Iran's cowardly response to Israel

Iran expects the U.S. to hold Israel back after making a cowardly drone attack. The ayatollahs should know better. This isn't over by a long shot.

In the early evening, Saturday, Iran announced to the media that it had launched “dozens” of drones and missiles toward Israel in response to the Israeli attack on its Damascus embassy. These drones were reportedly launched from Iranian territory, targeting Israel itself. I was honestly surprised at this military response, as Iran knows that Israel fights by “jungle rules,” and if it applied its true military power toward Iran, there’s little the ayatollahs could do to stop hell from coming to its own territory.

Screenshot from a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter by @IDF

As details emerged, a couple of things seem important. First, Iran has a large inventory of drones, but the ones that have been tracked by U.S., Jordanian, and Israeli air defense seem to be slow and relatively easy to intercept. While the estimate of the actual number of drones varies between 100 to up to 500, unless the drone “swarm” in several echelons is augmented by hypersonic ballistic missiles in a “time on target” combined attack, it’s very likely every one of them will be intercepted without causing significant damage in Israel.

Targets in Israel are between 1150 and 1500 kilometers from likely launch sites near the Iran-Iraq border. The drones would need to fly over a large portion of Iraq, and Jordanian airspace, before they reached Israel. The propeller-driven Shahed-129 can fly up to 1700 kilometers carrying two precision glide bombs, and stay in the air for up to 24 hours. Some of the drones appear to be Mohajer-10 jet-powered UAVs, which look very much like U.S. predator drones. These seem to have reached Israel’s air-defense perimeter more quickly, and resulted in Iron Dome, David’s Sling, or Arrow 2 interceptions. The slower Shahed drones take up to nine hours to reach their targets.

It’s possible Iran used its newer Fotros drones, which have much more advanced capabilities, but there’s a reason I think they didn’t.

Second, Iran’s mission to the United Nations said that no more attacks were coming toward Israel at this time. The WSJ reported:

"The matter can be deemed concluded," it said. "However, should the Israeli regime make another mistake, Iran’s response will be considerably more severe. It is a conflict between Iran and the rogue Israeli regime, from which the U.S. MUST STAY AWAY!"

This message was intended to de-escalate the situation, while reserving the right to attack U.S. forces if it decided to pursue that option. Iran was being very clever here. Telling the U.N. that its response is “concluded” means that the focus is now on Israel’s response to the escalation, while seemingly Iran is the one saying it doesn’t want any further escalation. Any response to this attack will therefore be blamed squarely on Israel.

There will be no time-on-target ballistic missile barrage. There will be no overwhelming rocket fire from Hizbollah in southern Lebanon. The Israeli people can breather easier knowing all they have to deal with is a few hundred slow UAVs, most of which won’t make it to Israeli airspace. Jordan’s military has intercepted a number of the Iranian drones, as well have American naval assets, and also Jordan has reportedly opened its airspace to Israeli fighter jets.

We can conclude from what we know (and there’s a lot we don’t know), that Iran intended for all the drones it launched at Israel to be destroyed before they inflicted significant damage on Israeli property. The Iranians seem to have a lot of confidence in the IDF to defend Israel. It’s possible that a drone or more than one will somehow get through and hit something, or even kill someone, but Iran’s leaders seem to believe that risk is low, or they’d have not done this. The cost for killing a single Israeli with a strike launched from Iranian soil would not be acceptable for the ayatollahs, who despite their savage raving are very calculating when it comes to Israel.

This means that the “response” by Iran was completely for show. It was hardly a military response at all. It was a demonstration that Iran isn’t going to sit idly by while Israel attacks its property in Damascus and kills its generals. But a nation that was truly incensed by its enemy’s actions would consider it an act of war, and respond with force to actually hurt their enemy. Iran knows that Israel kills its key engineers, scientists, planners, and military officials at will when it pleases the Mossad or when the Israeli government deems some Iranian a great threat. The Damascus strike was bold, but Israel had to know Iran would do “something” in response.

The actual response of the bully Iran appears to be more calibrated to sate its various aligned “proxies” in the region. I’m sure Gazans are cheering that Iran did something, and some Palestinians in the West Bank tried to stir up trouble, but the IDF quickly clamped down on it. Hizbollah is caught between its desire to actually hurt Israel (and they can) and its Lebanese hosts’ desire to keep Beirut from being turned into Gaza City—rubble. Israel has made it clear that’s what awaits Lebanon if Hizbollah should cross its red lines (more than a few barrages of 40 to 50 rockets at a time).

Iran’s proxies might not be too pleased with the “deemed concluded” message from Tehran, but that part is necessary to make Israel the bully for what comes next. I heard one analyst on Fox News claim that the U.S. would be launching nukes if an enemy attacked our embassy on foreign soil and killed some of our generals. That’s just hot garbage and nonsense. He also said that nobody could blame Iran for its response.

In truth, what Iran did was a major escalation, but a show version of it. Sending all those drones to be destroyed (mostly) over Jordanian territory, and some to crash in Iraq, was a cowardly act by the scared bully ayatollahs. It was an act that created a few hours of tense panic in Israel—and lots of phone calls and WhatsApp sessions from U.S. relatives—about what Iran might do. In the end, it was the empty threat of a bully too scared to actually stand up to the big guy on campus who can wipe the floor with him.

But when Israel responds—Israel will respond—the cowards will claim that Israel is the bully. Israel likely had a package of F-35s and F-15s in the air ready to strike Iran, and they may at any point carry through with that ability. Iran hopes that its feint would drive a further wedge between U.S. and Israel relations. President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu have spoken, and Biden has reiterated an “ironclad” commitment to protect Israel. Perhaps, the U.S. is encouraging Israel to limit its response, or to hold back completely. But no response at all is very unlikely, I think.

Israel cannot sit back and do nothing when it has in fact been attacked. Whether that attack had an actual effect or not is not the point. Iran can claim it intended to harm Israel (a lie!) while saying that Israel reacted out of proportion to its attack when Israel does in fact harm them in response. This is the typical double-standard applied to Israel in everything it does, right or wrong. So Israel is now stuck figuring out how to respond to an escalation in a way that doesn’t turn it into a cowardly bully making empty military gestures, like Iran already is.

Israel is also stuck trying to figure out the kind of response that won’t widen the war, because at some point, the Iran-aligned and -funded terror groups won’t be restrained anymore. Their desire to harm Israel will overwhelm their Tehran benefactors’ calculations and cautions. That will bring hell to many places in the Middle East, and in return, it could bring hell to Israel itself. Jungle rules are difficult, but they do not allow for “turning the other cheek.”

The last time Israel accepted attacks on its own soil was during the First Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein launched 42 SCUD missiles in January and February of 1991. The U.S. pleaded with Israel not to widen the war that we were fighting to liberate Kuwait, and we placed—for the first time—Patriot missile batteries operated by U.S. military personnel, on Israeli soil. Israel learned that it had to defend itself, and since then, a very sophisticated three-layer missile and air-defense system consisting of Arrow 2, David’s Sling and Iron Dome, have gone online. This time, the U.S. is helping to defend Israel from our naval platforms, but Israel will not be deterred from responding.

As much as Biden’s foreign policy goals of not widening any of the wars going on in the world have been marginally successful, the war in the Middle East is now widened. Iran can’t play the cowardly bully and get away with it. No U.S. president would allow that if Iran had launched hundreds of slow, but still lethal, drones against our homeland, then told the U.N. the matter was “deemed concluded.”

The ayatollahs should know better. This isn’t over by a long shot.