V In April 2018, an airstrike hit the T-4 airbase in Syria. Seven Iranians were killed and local media blamed the attack on Israel. At the time, the strike seemed to be quickly forgotten, one of many attacks that Israel was alleged to have carried out in Syria to prevent Iranian arms smuggling to Hezbollah and its further entrenchment in Syria. However, in retrospect the strike takes on more importance.

Israel’s Ynet revealed in May 2018 that “the target of the strike was, in fact, the "3rd Khordad” (Khordad is the third month of the Iranian calendar) aerial defence system, an Iranian stand-in for the S-300 system Russia stalled on providing the Islamic republic”. The system had been flown to the airbase in central Syria and was “destroyed before even being unpacked”. The destruction of an Iranian air defence system in Syria was important in preventing Syria’s air defence from acquiring new capabilities. The Israeli airstrikes on Iran on October 26 were also aimed at neutralising Iranian air defences.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel’s strikes targeted Russian-made S-300 air defence systems.

The airstrikes also targeted facilities involved in mixing solid fuel for Iran’s rocket programme. Together, these attacks are seen as a setback for Iran’s ability to produce more long-range missiles and it potentially opens up its airspace to more attacks in the future.

According to the Guardian, “three Russian-made S-300 air defence systems around Tehran were also reportedly hit, as well as the Parchin and Parand military bases”.

These were precision strikes, the kind we have all become used to over the past several decades. Warfare has transitioned since the Gulf War from conflicts involving mass bombing to precision operations based on the latest technology and advanced precision-guided munitions. What this means is that missiles and bombs are “smarter” and can be guided into a small target area, even at great distances. These types of weapon systems are now bolstered by drones, including what are known as loitering munitions or kamikaze drones. These types of aircraft behave in a manner similar to a cruise missile, but they can also hang above a target before striking. They are often stealthy and small, so they can avoid some radar detection.

The story of precision weapons is important in regards to Israel’s strikes on Iran. Unlike the “shock and awe” campaign that opened the US war on Iraq in 2003, the strikes overnight between October 25 and October 26 didn’t produce any massive explosions. In fact, Iranian regime media mocked the strikes by asserting that everything continued as usual the next day in Iran, showing videos of Iranians driving in Tehran. Some eager social media users who wanted to believe huge explosions were hitting Iran tweeted images of fireballs in Yemen or other places, mislabelling them as being in Iran.

The precision strikes enabled the Iranian regime to save face. It could say it had not suffered major damage. Satellite photos reveal that a number of buildings at key military sites were affected, but the regime could say the buildings were empty.

Meanwhile, Iranian diplomats are working the phones to try to drum up condemnation for the attacks. Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi phoned British Foreign Secretary David Lammy on the evening of October 27, according to Iranian media.

“The top Iranian diplomat said that his country will not hesitate to exercise its inherent and legitimate right to defend its national sovereignty and territorial integrity in accordance with the accepted principles of international law and the UN Charter,” Iranian state media IRNA reported. Iran said it wants the UN Security Council to condemn Israel.

Iran also ensured condemnations poured in from the Gulf, while Iraq denounced Israel for supposedly using its airspace in the strikes. Iran’s response is designed to lay the groundwork for creating an international legal framework. This is how Iran’s regime often behaves. Even as it conducts illegal terrorist activity, such as transferring weapons to Hezbollah or the Houthis with one hand, it tries to pretend it is behaving within international norms with the other. Iran’s foreign minister, for example, recently completed a tour of the region’s countries, and Iran’s president was recently at the BRICS meetings in Russia.

The looming question in the wake of the airstrikes relates to deterrence. Iran has attacked Israel directly twice in the last year. In April it used more than 300 drones and missiles and on October 1 it used 180 ballistic missiles.

In both cases it claimed it was targeting Israeli military bases. Iran also insisted it had a right to respond both times due to Israeli actions. These include an Israeli strike on a building next to the Iranian consulate in Damascus, and the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, which Iran blamed on Israel. Now Iran has another “open account” with Israel and will claim it has the right to respond proportionately and in an “appropriate” manner in the future.

This raises questions about whether Iran has, in fact, now been deterred. On the one hand, Tehran wants to put on a brave face after the strikes.

Iran wasn’t able to stop the airstrikes and its air defences appear to have failed. If these were badly impacted by the strikes then Iran will have even less capability than in the past to defend its skies. Iran has not used its air defences in the past against enemies. They have a mixed track record. In 2020, Iran shot down a commercial airliner, Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752, because it believed it was countering a US attack, killing 176 people.

Iran’s air defences’ only “success” is shooting down an expensive US Global Hawk surveillance drone in 2019. But Global Hawks are a relatively easy target to detect and strike, because they resemble a flying whale.

Iran used its 3rd Khordad system to shoot down the US drone. This was the same system Iran had sent to Syria in 2018. In Syria it didn’t survive for more than a few minutes on the tarmac before being destroyed in an airstrike.

The destruction of that, and Iran’s shooting down of a US drone with this air defence system, brings us back full circle to the perplexing question of whether Israel’s strikes on Iran will deter the regime. The regime knows its air defences can’t meet modern aerial threats. It knows this because the Syrian regime uses similar Russian-supplied defences and the Syrians can’t defend their airspace.

Iran has historically relied on other countries being afraid of how it would respond for preventing attacks on Iran itself.

It’s unlikely the regime will be completely deterred by losing some of its air defences and rocket fuel mixers to Israel’s precision strikes.

Instead, Iran will do what it did in Syria after 2018: it will keep moving forward and keep trying to target Israel with proxies.

Seth J. Frantzman is the senior Middle East analyst for the Jerusalem Post, an adjunct Fellow at The Foundation for Defence of Democracies and author of The October 7 War: Israel’s Battle for Security in Gaza (2024)