“It was a worst-case scenario in what Iran launched, but a best case in terms of the outcome,” Brett McGurk, the Middle East director for the National Security Council, said in an interview. He was one of the top officials who worked closely with President Biden during what officials described as a nerve-racking 12 minutes when the ballistic missiles were on their way to targets in Israel and nobody knew if the defenses would hold.
The missile war this weekend was the bookend to Israel’s bold but risky April 1 airstrike on Tehran’s consulate in Damascus, which killed seven officers in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including two senior leaders. Now, Israel’s stunning success at fending off Iran’s reprisal for that attack could mark a psychological turning point in the trauma of the Gaza war. Israel has felt weak and embattled since Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, and increasingly isolated internationally as it tried to crush Hamas in its lairs underneath a desperate Palestinian civilian population. But the symbolic imagery reversed Saturday night.
With its Iron Dome missile defense systems, Israel became the implacable defender, shielding Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem as well as its own population. Israel, for a change, seemed to have the world on its side as it countered the Iranian assault. Britain and France joined the United States in shooting down the Iranian volley. Sources said Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other Arab countries quietly joined in the integrated air defense, too. And Group of Seven Western nations talked Sunday morning about possible joint sanctions against Iran.
White House officials who on Friday night were waiting anxiously for the Iranian attack sounded almost jubilant Sunday afternoon describing the outcome. A senior administration called it a “spectacular defeat” of an “unprecedented” Iranian attack. Israel and its partners destroyed “99 percent” of the weapons fired in the assault, the official said, with “virtually no infrastructure damage to Israel at all.” In the Middle East, social media posts mocked the Iranian missile failure, a U.S. official told me.
The military confrontation between Israel and Iran will doubtless have more rounds. But a rapid move up the escalatory ladder seemed unlikely after Saturday’s night’s “extraordinary feat of military prowess” by Israel, as the senior administration official called it.
The White House had feared that if Iran punctured Israel’s defenses and caused heavy damage, Israel would respond with a punishing retaliation that could tip the region toward full-scale war. “If successful, the attack could have caused uncontrollable escalation,” the administration official said. But the shield proved astonishingly solid — and an Iranian statement said “the matter can be deemed concluded” after the failed barrage.
Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately after the “tense moments” when most of the 100 Iranian ballistic missiles heading toward Israeli targets were successfully intercepted. “We were feeling pretty good about where we were,” the official said. Biden told Netanyahu that “Israel really came out far ahead in this exchange” but cautioned him that “we do have to think carefully and strategically about risks of escalation,” the official recalled.
“Slow things down, think through things,” Biden admonished the Israeli leader. That’s classic Biden, and he seems likely to emerge from missile weekend in a stronger position, at home and abroad. While criticizing Netanyahu’s “mistakes” on Gaza and pressing for de-escalation and humanitarian assistance, Biden has also made good on his pledge of “ironclad” support for Israel’s defense in crisis.
“Biden is the first American president to directly defend Israel,” the senior official noted. U.S. guided-missile destroyers shot down four to six Iranian missiles, a U.S. Patriot missile in Iraq destroyed another, and two squadrons of U.S. fighter jets shot down many Iranian drones, officials said.
Military success likely creates space for other actions. Some Israelis will doubtless want to go harder on the offensive now that Iran’s rocket attack has been routed. But perhaps the show of force will create an opportunity for defusing a conflict that had, until this weekend, seemed damaging and demoralizing for Israel. After Saturday night’s fireworks, that momentum may have shifted.
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