It was an attack the world saw coming. On the evening of 13 April, Iran launched an estimated 185 drones and 146 missiles from its territory in an unprecedented direct attack on Israel. A smaller number of projectiles were launched by Iran’s proxies in Iraq and Yemen. The attack was in retaliation for the Israeli bombing of an Iranian diplomatic facility in Syria on the 1 April, which killed a senior commander in the al-Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). There were mercifully few casualties in Iran’s attack; most projectiles were intercepted before reaching Israel’s borders. Yet the incident had the region on edge for hours, with many wondering if this was the move that would set the Middle East on fire.
It turned out not to be… for now. Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian claims that the regime gave notice of the operation to “friends and neighbours in the region” 72 hours prior to the attack. The drones sent from Iranian territory that were not intercepted took several hours to reach Israeli territory. Short of sending carrier pigeons signalling the impending attack, it is difficult to view Iran’s move, despite its unprecedented nature and enormous scope, as anything other than a carefully telegraphed message: a show of force meant to serve as a deterrent, not an escalation.
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