Iran just made a big mistake that Israel should not imitate

It would be easy to be dazzled by the way Israeli, American and other allied armies shot down virtually every Iranian drone, cruise missile and ballistic missile launched at Israel on Saturday and conclude that Iran has achieved its goal: to avenge the death allegedly for Israel’s hand of a senior Iranian commander who was operating against Israel from Syria – and that we can now put an end to it.

That would be a dangerous and misinterpretation of what just happened and a huge one geopolitical mistake from the West and the world in general.

Now there needs to be a Massive and sustained global initiative to isolate Irannot only to dissuade him from attempting that adventure again, but also to give Israel reasons not to automatically engage in military retaliation.

This too would be a serious mistake. Iran has a regional network and Israel needs it regional alliance, together with the United States, to discourage it in the long term.

There must therefore be major diplomatic and economic consequences for Iran, with countries like China finally stepping up:

when Tehran launched all those drones and missiles, it couldn’t have known that virtually all of them would be intercepted.

Some were shot down over Jerusalem.

A missile may have hit the Al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s holiest shrines.

(You can see images online of Iranian rockets intercepted in the sky just above the mosque.)

Another could have hit the Israeli parliament or a skyscraper, causing mass casualties.

In other words, we are talking about an unprecedented escalation in the long and tightly contained shadow war between Iran and Israel, which had been limited almost exclusively to selective Israeli attacks against Iranian units. Revolutionary Guard Iranians in Lebanon and Syria – where they have nothing to do in the first place – and Iran reacting by deploying its Lebanese proxy militia, Hezbollahthey launch rockets at Israel.

We have also seen Iran smuggle weapons and explosives from Syria to Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to kill them and destabilize Jordan, and the Mossad assassinate a nuclear scientist in Iran.

Israel has never launched such a massive missile attack directly against Iran, nor has Iran ever done so against Israel before.

In fact, no country had directly attacked Israel since Iraq’s attack. Saddam Hussein with Scud missiles 33 years ago.

Without a US-led global initiative to impose sanctions on Iran and further isolate it on the world stage, Iran’s behavior would be tacitly normalized, in which case Israel would most likely react in kind, and we are on our way to a major dispute in the Middle East.

War in the East and oil at 250 dollars a barrel

“The alternative to a larger, large-scale regional war, which we do not want and which Israel does not want, cannot be a return to the status quo ante,” said Nader Mousavizadeh, founder and CEO of the geopolitical consultancy firm Macro Advisory. Partner. and senior advisor to Kofi Annan when he was Secretary General of the UN.

A global effort to isolate IranMousavizadeh added: “It is the best way to separate the regime from its people, reassure Israel and Israelis of their security and eliminate the need for further regional military escalation, which would be a gift to Iran and its proxies.” “.

It is also the best way to ensure that the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not to drag the United States into a regional war to shore up its crumbling political base.

It is impossible to exaggerate the political-military implications of what just happened.

Shortly after the missile attack, President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran issued a statement declaring that the Revolutionary Guard had “taught the Zionist enemy a lesson.”

Surely yes, but it may not be what Raisi thinks.

Iran has just unwittingly revealed to the entire world that its government is so penetrated by Western spy agencies (because many Iranians hate their government) that the president Joe Biden was able to predict almost the exact time of the attack more than a day in advance and showed the whole world that Israel and its Western allies have anti-missile capability much higher than those of Iran.

As Haaretz’s veteran military correspondent wrote on Sunday, Amos Harel:

We are talking about “an unprecedented achievement in the history of Israel’s wars – albeit with the help of some friends – which largely eliminates the main card that Iran and the Axis have:

drones and missiles.

The impressive interceptions of Arrow system “They attracted most of the attention, but Israeli and American pilots shot down hundreds of cruise missiles and drones.”

One must assume that Iran and its proxies must be disappointed and nervous about this turn of events.

As Harel added: “The Iranian intention, assessed before the attack, was to demonstrate their abilities with an attack on military objectives.

Analysis of the areas where warnings were issued suggests that the target could have been the Nevatim Air Base in southern Israel.

It appears that the Iranians intended to destroy the base and the advanced F-35 fighter planes stationed there, which are the crown jewel of American aid to Israel. “Iran has completely failed.”

Instead, the Iranian attack may have limited itself to seriously wounding a 7-year-old Israeli Muslim Bedouin girl who was struck by falling shrapnel.

And if Iran’s offensive has been so effective, its leaders must now wonder how good their defenses will be if Israel decides to retaliate. Hezbollah must ask itself the same thing.

This may explain why Raisi, after boasting about teaching Israel a lesson, asked (begged?) that the United States and all other “supporters of the occupying regime… appreciate it.” responsible and proportionate action from the Islamic Republic of Iran” and we don’t move forward. the offensive against Iran. Message to the world from Tehran:

we were just firing a little warning shot; Nothing to worry about here; Let’s go.

And not just because Raisi is worried about his external front.

Satiety

Earlier this month, Haaretz reported that “Iranian fans at Tehran’s Aryamehr Stadium were asked to observe a minute’s silence in honor of seven members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard, including General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who were killed in the Israeli army ) air attack on his consulate in Damascus.

Instead, viewers began to do so whistling and honking in an apparent act of protest.

In a video circulating on social media, fans can be seen loudly interrupting the moment of silence. …In a video circulating on X, fans can be seen shouting:

‘Take that Palestinian flag and shove it up your ass!’”

And it’s not the first time this has happened during football matches.

Many Iranians understand that the regime’s obsession with destroying the Jewish state is nothing more than one expensive way to divert the attention of Iranian public opinion from the murderous repression carried out at home against its own people.

As this story from a football match indicates, people are less and less afraid to say so in public, especially after the regime has killed some 750 women, girls and men since a nationwide protest uprising began on September 16 2022, after the death of a young man.

Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini is in the custody of Iran’s morality police.

Thousands more were arrested.

One reason Iran supports Hamas’ war and prefers Israel to remain blockaded in Gaza and occupy the West Bank is that this keeps the world and many Americans focused on Israeli actions, rather than the brutal crackdown on pro-government protesters in ​​Iran and the imperialist influence of Iran. in the region, where he uses representatives to control the politics of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen and uses those countries as military bases to attack Israel.

No one should think that Iran is just a paper tiger.

Tehran can still fire thousands of short-range rockets at Israel Hezbollahand because some of these rockets are precisely guided, they could cause significant damage to Israel’s infrastructure.

Iran also has missiles bigger in his arsenal.

However, what happened on Saturday ultimately represents a significant boost for what I call the Middle East Inclusion Network (more open and connected countries like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel, and NATO allies ) and a real setback. for the Resistance Network (the closed and autocratic systems represented by Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and Iranian Shiite militias in Iraq) and Russia.

The sound inside Iran and the Resistance Network on Sunday morning is that sound you hear from your car’s GPS after a wrong turn:

“Recalculate, recalculate, recalculate.”

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