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.

A few days later, on Sunday, 300 drones and long-range missiles were launched from Iran toward Israel. The attack marked the first time Iran had attacked Israel directly from its own territory, rather than relying on its proxies in Iraq, Syria or Lebanon. Though Israeli jets and air defences responded, with the support of American, British, French and Jordanian forces, and successfully intercepted most of the drones and missiles, the spectacle of missiles flying above the Dome of the Rock – the third holiest shrine in Islam – seemed to portend a full-blown war.