Al-Qalam 
[Photo: Reuters]
Iran’s prestige as the foremost supporter of Palestine’s freedom struggle has been enormously bolstered when it attacked Israel, writes Iqbal Jassat.
The eve of April 14, 2024, and the hours that followed into the night will be recorded in history as momentous, for it saw the Islamic Republic of Iran launch an aerial assault directly from its soil on apartheid Israel’s colonial regime.
Residents attest to the tense hours when Iran’s drones and ballistic missiles came over the regime’s night skies as bewildering, shocking and alarming. Many claim to have spent the night in bunkers and safe rooms, anxiously and sleepless.
It was a new reality they were confronted with, to have been on the receiving end of an attack: Much different from being cheerleaders to the slaughter of thousands of innocent Palestinians in Gaza and the pogroms in the West Bank.
A columnist in Forward described the sombre reality of the effects of Iran’s attacks in the following words: “Sunday is the start of the Israeli workweek, but schools and many government offices were closed for the day. This cosmopolitan city’s typically crowded light rail was sparse and remarkably silent, with the few passengers glued to their smart-phones looking for answers nobody could seem to find”.
While uncertainty about the result of Iran’s historic attack has preoccupied military analysts keen to find answers, they certainly cannot ignore the fact that Israel’s deterrence capacity has been severely compromised.
Former French military mission chief to the United Nations, General Dominique Trinquand, made an important point: “The significant development in this conflict is that Iran has directly hit Israel”.
Though advanced American defense technology intervened on behalf of Israel to intercept many of the drones and missiles, the Iranian attack “carries significant weight”, he said.
“One cannot underestimate the number of missiles and drones fired at Israel from Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon, with strikes on the Golan Heights”.
An equally important observation has been made by Didier Leroy, a researcher at the Royal Military Academy of Belgium.
According to him, “We have crossed a qualitative threshold that changes the dynamics and repositions Iran on the map as an active military player.”
From his vantage point as a former director of Israeli military intelligence, Amos Yadlin predicts that the Iranian attack may lead to a strategic change in “the war in Gaza and even to its end.”
The military decree issued by Israel’s war cabinet to block information on the damage caused by Iran’s attacks has gagged local and international media platforms and denied access to independently verify claims that “minimal” damage had occurred.
Such repressive conduct which unfairly censors news content, has given the regime carte blanche to disseminate propaganda couched as “information” but far removed from truth and accuracy.
An Iranian analyst, Professor Sayed Mohammed Marandi, insists that Iran’s main targets are two airbases. And that 20 or more missiles struck their targets. “The other drones and older generation missiles were inexpensive decoys that depleted the Israeli air defense capabilities of most of its very expensive missiles”.
Skeptics who may argue that Iran’s attack was a failure either ignore or deliberately obfuscate the new reality of deterrence injected by the Islamic Republic.
From an Iranian perspective, the attack on its consulate in Damascus was a redline which, if not retaliated against, would erase any notion of deterrence, opening the door for even more brazen Israeli military action, up to and including direct attacks on Iran.
No wonder that former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter has described Iran’s retaliatory attack as one of the “greatest victories of this century.”
“Operation True Promise,” as Iran named its retaliatory attack on Israel, will go down in history as one of the most important military victories in the history of modern Iran, keeping in mind that war is but an extension of politics by other means. The fact that Iran has established a credible deterrence posture without disrupting major policy goals and objectives is the very definition of victory, wrote Ritter.
This point is emphasised by Palestinian academic Professor Sami Al-Arian. He insists that the theory of Israeli deterrence has been greatly undermined.
“The strategic situation of the Zionist regime after October 7 is not the same as it was before. Similarly the regional strategic situation after April 14 is not the same as well.”
No matter how Israel’s racist right-wing regime attempts to spin its lockdown as a “victory”, the fact disputes this narrative.
Iran’s prestige as the foremost supporter of Palestine’s freedom struggle has been enormously bolstered. It is a position it has not shied away from nor concealed. In fact, part of the strategic calibration that went into its attack has been to ensure that Gaza’s plight is neither overshadowed nor forsaken.
Unsurprisingly, Hamas has backed Iran’s attack and affirmed “the natural right” of countries and peoples in the Middle East to defend themselves “in the face of Zionist aggressions”.
“The military operation carried out by Iran against the Zionist entity is a natural right and a due response to the crime of targeting the consulate in Damascus,” it said.
The most important lesson of Iran’s heroic mission is that fighting for liberation, defending sovereignty, and resisting occupation and oppression is a just cause.
*Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of the MEDIA REVIEW NETWORK.
