Tehran will wreak cold and calculated revenge on Israel

Reeling from the final stage in Israel’s long-running campaign to knock out its nuclear capabilities, Iran has retaliated with a modest flock of drones that have been easily swatted aside. That is dangerous for everyone else.

- SAM KILEY WORLD AFFAIRS EDITOR

Launching 100 unmanned aircraft against the Jewish state after three top commanders, air defences, nuclear facilities and missile launch sites were destroyed is a sign that Iran’s capacities for conventional revenge have already been degraded.

So, Tehran will use hybrid warfare to strike back against Israel and her allies.

The most obvious targets are steaming through the Arabian Gulf. Oil tankers, carrying the lifeblood of global industry through the narrow choke points of the Gulf, have been struck with mines in “mysterious” assaults by Iranian commandos over recent years. These have been a rehearsal for retaliation against Israeli attacks that Israel has said were coming.

For years, Iran’s top leadership has described the Jewish state as a “cancer” that needed to be “cut out” of the Middle East and should be annihilated.

Iran created Hezbollah in Lebanon, as a proxy force to maintain pressure on Israel, backed Hamas in Gaza and on the West Bank, sent money, technicians and missiles to the Houthis of Yemen, and dispatched squads of assassins around the world to threaten its critics.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza against Hamas has evolved into a programme to drive the Palestinian population out of the enclave. But Israel’s campaigns everywhere else have, for years, been deliberately shaping the battlefield for the operation against Iran’s nuclear programme.

Over the past 12 months, Israel has eviscerated Hezbollah with bombs hidden in pagers, airstrikes and a ground invasion of Lebanon. It continues to target Hezbollah supply routes and Iranian advisers in Syria.