Iran’s missiles were shot down – but they still delivered what Tehran was hoping for

Earlier this month, after an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus killed several military commanders, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, used his sermon to mark Eid al-Fitr to equate Israel’s attack on the diplomatic facility to an attack on Iranian soil, and vowed that Israel’s “mistake” would be punished. At just that moment, the broadcast of the sermon cut to a face in the crowd – Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh. Hajizadeh commands the aerospace forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). His grin was knowing.

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