14 November 2024

How Iran’s attacks on Israel backfired, escalating regional conflict – opinion

NEVILLE TELLER

Despite the many charges of aggression, mass murder, and worse that the Iranian regime chooses to level against Israel, there is no disguising the fact that it is Iran that seeks to destroy Israel, not the other way around.

On April 13, 2024, Iran – which essentially means the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – committed a major strategic blunder. Israel’s audacious attack on the Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus on April 1, 2024, took out seven Iranian military advisers, including Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC).

Such an operation would normally have provoked Iranian ire and an armed response on northern Israel from Hezbollah. Not this time. Instead, the incident was the trigger for a fundamental shift in Iranian policy that has led to negative consequences for Iran, which are still to be fully worked through. They may, in the final analysis, prove existential.


No comments: