THE SHADOW WAR EXPLODES

Ina way, both strikes were messaging, indicating each other’s capabilities to attack deep. And hopefully this crisis will pass and the world will be spared a wider escalation.

- AJAY SINGH

Then Iranian missiles and drones struck Israel on the night of 13 April, it was the first time that any nation had hit Israeli soil since the 1973 war (less a flurry of missiles fired by Saddam Hussain in the first Gulf war of 1991). It was also the first time that Iran directly attacked Israel bringing their shadow war out into the open.

Iran and Israel have been in a state of animosity, bordering on open enmity, ever since the Ayatollahs came to power in Iran in 1979. But though Iran proclaims, “Death to USA, Death to Israel,” it largely relies on its proxies to carry out that threat. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Shia militia in Syria and Iraq are all sponsored and armed by them. Both sides view the other as an existentialist threat, but have refrained from direct attacks on each other—barring cyberattacks, the killings of Iranian nuclear scientists by Israel and attacks on Israeli consulate members by Iran. Now the confrontation has

 THE IRANIAN ATTACKS