Monday, October 28, 2024
Iran couldn't prevent Israeli strike even though they knew it was coming
Strike showed Iranians that they were defenceless
Shortly before 2am on Saturday in Israel, airmen and women wearing bomber jackets bearing the Star of David climbed into the cockpits of about 100 jet fighters, spy planes and refuelling aircraft at an Israeli military base. They were following commands from an underground bunker known as the pit.
Israel’s wartime leaders, who were gathered in the bowels of the military headquarters in Tel Aviv, had just given the green light for the largest attack against Iran in Israel’s history — and its most politically perilous. They called the operation “Days of Repentance”. The assault was calibrated to punish Iran for an attack on Israel but aimed to avoid setting off a full-scale war between the two foes involving American forces and other countries in the region. The attack steered clear of the oil and nuclear facilities that Iran had warned would prompt a retaliation, and appeared to heed the caution urged by US officials.
The attack, however, marked a dangerous new phase of confrontation between Israel and Iran, which began striking each other directly earlier this year. It left Iran even more exposed to further air attacks, with Israel destroying several of the country’s Russian-made S-300 batteries, according to an Israeli official.
“The message is that we don’t want an escalation but if Iran decides to escalate and attack Israel again, this means that we have increased our range of freedom of movement in the Iranian skies,” an Israeli official said.
For weeks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had signalled that Israel would hit back over Iran’s ballistic-missile assault on Israeli territory on October 1. Pulling it off required weeks of planning and delicate diplomacy.
Iran “knew that Israel was coming, and still they couldn’t prevent anything,” said Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general.
The US — sensing an opening after Israel killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar — has been pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel and other Middle East capitals this week in an effort to reach a deal that has eluded negotiators for months. The calibrated nature of the attack appeared to leave room for those talks to continue, with negotiators set to meet in the Qatari capital Doha on Sunday.
Videos carried by Iranian media on Saturday (October 26) showed an air defense system continuously firing at apparently incoming projectiles over central Tehran, as Israel's military said it launched three waves of strikes on military sites in Iran.
But even as Israel worked diplomatic channels that could end the war in Gaza and cool tensions with Tehran, Israeli officials were completing details of the retaliatory attack.
On Friday evening, as the sun set marking the start of Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, Israel’s cabinet in a phone conversation led by Netanyahu agreed to move ahead with an attack that night, according to an Israeli official.
Hours before the attack began, Israel alerted the U.S. and several Arab-world and European capitals about the nature and scope of the attack, according to people familiar with the matter. Officials in some of those countries then alerted Iran.
Israel’s prime minister’s office later said the idea that it informed Iran about the nature or timing of the attack was “false and absurd.” When they finally began, the Israeli strikes unfurled in waves. The attack involved Israel’s most-advanced aerial weapon, F-35 jet fighters, adept at evading radar, people familiar with the mission said.
As the jet fighters were airborne, Israeli officials, conscious that their U.S. counterparts were frustrated that Israel hadn’t forewarned last month that it would kill Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, also made a point of actively briefing their U.S. counterparts about their attack.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called his U.S. counterpart, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who assured him of America’s readiness to defend Israel against backlash from Iran and aligned militant groups.
The first crop of jet fighters destroyed air-defence batteries in Syria and Iraq, clearing the flight path for the second and third sorties to funnel through to Iran.
Their exact route, which hasn’t been shared by Israel, appeared to dodge airspace in Jordan after the Arab nation said it wouldn’t be part of an attack on Iran. Most of the attacks were launched from outside Iranian airspace, said Amir Aviv, a former senior Israeli military official who is often briefed by the defence establishment. Iran said Israeli planes attacked from within Iraqi airspace, around 70 miles from its border.
At around 3.30am in Israel, the country’s military launched the second of at least three waves of attacks, according to people familiar with the matter.
Israel’s strikes targeted Iranian facilities involved in the production of missiles like the cruise and ballistic missiles that targeted Israel twice this year.
