It was just before 2 a.m. when a barrage of Iranian drones and missiles swarmed the Israeli sky. Sirens and explosions rang out across Jerusalem, the southern Negev and the northern border region as Israel launched air defense interceptors.
The Israelis, who had waited anxiously for several hours after being warned that the arsenal of projectiles was heading their way, hurried to safe rooms or bomb shelters.
After more than four decades of hostility between the bitter enemies, Israel came under direct attack from Iran for the first time. That brings the Middle East closer to the full-blown regional conflict that Western and Arab leaders have feared since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack triggered Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza.
All eyes are now on how Israel – still enraged, traumatized and in full war mode after the Hamas attack – will respond to the unprecedented assault on its territory.
An Iranian retaliation of sorts had been telegraphed since a suspected Israeli strike targeted the Islamic republic’s consular building in Damascus on April 1, killing senior Revolutionary Guards commanders and hitting what Tehran considers sovereign territory. But when it arrived, it was much larger than expected: more than 300 drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles launched from multiple fronts against Israel.
With US-led support, the Israeli military says air defenses were able to eliminate “99%” of projectiles. Physical damage appears limited and no deaths have been reported.
But by launching such a massive barrage, the Islamic republic sent a message: It was willing to risk its security by directly confronting Israel and potentially drawing the United States into combat. This is a major blow to Western and Arab hopes of easing regional hostilities and ending the war in Gaza.
For six months, Iranian leaders have made clear that they were trying to avoid direct conflict with Israel and the United States, or a full-blown regional conflagration, even as they rattled sabers and stoked instability.
Instead, Iran seemed content to project its hostility toward Israel through the so-called Axis of Resistance, the Tehran-backed network of regional militants that includes Lebanese Hezbollah, militias in Iraq and Syria, Houthi rebels in Yemen and Hamas. Iran’s priority, according to analysts, was to ensure the survival of the Islamic regime by keeping the conflict at arm’s length.
There were also signs that Tehran was trying to ease regional hostilities since late January, when three American soldiers were killed when Iranian-backed militias launched a drone assault on an American base on the Jordanian-Syrian border.
Iraqi militias, which had launched more than 160 drone and rocket attacks against American troops in Iraq and Syria after October 7, had ceased their attacks against US forces since February, although they continued to claim attacks against Israel. In January, Iran held indirect talks with the United States in Oman.
But Tehran’s calculations changed after the April 1 strike against its diplomatic mission in Damascus.
The attack signaled that Israel was raising the stakes in its long-running shadow war with Iran, and dealt another humiliating blow to Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards. More than 10 commanders and military advisers had previously been killed by alleged Israeli strikes on Syria since October 7.
In Tehran, the attack on Damascus, which killed seven members of the guard, including two senior commanders, was seen too much as an Israeli provocation. Just as Israel sought to re-establish its deterrent after being caught by surprise by the Hamas attack, the Islamic regime has now sought to do the same, not wanting to appear weak in the eyes of its domestic electorate or its regional proxies.
But rather than a deterrent, the result will likely be an escalating cycle of violence. The key will be how and when Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government responds, and whether the United States, desperate to contain tensions but committed to providing “armoured” support to Israel, can rein in its ally.
In the wake of the October 7 attack, the mindset in Israel was not that Hamas posed an existential threat, but that Iran and its proxies would if the Jewish state appeared weak and vulnerable.
From Israel’s perspective, Hamas did not act in vain. Rather, it sees Tehran as the puppeteer of the Palestinian Islamic group and other anti-Israel militant groups across the region, which have launched multiple attacks against Israel since October 7.
In the months that followed, Israel’s goal was to restore its military deterrence and signal to Iran that the unwritten rules in the Middle East had been overturned: not only would it strike Hamas in Gaza, but it was also willing to escalate the action to weaken other Iranian groups. supported militants who threaten the Jewish state.
At any other time, the intense border clashes between Hezbollah and Israel would have been considered a full-blown conflict. Israeli attacks have killed more than 250 Hezbollah fighters, a similar number to fighters killed in the 2006 war with the Jewish state.
But in today’s context, so far, it has been considered contained, even as both sides have struck ever deeper into each other’s territory, beyond the invisible red lines.
Iran’s assault on Israel was, in effect, an attempt to re-establish the old rules of the game. But the concern will be that this provides even greater motivation for Israel to further escalate the conflict with Hezbollah, by far Iran’s most powerful and important proxy.
Sanam Vakil, Middle East director at Chatham House, said Iran was gambling but believed that if it had not launched the attack Israel would have continued to try to weaken Iranian forces and those of its proxies, in especially Hezbollah.
“Without trying to reaffirm the red lines and reclaim some of the deterrent capacity, there was no end in sight to Israel’s ongoing campaign of degradation,” Vakil said.
Much will depend on Israel’s response, he said. If it decides to “further escalate and target nuclear facilities, we would be in totally new territory.”
If a full-blown regional conflict broke out, it would have far-reaching repercussions. Lacking Israel’s conventional weapons, Iran has long developed a strategy of asymmetric warfare, using its guard and axis of resistance to strike at its enemies and their allies.
During previous periods of heightened tension, Iranian extremists have frequently threatened to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which a third of all seaborne oil cargoes pass. Iranian forces seized an Israel-linked container ship near the strait on Saturday.
The Middle East has been in a downward spiral since October 7th. The situation has become even steeper and much more dangerous.