Tempting Fate: The Implications of Iran's Attack on Israel

On Saturday, April 13, the Islamic Republic of Iran launched an unprecedented aerial attack on Israel. The Israeli military and its allies and partners were successful in defending against the attack. FPRI Senior Fellow Afshon Ostovar and Aaron Stein, President of FPRI, discuss the attack and its implications below.

The Iranian-Israeli feud has steadily escalated over the last decade and Iran’s missile attack on Israel over the weekend marks a dangerous new phase. The shadow war, as the Iranian-Israeli conflict is often called, has been typified by a tempo of tit-for-tat attacks playing out across a wide geography. Israel has focused its efforts on disrupting Iranian weapons proliferation to militant groups in Syria and Lebanon and on sabotaging strategic facilities linked to Iran’s nuclear and defense industries. Israel has also been reportedly responsible for the assassinations of high-level military officials in Iran. The Iranian government has responded to those attacks mostly indirectly, primarily through its loyal proxies in Iraq and Syria. Yet, up until the airstrikes this past weekend, Iran has avoided attacking Israeli territory overtly or directly. Iran’s latest military action thus changes the game.

Aaron Stein, President

The Iranian strikes this weekend were designed to kill Israeli citizens and service members and, it appears, to repeat the actions taken after the US killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Commander Qassim Soleimani in January 2020. In response to the drone strike that killed the now deceased Soleimani, Iranian leadership authorized an attack on the Ain Al Asad Airbase, where US forces were present and the US drone that killed Soleimani was reportedly based.

The difference, in this latest case, is the size of the Iranian attack. The Islamic Republic, it appears, emulated elements of its proxy force practice during the recent Yemeni civil war. In multiple instances, the Iranian-supported Houthi movement used drones to overwhelm Saudi air and missile defense assets, so that the ballistic missiles fired at Saudi Arabia could “sneak through” regional air defenses.

Distance, of course, matters. Iran cannot change that is 1,000 miles away from targets in Israel. A drone flies slowly. A missile does not. Thus, Iran had to synchronize its attack, launching its larger number of drones hours before its faster-flying ballistic missiles. The United States has access to Iraqi air space—both for missile defense and for overflight of fighters—and Jordan has given the United States access for operations in Syria for more than half a decade. The result is that as Iran prepared to attack, the United States could fly along its border and shoot down drones in large numbers. The same is true in Jordan. Thus, the drone threat was largely negated, which allowed for Israeli and American missile defense systems to destroy operational Iranian missiles as far out as Iraq and as close in as Jordan.

The success of the defense may allow for Israeli leaders to “declare victory” and refrain from attacking Iran directly. The tyranny of distance, in any such response, is ever present. While Israel’s vaunted Air Force has the means to strike Iran, the costs of any such action could be another Iranian attack, or a concerted Iranian effort to build a nuclear weapon. The region, thus, could be in for another wave of airstrikes, or both sides could decide that it is best to return the war to “the shadows.” However, what is clear is that the Israeli and Iranian leadership will, for the foreseeable future, be prepared to strike directly against each other’s homelands.

This new dynamic is unstable, all but guaranteeing that the fall-out from the October 7 attack will continue to destabilize the Middle East.

This article appeared originally at Foreign Policy Research Institute.