In the skies over Israel, the "Iron Dome" tracked the exhaust traces of flying objects in the air, as well as the explosive sparks that hit the target, reappeared.
However, this time it is not missiles launched by Hamas or Allah in Lebanon, but hundreds of "Shahid" suicide drones and cruise missiles flying from the direction of Iran.
Half a year has passed, the same news picture, but the nature behind it has completely changed. This is the first direct military attack from Iran since the establishment of the state.
According to information released by the U.S. military, in the early morning of April 14 local time, Iran launched a large-scale drone attack, ballistic missile and cruise missile missile, which lasted for a total of five hours. Since the shortest air distance between Iran and Israel is 1724.48 kilometers, separated by Iraq and Jordan, many drones and missiles have been shot down by the US military, British army and Jordanian air force stationed in Iraq before they reach Israel.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that it had shot down 99 per cent of airstrikes from Iran targeting Israeli territory, with the exception of a girl who was seriously injured in the southern desert region, and that there were essentially no civilian casualties. At one point since the attack, Israel has closed all traffic in its airspace and cancelled all flights between China and abroad.
Footage of the Israeli "Iron Dome" air defense system launched to intercept it in the early morning of April 14 over Jerusalem / Source: Xinhua News Agency (Photo by Jamal Awad)
In the aftermath, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps took to social media to warn the United States not to meddle and threatened to strike more if Iran or its interests were hit. The local Israeli government has also advised residents to find the closest air defense facility to them in case of another Iranian attack.
Iran and Israel are directly engaged in military friction, and the situation in the Middle East, which has been tense because of the Gaza conflict, is now dangerously uncertain.
In the wake of the Iranian attack, several members of Israel's wartime cabinet were in favor of a retaliation. But the latest news says that in a subsequent call with Biden, Netanyahu was successfully dissuaded by Biden and chose not to carry out a retaliatory strike against Iran.
"Engines in the air"
After graduating, Mr. Zhang came to Tel Aviv, Israel to work in IT. Over the past week, he has seen that the Israeli media have been broadcasting news that Iran is about to launch an attack on Israel.
On the 13th, there was even more news that Iran's attack on Israel would take place within 48 hours. For the inhabitants of Israel's major cities, the arrival of this moment is already a matter of "when" rather than "if".
Therefore, at 10 o'clock local time on the 13th, the Israeli authorities released information through the media that when the Iranian air raid would be ushered in at 2 o'clock in the morning the next day, the residents of Tel Aviv, where Mr. Zhang is located, are ready and waiting for the air defense siren to sound.
In the middle of the night, the engines in the air roared, and Israeli warplanes hovered in the air. Mr. Zhang described it as "like living next to the airport". But the air raid sirens never sounded.
This means that the residents of Tel Aviv do not need to take refuge in air defenses. Opening the social dating app, Mr. Zhang found that the local young people in Tel Aviv still have the same nightlife. There are hundreds of young people in the nightclub, wearing fashionable and thin clothes, dancing to the rhythm of the music. Warplanes roared in the sky and people on the ground writhed to electronic dance music, and Mr. Zhang, who had been working in Israel for some time, was no stranger to this.
In fact, the 170 drones, 30 ballistic missiles and 120 cruise missiles launched by Iran in the direction of Israel largely did not reach Haifa, Jaffa and Tel Aviv, the most densely populated places in Israel's central hinterland. The most threatened areas are Jerusalem, which borders the West Bank, and desert areas in the south, which are less populated.
On April 14, 2024, after an Israeli raid, there were few pedestrians on the streets of Jerusalem
Mr. Zhang described that in addition to the fact that the engines of Israeli warplanes were so loud that people couldn't sleep, he had to continue to work overtime the next day. Three of his colleagues on his team had been summoned back to the military to standby, so he had to take on the workload of his absent colleagues.
Shadow wars are made public
After the attacks subsided, Iran's permanent mission to the United Nations said on social media that Iran's attacks on Israel could be considered "over" and warned that if Israel retaliated, it would face tougher retaliation.
Iran's first military attack on Israel was directly caused by an attack on Iranian diplomatic facilities in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on April 1 by suspected Israeli troops. Seven Iranian military personnel were killed in the attack, including two generals of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
One of the slain generals, Mohammad Reza al-Zahedi, was a powerful senior general within Iran's military and a key decision-maker in the deployment of Iran's armed forces to its Middle Eastern neighbors beyond its borders.
Iran's ambassador to Lebanon and others mourned the late senior commander of the Quds Force Zahedi
A significant number of observers in Israel believe that Zahedi, as a representative of the Iranian military, has long provided military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and is also responsible for directly cultivating Shiite armed groups in Syria.
In addition to Syria, al-Zahedi has been implicated in the Houthis, a Shiite militant group in Yemen, and Allah, a Shiite Muslim military group in Lebanon, as well as a series of Shiite militant groups active in Iraq. Zahedi was killed in an airstrike, the highest-ranking military officer killed after Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani was killed by a U.S. military drone in 2020.
