For Israel’s sake, Netanyahu must think beyond ‘reciprocity’ with Iran

Sunday's attack on Israel by Iran involved 185 drones, 36 cruise missiles and 110 surface-to-surface missiles, according to leaked Israel reports to the New York Times. Most came from the Iranian mainland with a few fired by proxies in Iraq and Yemen. Israel, in conjunction with the armed forces of the US, UK, France and Jordan, defended itself by employing the home-made Iron Dome and David's Sling as well as the American manufactured Arrow system to shoot down the ayatollahs' lethal visitors.

This followed an attack a couple of weeks ago, on a building in Damascus, situated between the Iranian and Canadian Embassies. Key Iranian commanders, General Mohammed Reza Zahedi and his deputy were killed, along with their staff. Both had been heavily involved in providing arms to Hezbollah — and almost certainly smuggling arms and expertise to Hamas operatives in Gaza over many years.

Zahedi was a commander with the al-Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon. He was only brought back to Syria in December because the experienced Revolutionary Guards commander, Sayyed Razi Mousavi, had similarly been killed — and this in turn followed the assassination of the legendary al-Quds Force leader, Qasem Soleimani, by the Americans in 2000.

So the elimination of pivotal Iranian military figures is not a new occurrence. After all, the Director of Iran's nuclear program, Professor Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed in an ambush in 2020 — almost certainly instigated by Israel.

According to the Israeli media, the killing of Zahedi on April 1 would have involved “the whole chain of (Israeli) authorisation to decide to attack”. Did the Iranian response of a calibrated but mass attack from Iranian soil therefore catch Israel by surprise? Did a reckless Netanyahu miscalculate once again?