Cables From The Diplomatic Frontlines - Iran strikes Israel : lead-up, attack and early inferences to draw.

An unprecedented attack on Israel.

• This past weekend’s attack on Israel went down as one of the largest state vs state ballistic missile salvos in history.

• Although there was fortunately very little actual damage sustained by Israel (save for non-fatal injuries), the scale and brazenness of attack (ballistic missiles were launched from Iran - a very first in the history of Israel vs Iran hostility) will surely necessitate a further response from Israel (in spite of virtually all Western allies calling for avoidance of additional retaliation).

• There are also a number of resulting strategic implications in the aftermath of this attack.

• We shall evaluate these (as well as the probable and possible Israeli options for a retaliation/response) in future posts.

• For now however, we shall look at immediate insights and inferences that can be drawn from the lead-up to this attack and from the drone/missile barrage itself.

The lead-up.

• Days and hours leading to the attack have in fact revealed a lot.

• First off, this was yet another win to the credibility of US intel.

• A month after correctly predicting a terrorist attack in Moscow (and warning Russians wholly three weeks prior to the attack) American intel agencies were once again highly accurate in predicting the imminent attack: a day before the barrage, Washington was already on high alert and shared this insight with the entire world.

• The result was that by late Friday and early Saturday, all major media institutions were already informed that an Iranian attack was imminent.

• There was also a spillover effect in the social media: hours before the attack, Twitter/X was already buzzing with new data points.

• It is highly doubtful that but for American intel, a similar level of awareness would have been possible: perhaps hours before the attack - but not day/s.

• Secondly, the long lead-up to the actual attack and the ensuing suspense had arguably caused far more psychological tension than the actual barrage that ended up in failure.

• And there were two additional events of note:

• 1) Qualified US messaging to deter the attack.

• Biden’s made a public statement that the US was ‘‘devoted to the defense of Israel’’ and that the US would ‘‘support Israel” and ‘‘help defend Israel’’ and that Iran ‘‘will not succeed”.

• Turns out: Biden was right - Iran did not succeed.

• And this is of course in large part due to the involvement of the US military (more on that later below).

• But what is also notable however, is the lack of any US threat to hit back: promising to ‘‘help defend’’ Israel is not the same as ‘‘Iran would pay a high price for this attack - so it should not do something so foolish’’.

• In other words, Biden threatened Iran with a bulletproof vest vs shooting back.

• This is qualified support - not the unconditional “you hurt Israel we hurt you” type that would have once been expected from the US.

• And there is of course reason for this: at a fundamental level, Washington understands that Iran had to do something in response to the brazen Israeli assassination of its senior commanders (more on that later below), and so given that a) Iran was going to do something no matter how high the potential costs, and that b) Washington doesn’t want further escalation, it made sense not to threaten further repercussions: doing so and following through would have resulted in further escalation.

• And making that threat without following through would have resulted in loss of credibility.

• A lot of critics pointed out how Biden should have made this threat and followed through.

• Perhaps - but there is however, significant difference between making this threat because Biden admin was interested in escalation (to use it an excuse to thereafter target legitimate military targets/nuclear enrichment facilities etc) vs doing so reflexively just because an ally - that was also an original instigator in this case - was about to get attacked.

• The former would be in line with a controlled policy and a scenario where Washington would maintain escalation dominance.

• The latter would have undesirable implications - since what is the message here

• That just because a country is a close ally to the US, it can instigate military operations and remain confident that come what may America will be there to help?

• That would amount to a blank check to US allies and would lead to a highly undesirable precedent.

• And in fact, precisely now - when the Iranian threat is nowhere near existential to Israel - is the best time to signal to Israel that its actions/instigations will not automatically drag the US into war on its side.