Iran mustered fiercer attack than in the spring, warns of even worse

Like the April attack, the barrage on Tuesday was spectacular in nature. The strikes forced several Middle Eastern countries to close their airspace, and inside Israel, much of life came to a standstill for more than an hour as air raids sirens blared and people hunkered down in bunkers.

But the latest attack’s impact was slightly greater than that of the April barrage — the only other time that Iran has directly targeted Israel — with several missiles on Tuesday striking Israel. One landed near an intelligence base outside Tel Aviv and another near a school in Gedara, in central Israel, according to Washington Post reporting.

Video filmed in south Israel from the town of Ar’arat an-Naqab and verified by The Post showed at least 20 projectiles flying through the air above the Nevatim military air base. Fire and several plumes of smoke were already visible on the airfield as at least six missiles hit the base, erupting in fireballs. Israel’s military said “air force bases sustained hits” but did not specify how many.

In April, only two munitions eluded air defenses and impacted Israel, according to Post reporting.

The greater effectiveness of Tuesday’s attack could be due to the shorter warning time or the larger quantity of faster munitions, according to analysts.

“A greater volume of ballistic missiles coming at one time is going to be more likely to overwhelm the air defenses,” said John Krzyzaniak, a researcher who studies Iran’s missile programs at the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.

He said Iran likely observed what was effective during the April attack and what was not. In April, Iran fired slower moving drones and cruise missiles in advance of ballistic missiles. This time Iran just launched ballistic and hypersonic missiles.

“They used a different mix of mostly the same missiles,” he said. It is also possible that Israel’s air defenses prioritized stopping those missiles that appeared bound to cause the most damage, he said.

While the damage appeared to be contained, the potential destruction that could be caused by this kind of attack should not be minimized, said Fabian Hinz, an Iran analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Berlin.

“In general, these missiles can cause a lot of damage. Their warheads weigh several hundred kilograms. They impact with several times the speed of sound,” Hinz said. “One shouldn’t underestimate that 200 ballistic missiles is a very large number.”

In recent months, Iranian officials have said they want to avoid an all-out war, but the strikes risk triggering just such a conflict. As tensions have escalated in the region over the past year, Iran has struggled to maintain its deterrence of its arch-foe Israel without provoking a war.

Those Iranians calling for restraint appeared to hold sway until the killing of Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group, in Beirut by Israel late last month. That killing, carried out just weeks after the leader of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh was slain in Tehran, appears to have empowered Iranian hard-liners, who favored military action over “strategic patience.”

In the weeks after Haniyeh’s death, the Iranian regime had already begun to face mounting criticism for failing to respond — even on talk shows broadcast on state-run television.

On one talk show, analysts had criticized the regime’s “inaction” after Haniyeh’s killing, arguing that without a response, Israel and others would cease to take Iranian threats seriously. The show was aired on a television channel affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And on social media, users who often amplify pro-IRGC content began making the same argument, saying Iran’s patience was being interpreted as weakness.

Among those who had been calling for restraint was Iran’s newly elected president Masoud Pezeshkian, who championed Iran’s desire to engage with the international community in an address to the United Nations General Assembly last month.

After the attack Tuesday, Pezeshkian, however, issued a statement of support. “Let Netanyahu know that Iran is not a belligerent, but it stands firmly against any threat. This is only a fraction of our power. Do not enter into a conflict with Iran,” he said in a post on X, the social media platform.

The attack demonstrated that hard-liners had won out, persuading Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that military action was a must, according to Gregory Brew, an Iran analyst at the Eurasia Group.

“Khamenei was forced to take action to maintain a semblance of deterrence and credibility,” he said, citing the growing criticism of Iranian inaction both domestically and in the region among Iran’s allies.

But the missile attack also revealed Iran’s weakness, Brew said. Iran avoided “action that causes significant damage,” he said, but “it has also left Iran very vulnerable to Israeli retaliation, which is sure to come.”

Inside Iran, official commentators said the missile strike had restored deterrence and Iranian attacks in the future could inflict greater damage.

Iran demonstrated “that it does not accept any forceful remarks, and it has become very powerful,” said Mohammad Jafar Asadi, a senior commander in the IRGC. In the future, Iran “is fully prepared to give a tooth-breaking response,” he added.

“After this, if they commit a crime and mischief at any level, we will show a response, and our next responses will definitely be stronger,” said Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi, commander in chief of Iran’s army

While Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, Iran’s joint chief of staff, highlighted that Iran had chosen not to target Israeli “economic and industrial infrastructure,” he warned such attacks “were completely possible.”

Ultimately, how Iran measures the success of Tuesday’s attack could largely depend on how Israel responds.

“This attack satisfied the narrative of ‘we are tough’,” said Paul Salem, head of the Middle East Institute, referring to how the strikes were viewed inside Iran. While it’s not certain that the two sides will continue to escalate, he said that significant retaliation from Israel may further diminish the voices inside Iran calling for restraint.

“If Iran is attacked in a massive way, it could dramatically shift the mood in the favor of the regime and the hard-liners within it,” he said.

Claire Parker contributed.