Iran’s bombardment of Israel on 1 October 2024, with approximately 180 projectiles, including many ballistic missiles, marked a clear shift toward direct confrontation between the two regional powers, Iran and Israel.
This contrasts with the indirect ‘proxy wars‘ waged since 7 October 2023, through pro-Iranian militias, particularly the Palestinian Hamas movement, Lebanese Hezbollah, and the Houthi movement in Yemen. According to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the attack came in response to Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in central Tehran on 31 July 2024, and Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on 27 September 2024.
This attack differs from Iran’s earlier strike on 13-14 April this year, as it was twice as intense. In this operation, Iran used ballistic missiles, unlike the April attack, where mostly drones and cruise missiles were employed. Most of the missiles in the April strike were conventional rockets, which took at least two hours to reach their targets in Israel, except for a few ballistic missiles. In contrast, in the latest attack, the rockets took only 15 minutes to hit their targets in Israel. For the first time, Iran deployed its hypersonic missile “Fattah,” capable of speeds 15 times faster than the speed of sound and with a range of up to 1,400 kilometres. This is only the second time such missiles have been used, with Russia deploying them first in the Ukraine war.
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