FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
JERUSALEM – The camera is fixed on the roundabout-fountain and on the cars that drive around it, the sky is blue, so clear that you can see the mountains in the background. It is the moving postcard that the Iranian regime broadcast on all channels as news of an attack in the Isfahan area. Reassuring images, accompanied by elevator music, if you want to send the message immediately: they have no intention of taking the conflict upstairs. Downplaying – repeating that “the mini planes were shot down and did not reach their objectives” – allows the ayatollahs and the Pasdaran not to carry out the threats relaunched throughout the week: “If the Zionist regime attacks us directly, we will respond with a weapon never seen before.”
The Israelis attacked, but the mode was limited should avoid widening the conflict for now opened between the two nations after the bombing ordered by Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, in the night between last Saturday and Sunday, over 300 drones and missiles launched towards the airspace of the Jewish State. A raid decided to avenge the killing of a general of the Revolutionary Guards together with six advisors in Damascus on April 1st.
The government a Jerusalem neither confirms nor denies, except for some unauthorized releases with references also to Khamenei’s birthday, 85 years old. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chooses the strategy of ambiguity that has defined the shadow war with the Islamic regime in recent decades. The little information arriving from the city in central Iran is that provided by the Pasdaran and the Americans, who were informed only shortly before the operation. Small drones, quadcopters that are assembled on site, would have been usedarmed with explosives and sent to a military aviation base: this appears to be the part of the mission managed by the Mossad with local teams.
According to the American broadcaster ABCTsahal’s jets would instead have fired three missiles from the skies of Iraq and Syria against the radar system that protects the sites in Isfahan, which is at the heart of the production of rockets, drones and nuclear research, the Natanz plant is located an hour’s drive. The raid would have served to demonstrate that the Israelis can penetrate Iranian defenses and they would know how to hit even the most secret atomic laboratories. The United Nations Atomic Energy Agency confirms that “there is no damage to the nuclear centers”.
The Jewish Passover holidays begin the day after tomorrow and Israeli analysts consider it unlikely that last night’s retaliation was just the first phase of a longer retaliation. At least for the next ten days. The general staff returns to concentrate on the northern front, where clashes with the Lebanese Hezbollah remain dailyand on Gaza: on day 196 of the war the jihadists still managed to launch rockets and sirens rang out in Sderot, even if most of the bullets – say army spokesmen – fell back into the Strip.
