Iranian leadership is downplaying Israeli strikes against their country, despite previously vowing total war in the event of the “tiniest invasion.”
During a Friday speech, President Ebrahim Raisi did not mention the Israeli missile strike launched against the Isfahan region of Iran earlier the same day.
Instead, Raisi focused on justifying Iran’s own offensive attacks.
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“Operation True Promise led to authority, unity and cohesion in the country,” Raisi said in his speech, according to translations from Iran International English. “Today, all political groups and factions believe that this response was necessary and a big honor for the country.”
Operation True Promise is the codename for the Iranian drone missile and drone launch against Israel that took place on Saturday last week.
Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel on Saturday in response to an apparent strike on Iran’s embassy compound in Syria on April 1 that killed 12 people, including two Iranian generals. It was the first ever direct Iranian military attack on Israel.
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Israel, with help from the U.S., the United Kingdom, neighboring Jordan and other nations, successfully intercepted nearly every missile and drone that Iran launched. Israel boasted of a 99% success rate, through the use of its Iron Dome and David’s Sling systems.
Following the Iranian launch, Raisi said the attack was a limited one — and that if Iran was provoked to carry out a bigger attack, “nothing would remain from the Zionist regime,” the official IRNA news agency reported.
The Iranian supreme leader’s decision not to address Israel’s retaliatory strike shows a drastic gap between this previous rhetoric and the country’s disposition moving forward.
Israel and Iran have waged a shadow war for decades, with the war coming to a head over the past few months as Iran has supported Hamas, which carried out the deadliest terror attack in Israel’s history on Oct. 7.
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