One of Israel’s hits was at the sprawling Parchin military site, where Iran once worked on nuclear weapons capabilities, according to the U.N. atomic agency. Four buildings were hit there, including three solid-propellant facilities for missiles, said Fabian Hinz, research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies focused on Iran’s missile program.
Just before sunrise, Israel’s military said its attack and retaliation were complete. The planes returned at the end of the four-hour assault with no losses.
Soon after, Iranian officials began privately telling Arab nations that the attack hit sites with great accuracy. In public, the regime said it led to “limited damage” and that Iran reserved the right to carry out a response at a time of its choosing. Four Iranian soldiers were killed in the attacks, Iran said.
Israeli officials said they hope that the attack would end a tit-for-tat exchange of fire with Iran and Israel’s military could now focus on its war goals fighting Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iranian allies.
Orion, the retired brigadier general, said the attack was calibrated but doesn’t mean the end of tensions with Iran. “It allows both sides to finish for now until the U.S. elections, and then see where it goes,” he added.
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Why does the ‘Right Side of History’ always get it so wrong?
Comment from Nicholas Jensen in Australia
Several months ago, after a terse exchange of views at a local pub, I was shocked to learn I’d landed on the Wrong Side of History. “Christ,” I thought. “Not again.” Quite how I ended up there on this occasion – and I’ll come to this soon – remains something of a mystery, though it’s clear polite society won’t be welcoming me back anytime soon.
For those unfamiliar with the expression, the essential thing to know about the Right Side of History is that it is the good side of history, the side of the gods. As for everyone else – you know who you are, you know what you’ve done. You’re not just a lost cause but you’re a lousy person, hopelessly out of step with the rest of humanity.
The other thing to know about the Right Side of History is you can’t dodge it. Occasionally, this can be awkward because some of its most ardent advocates can be very nice, well-meaning people – like teal voters without a cause, though much more authoritarian by nature.
The heavy-duty warriors tend to be familiar characters, easy to spot. In politics, the Obamas and Clintons stand unique among the Right Side of History warriors. “My fellow Americans, I am confident we will succeed in this mission because we are on the right side of history,” was a stock-standard Barack Obama line wheeled out on more than a dozen occasions in his big presidential speeches.
Over on planet celebrity, Taylor Swift recently confessed that she “needed to be on the right side of history” when it came to engaging in politics, while our very own Senator Fatima Payman produced a classic of the genre when she wrote earlier this year of the Middle East: “Let historians write of us that we were on the right side of history, that we boldly reinforced international law, and that we were a shining beacon and voice for freedom.”
It’s worth remembering that we survived a near-lethal overdose of the Right Side of History not so long ago, when public debate of the voice descended into an absurd Manichean struggle between saints and sinners, heroes and villains. As it happens, that little pub skirmish I mentioned earlier occurred when I was asked by a group of mates how I’d voted at the referendum. When the reply came “No”, off to Siberia I trod. (Yes, millennial No voters do exist, in case you’re wondering.)
One obvious trap with this kind of thinking is the belief that the Right Side of History is unique to the puritans of our own age. Every depraved despot and potentate worth their salt, at one time or other, has claimed some guiding force, some special insight into an imagined future that seeks to vindicate their odious deeds. In that sense, the Right Side of History is the perfect weapon, perhaps the most dangerous of all.
Still, there’s no getting around one big problem: history doesn’t work this way and, what’s more, it never has. The Right Side of History presupposes a direction, a teleology, in which history moves inexorably towards an endpoint, a synthesis, from which it can reset and go again. Next to Hegel, Marx and the Whig conception of history, modernity is strewn with the corpses of a thousand dead-end theories on the causes of development and progress. In the end, chance, randomness and indeterminacy seem the more likely candidates.
In these febrile times, where the weaponisation of the past and the debasement of language seems virtually universal, it’s curious to observe just how casually the Right Side of History has morphed into a progressive article of faith, a kind of gibbering battle cry for the self-righteous and the condescending. Still, its expression contains a stark warning, worthy of our attention – namely, that it is better to stick to the sceptical side of history than cling to the wisdom of false prophets.
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