the informational arsenal, which is as much a part of this war as the actual missiles).
In its April attack on Israel, much of which was either repelled or fell within Iranian territory, the Islamic Republic took away a number of lessons – one of which directly impacted the nature of Israel’s strike on Friday night.
Tehran learned that too many of its vaunted drone armada and many of its cruise missiles either didn’t make it out of Iranian air space or they were too cumbersome and easy to spot for Israel’s defenses. So, in the Oct. 1 attack, Israel was largely assailed by ballistic missiles, where as many as three dozen or so impacted into Israeli territory – at least in close proximity to two of its northern air bases, as well as the headquarters of the Mossad, just a few miles from the central coastal city of Herzliya.
Israel’s missile defense array could not cope with all of these missiles – and it did not enjoy anything like the same level of coordination and cooperation as during the April strike, where very few projectiles made it through the defensive shield.
As a consequence of this, Israel specifically targeted a number of sites connected to Iran’s ballistic missile production and guidance. The strikes hit at least 12 planetary mixers used to make solid fuel used in long-range ballistic missiles, reports said, with some putting the number of mixers struck at 20.
“The Saudi Elaph news site reported, citing an unnamed informed source, that the heavy fuel mixers had been used to power Khaybar and Qassem missiles, ballistic missiles that were launched at Israel in the Iranian strike earlier this month,” according to the Times of Israel.