In fact, Iran and Israel had long been friendly during the Pahlavi dynasty, and after the establishment of Israel in 1948, Iran was the second Muslim-majority country to recognize its status. Together, the two sides work closely together as allies of the United States. In 1979, the Islamic Revolution broke out in Iran, which changed everything. The Tehran side severed all ties with Israel, and the Israeli embassy in Tehran was converted into a Palestinian embassy. The new Islamic Republic brings with it a new worldview. Against the "arrogant" world powers and their allies (the Great Satanic United States, the Little Satanic Israel), Iran has completely reversed its position on the Palestinian issue in order to demonstrate its leadership in the Islamic world.
In the past three or four decades, the secret war between Iran and Israel has never stopped. In regions such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, Iran has gradually formed a network of "axis of resistance" to take on Israel by proxy. This is Iran's proudest "game". Israel has also supported various groups that have violently opposed the Iranian establishment. The destruction of Iran's nuclear and military facilities is believed to be Israel's fault, including assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.
The most blatant is that in 2020, the "father of Iran's nuclear power" Mohsin Fakhrizadeh was shot and killed by an AI-controlled machine gun. Later, U.S. intelligence officials said that Israel was behind it. Iran also claimed that an Iranian anti-government group and Israel jointly planned the operation.
The "father of Iran's nuclear program" Mohsin Fakrizadeh
Decades of shadow warfare have gradually become public.
In the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack, rocket and artillery attacks on Israel by armed groups active in Lebanon and Syria, allegedly Iranian-controlled, have increased accordingly. It is true that the Sunni Hamas organization does not obey Iran's orders, but Israel has been attacked by Hamas on a large scale without warning, so that Iran and many Shiite camp organizations see an opportunity to attack Israel.
In response, Israel put high-ranking Iranian military officers in and out of Syria on hunt lists. In December 2023, Saeed Razi Mousavi, Iran's senior military adviser to the Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria, was killed in an airstrike. The Israeli army's purpose is to send a message that the days of high-ranking Iranian officers moving in and out of Syria unscathed are gone.
In early April, less than a week after Israel announced a large-scale withdrawal from Gaza, the smell of gunpowder on both sides suddenly increased. As soon as the past "dark wars" were fought through proxies and affiliated organizations throughout the Middle East, the risk of direct confrontation began to increase.
The first large-scale air strikes against Israel were Iran's countermeasures. The fact that the air strikes were preceded by sufficient warning shows that this direct attack on Israel was a bit of a "show", and one of the motives was to appease the hardliners at home, rather than really trying to make a big deal out of it.
Biden is not happy
A week ago, Israeli forces attacked a convoy of the American charity World Central Kitchen in the Gaza Strip, killing seven staff members, mainly from the West, in a phone call in which Biden shouted to Netanyahu as "immediate ceasefire in Gaza."
The convoy of the "World Central Kitchen" was attacked by Israeli forces
And in the latest round of telephone conversations, according to CNN reports, Biden's message to Netanyahu is: Israel should declare victory, after all, such a large-scale air strike, which only caused one serious injury, can declare Israel's absolute superiority in air defense.
Let Netanyahu accept it when he sees it, Biden's position is "non-engagement" and opposes any military counterattack by Israel against Iran.
After all, Israel's "Operation Iron Sword", which lasted for six months, made Biden, who was facing the pressure of re-election in the general election, feel the danger of alienating left-wing voters. With the Democratic Party's mainstream disapproval of Israel waning, Netanyahu, who has a hard-line style and caused huge civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip, has become a burden in the eyes of the Democratic government.
U.S. President Joe Biden
But from Netanyahu's standpoint, in the face of such a large-scale air strike, it is difficult to give an account to his right-wing votes without any reaction.
On April 7, the same day that Israeli forces announced a large-scale withdrawal, Israel's well-known far-right National Security Minister Ben-Gvir posted on social media that he would resign if Israeli forces did not enter Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip.
If Ben-Gvir does withdraw from the "far-right Israeli cabinet", Netanyahu will lose the majority he needs to govern in the Knesset and be forced to hold new elections.
After Iran's massive attack on Israel, Ben-Gvir spoke again: "Now is the time to strike back overwhelmingly. ”
Israeli Minister of National Security Ben Gvir
Moreover, Iran is the real thorn in the side of Netanyahu himself, not Hamas. By contrast, the weakened Hamas was just an unexpected episode. In past speeches, he once said that "Israel faces a triple threat: Iran, Iran, and Iran!"
For Netanyahu, Iran, which has a large influence throughout the Middle East and is one of the largest in terms of land area and population, is Israel's number one enemy in his heart. Igniting and winning a large-scale state-to-state war between Israel and Iran seems to be of paramount importance to Netanyahu's lifelong political ambitions.
A week ago, one of Biden's phone calls temporarily suppressed Netanyahu's Gaza operation, and this week, Biden's second phone call may have held him down again. But Netanyahu's ambitions, the old politician, will not stop there. He has rich experience in fighting with former Democratic presidents such as Clinton and Obama, and it may still be his strategy to retreat and advance again to survive the US election in November this year.
The future of the Middle East remains uncertain.