Shortly after Iran’s retaliatory strike on Israel concluded seemingly
without incident, the full-throated proclamations of Israel’s
defensive feats followed. Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari
said that Iran’s retaliation had “failed” after 99% of the launched
missiles and drones were intercepted by Israeli air defense systems.
U.S. President Biden hailed Israel’s “remarkable capacity” to defend
against such “unprecedented attacks,” sending a message to Iran that
it “cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel.”

Israeli military analyst Amos Harel added more meat to these
statements, regarding the “incredible operational capabilities” 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 “one can assume that Tehran is extremely
disappointed,” because the intention of the attack, according to
Harel, was to showcase its capabilities by hitting military targets
like Netavim Air Base:

“It 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.”

Such assessments are mistaken on two counts: first, they confuse (or
intentionally obfuscate) Iran’s intentions behind the attack, and
second, they incorrectly interpret the attack’s results.

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’s constant preparation
of the international community by vociferously declaring its
intentions a week in advance and promising the U.S. that its attack
would be “under control” and conducted in a way that “avoids
escalation” 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 “theater.”

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

Several activists and military and political analysts have offered a
different interpretation of the results.

Avaaz campaign director Fadi Quran posted on X that “the scale of
Iran’s 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.”

“The Iranians did not use any weapons Israel didn’t know it had, it
just used a lot of them,” Quran added. “But the Iranians likely now
have almost a full map of what Israel’s missile defence system looks
like, as well as where in Jordan and the Gulf the US has
installations.”

According to Quran, what this means is that Iran can now “reverse
engineer” the intelligence it gathered, while Israel and the U.S.
“will have to re-design away from their current model,” making the the
cost of the “success” in stopping the attack very high.

“Anyone assuming this is just theatrics is missing the context of how
militaries assess strategy versus tactics,” 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.

Beirut-based military analyst and Al-Mayadeen contributor Ali Jezzini
offered a similar analysis of the Iranian strikes, arguing that they
were “very successful” and that more missiles likely hit their target
than Israel has been letting on.

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

“The cost of this night’s interceptions certainly exceeds a billion
dollars between the Americans and the Israelis,” Jezzini added, a
claim that seems to be echoed by Israeli sources.

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’s defense capabilities.

Political analyst Sari Orabi echoed this analysis on his Telegram
channel, arguing that the “success” of Israel in intercepting Iranian
missiles is “conditional upon the presence of regional layers of
protection provided by the United States,” which exposes Israel’s
reliance on its network of allies and forces it to give away its
various defensive positions.

Orabi added that the Iranian intention behind the strike was
“extremely cautious” and “sought to create a new deterrence stance
that does not evolve into war,” which creates a new precedent for
Iranian action that increases the regional cost of continuing
belligerent action toward Iran.

The Biden administration has also made this cost clear to Israel,
reportedly telling Netanyahu that the U.S. would not back an Israeli
counterattack and that Israel should “take the win.”

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.

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/why-irans-retaliatory-attack-against-israel-was-not-a-failure/