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With hindsight, Iran made a major strategic blunder back in April, when it fired some 300 missiles and drones at Israel, only to see virtually all of them shot down or fail. Tuesday’s barrage, smaller in number but more potent, looks like another mistake.

Iran’s leaders had in April hoped to restore lost deterrence, after Israel struck the Iranian consulate in Damascus. Senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers were killed. Tehran’s response aimed to demonstrate power, without inflicting casualties that might force a potentially overwhelming Israeli retaliation.

The intended message was clear — we don’t want a real war, but if it comes to one, look what we can do. And yet the attack projected weakness instead. It showed Israel that Iran lacked either the capability or the willingness to hit back hard. The Israeli retaliation that followed — a single precision strike that destroyed air defense assets near an Iranian nuclear site — left no doubt as to Israel’s capabilities or intent.

Since then, the clerics in Tehran have had to look on as Israel decapitated and degraded Hezbollah, the most powerful asset in their so-called Axis of Resistance. As one Hezbollah commander after another was killed, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general was severely injured, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed while in Tehran, no less. Iranian leaders talked big about punishment, and then sat on their hands.

But the bunker-busting strike on Hezbollah’s Beirut headquarters that killed the group’s charismatic leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and yet another top IRGC general, was too much to ignore. The alternative was to be dismissed as a paper tiger, not just in the Arab world — as was already happening — but among its Axis clients and, worst of all, at home.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-10-01/iran-s-missile-strike-was-yet-another-strategic-blunder?srnd=homepage-canada&sref=bsUD5q46