Everything was choreographed. Minutes before Iran launched the first wave of drones that led the massive attack in the early hours of Sunday against Israel, a group of young people changed the sign that dominated Palestine Square in Tehran. The photo of General Mohamad Reza Zahedi, the highest-ranking commander who died in the attack on the Iranian diplomatic complex in Damascus on April 1, was changed to another showing an Israeli flag pierced by missiles. On both signs the message was written in Persian and Hebrew.
“Next time it will be even bigger,” said the slogan that dominated the square when the drones and missiles were already flying toward Israeli territory. In the end, and after days of speculating about what the announced response would be, Tehran showed its cards: a combination of more than 300 drones and missiles launched mostly from its territory that, as they warned yesterday, only sought to attack two clear objectives: the military base from which the attack on the diplomatic complex in Syria was launched and the intelligence unit that has led all the operations of the last six months.
The support of the militias allied to Tehran, who were so widely thought to lead the attack, hardly seemed anecdotal. Moments later, a crowd of followers of the Islamic Republic gathered in this same square to celebrate what the authorities consider a “victory.” An image that was repeated in many other cities in the country where in the wee hours of the morning chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” or “Allah Akbar” were heard.
“Iran had to do it. Israel had attacked her consulate and that is our territory. It was done in legitimate defense,” explained Shiba, a university language professor who was waiting for the bus in that same square decorated with Palestinian flags yesterday at the end of the afternoon.
“There have been many years in which Israel has killed scientists and soldiers and Iran has done nothing,” this woman justified. Ramin, a dentist who was having a coffee on the other side of the square, agreed with Shiba and pointed out that this time it had not been an arbitrary attack by Iran, nor an action through its allied militias, but an act of “defense.” . “Any other country would have done the same. And Iran showed that it had the means to do it,” she said.
The position of both was in line with the message that Iran sought to send yesterday after the attack. “Iran has created a new equation,” said the top commander of the Revolutionary Guard, General Hossein Salami, which made it clear that the “shadow war” that Iran and Israel fought for years was now being fought openly.
After decades of confrontation, which began with the creation of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Iran responded directly on Israeli soil for the first time. It left behind the strategy of “strategic patience,” which Iran had talked so much about for years, and marked the red lines for the future. “From this moment on, any attack against Iran’s interests, personalities or citizens, we will respond from Iran,” Salami said on public television.
Hours later, a photo of Salami was made public in the company of other senior military officials in the command room from which they ordered and followed the attack. Among them was also the top commander of the Iranian military forces, General of the Revolutionary Guard, Mohamed Bagheri, who also used Iranian television to warn Israel of a greater response if it attacked again.
Bagheri made it clear that Iran had completed its “response,” that the objectives had been met, but he also announced that Tehran had warned Washington that any support for an Israeli response would represent an attack on its bases in the region. Iran wanted to emphasize in multiple ways that it was far from having used its full response capacity. The country remained on alert yesterday.
Foreign Minister Amir Abdolahian, who spoke in front of the diplomatic corps accredited in Iran, defined the operation as “limited and minimal.” He assured that he had notified the countries of the region of the action 72 hours in advance with a response that he defined as “legitimate defense” and assured, as anticipated from the beginning, that the Iranian action had not only been announced in advance, but it had also been designed after many negotiations so as not to provoke a further escalation. “Bravo to the Revolutionary Guard,” said President Ibrahim Raisi, pointing out that they had “taught the Zionist regime a lesson.”
But not everyone in Iran thought the same. Amir, a 25-year-old merchant who claims that for years he was a follower of the system, stated that everything was choreographed to “save their face.”
“They had to respond so as not to look bad with those who shout “death to America” and with those who support them in the region, but look how many missiles reached their destination. “How can you call this a victory?” said this young man who asked not to forget that many of the children of the authorities live in the West. “What they caused with this is that the dollar rises, prices rise and our lives become more miserable,” said Amir, who assured that he was not afraid.
It is not the same as Sima, a 22-year-old student. Yesterday she was afraid of a major attack, like many. “My father has told me about his experience in the war with Iraq, the fear of missiles. I don’t want that, I just want to live calmly and in peace,” she stated.
