On January 8, just five days after the U.S. killed the high-ranking Iranian general Qassem Suleimani in a retaliatory airstrike, Tehran responded by firing ballistic missiles at two American bases in Iraq. At first it seemed possible that the Islamic Republic deliberately aimed its rockets so as not harm U.S. soldiers, but, Uzi Rubin concludes, information made public since then strongly suggests that the lack of American deaths was “a matter of sheer luck.” Iran, which generally prefers to operate through proxies or in such a way as to maintain plausible deniability, not only took credit for the attack but boasted about its success.
After analyzing the missile strike and its aftermath, Rubin explains what Israel can learn from it:
Tehran [in this episode] showed a significant degree of self-restraint. Operation Shahid Suleimani, [as the Iranian military dubbed its retaliatory attack], was ultimately more of a demonstration than a decisive strike. As such, it did not diminish—and perhaps even augmented—American deterrence of Iran.
The killing of Suleimani—apart from being a serious setback to Iran’s quest for regional hegemony—was a body blow to the image and reputation of the Islamic regime and a humiliation within and without. [Therefore it] apparently crossed a threshold and compelled the Islamic regime to bet the whole house and take the almost suicidal risk of killing U.S. troops just for the sake of regaining the respect of its citizens.
[F]rom the perspective of the cognitive battlefield, the U.S. administration’s messaging was hesitant and contradictory, showing a lack of control over information directly provided to the media by individual U.S. troops, rather than through their spokespersons. This stood in sharp contrast to the focused, fluent, and forceful messaging of the Iranians. In today’s conflicts, the cognitive battlefield is only a fraction less important than the physical battlefield, if [not of equal importance]. It is the cognitive battlefield that decides the perception of victory or defeat. The IDF would be well advised to heed this lesson from Iran’s act of revenge.
Read more on BESA Center: https://besacenter.org/mideast-security-and-policy-studies/iran-soleimani-revenge/