Just days ago, much of the world’s attention was on the impending famine in Gaza and on Israel’s failure to achieve its war objectives of toppling Hamas and returning hostages more than six months into the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was under pressure from US President Joe Biden to allow in sufficient humanitarian aid and reach a ceasefire, as well as appeals from Israeli protesters to seal a hostage deal and hold new elections.
But at night on Saturday, 13 April, all that faded instantly as Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel in much-anticipated retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed senior Iranian military officers in Damascus, Syria, on 1 April.
Israel’s strike in Damascus and Iran’s direct response have taken the two countries’ long-standing conflict—often characterised by covert strikes and the use of proxies—out of the shadows, sapping attention from Israel’s failure in Gaza, expanding Israel’s war effort to Iran, and forcing Netanyahu’s critics abroad to get behind him—at least for now.
For six months, Israel has been engaged in a war on several fronts. While it has pummeled Gaza, it has been taking fire from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
Although Israeli leaders considered a preemptive attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon in the first days following the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, it was averted at the last minute at Biden’s urging.
Biden has gone to great lengths to avoid further regional escalation, and since then, Israel has largely followed suit. It has stuck to the tacit rules of the game in its tit-for-tat attacks with Hezbollah in Lebanon and targets in Syria, and it left the United States to deal with Iraq and Yemen.
Despite being fired on daily by Hezbollah with drones, anti-tank missiles, and rockets and having 80,000 residents displaced from the northern border area, Israel made a decision early on in the war to focus on Gaza and keep Lebanon a secondary front.
The fact that this front has not spiralled out of control or descended into all-out war is in itself no small thing, considering the high risk of miscalculation on an almost daily basis by both sides over so many months.
Crossing the line
But that cautious approach appears to have gone out the window after Israel decided to kill a senior Quds Force commander inside an Iranian consular compound in Syria.
It is true that Israel has targeted Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers in Syria before, most recently when a missile strike killed Iranian official Sayyed Razi Mousavi in Damascus on Christmas Day last year.
But the fact that the April 1 strike was on the Iranian consulate—considered by Iran and others to be a violation of international treaties—was a significant escalation.
There appears to be a consensus among Israeli military experts, analysts, and some former security officials that this was a miscalculation by Israel, that it saw an operational opportunity and took it without considering all the repercussions.
That is certainly plausible. Israel has become accustomed to attacking Iranian military officers without being confronted with direct retaliation from Tehran.
