Iran's Attack on Israel: Is the Middle East About to Go to War?

In the dark, calm hours of the night on Saturday, the thirteenth of April 2024, air raid sirens sounded off across Israel. Around the world, alerts chimed and cell phones flared to life, warning any person with even the most basic access to modern media that an attack was coming. Dozens of drones had lifted off from Iran and were on their way, on a long, slow march across the Middle East, with Israel directly in the crosshairs.

For people just tuning in, the attack was both perplexing and deeply worrying. It was launched by a far stronger and more fearsome adversary than the Hamas organization Israel had been fighting in Gaza. For those who had watched the conflict closely, it was the moment that observers had been dreading for months: the moment when posturing, rhetoric, proxy warfare, and even direct attacks on each other inside third nations boiled over into a strike that could become the opening salvo in a new international war, with Israel on one side and Iran on the other.

What follows is a close and comprehensive look at Iran’s strike on Israel: what happened, why it happened, what has been going on below the surface of Middle Eastern affairs, and what may come next. The attack was unprecedented in scope, largely unsuccessful in its tactical aims, and revealing in what it exposed about the alliances, calculations, and red lines that now govern one of the world’s most dangerous standoffs.

Key Takeaways

Iran launched roughly 170 Shahed-136 suicide drones, more than thirty cruise missiles, and over 120 ballistic missiles at Israel on the evening of April 13, 2024, in the largest drone strike in recorded history.
Israel’s multi-layered air defense, supported by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Jordan, intercepted nearly the entire barrage; no drones or cruise missiles reached their targets, and only a small handful of ballistic missiles struck.
The attack was a direct retaliation for an April 1 Israeli airstrike on an Iranian consulate building in Damascus that killed senior Quds Force commanders, including Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi.
Damage inside Israel was limited, and there were no deaths; experts concluded the strike was meant to succeed, not merely to make a show, and that it failed.
The barrage marked the first time since 1991 that Israel had been attacked directly by the military of another nation, shattering a decades-old veneer of indirect conflict.
International reaction broke largely against Iran, with even Tehran’s partners urging restraint and declining to back further escalation.
Israel faced three broad choices in response: draw the conflict down, respond proportionally, or escalate; at the time of analysis, no decision had been announced.

This is the central question that hangs over the entire episode, the one rightly on the minds of world leaders, global analysts, and ordinary people watching the exchange play out: is the Middle East on the brink of war?

The Attack

Iran’s assault commenced on the evening of Saturday, April 13, local time, with the launch of roughly 170 drones from Iranian airspace. The drones were a widely used, Iranian-designed model called the Shahed-136, a suicide drone that attacks in waves against ground targets. Each is equipped with up to 50 kilograms, or 110 pounds, of explosives, intended to crash directly into a target and detonate in the process.

Cruising at a top speed of just 185 kilometers per hour, or not much faster than 100 miles per hour, they would take several hours to reach Israel. The Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, sounded the alarm, and not only Israel but several surrounding nations either closed their airspace at that time or had already done so in anticipation of the attack.

As the drones closed in, Iran launched a second wave: over thirty cruise missiles, which fly in a relatively straight shot over long distances, and over 120 ballistic missiles, which climb high into the atmosphere before falling downward toward their targets. Both ballistic and cruise missiles fly far faster than the Shahed drones, and Iran had timed its launch to bring those missiles crashing down on Israel slightly after the arrival of the drones.

This is a tactic rising rapidly in popularity among 21st-century warfighters, and one that the Institute for the Study of War has described as a near-carbon-copy of methods Russia has used against Ukraine in its ongoing war. The incoming drones and cruise missiles are meant to occupy an enemy’s air defense systems, costing them valuable interceptor rockets that take time to reload, while the faster, harder-to-hit, and deadlier ballistic missiles arrive during a critical moment of vulnerability, surging through and hitting the intended targets. As the Institute put it: “The Iranians very likely expected that few if any of the cruise missiles would hit their targets, but likely hoped that a significantly higher percentage of the ballistic missiles would do so.” Worth noting, too: Iran-allied groups, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen to militias in Iraq, all launched their own rockets at Israel, according to IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari.

Israel’s Multi-Layered Shield

When the combined attack came within range, Israeli air defenses roared to life. Standing against the missiles and drones was Israel’s vaunted, multi-layered defensive shield, a highly advanced interlocking system of long-, medium-, and short-range systems meant to bring down a wide array of aerial threats in and around Israeli airspace.

At long range, Israel’s Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 systems used detachable warheads to intercept Iran’s ballistic missiles, doing so at altitudes high enough that even if a nuclear warhead were mounted to one of the missiles, it would have been disposed of far enough from the Earth’s surface to render its effect harmless. In medium range, Israel used David’s Sling, a system that can launch interceptors against all of the munitions Iran used, at a range of 100 to 200 kilometers, or 62 to 124 miles. The drones and missiles that made it through Arrow and David’s Sling had to face the Iron Dome, Israel’s globally exalted last line of aerial defense, which fires missiles to dispose of short-range threats in midair.

Also at Israel’s disposal were American-made Patriot air defense systems and the aircraft of the Israeli Air Force, including over two hundred F-15 and F-16 fighters and dozens of advanced F-35s. A final element of Israel’s defense, the so-called Iron Beam laser defense system, has not yet gone operational and so was not used in this case. Israel’s allies took part as well: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Jordan each took down numerous incoming targets using warplanes and air defenses, while the French Navy provided radar coverage for the affected area.

A Barrage That Failed

Against such a comprehensive air defense, Iran’s assault was largely unsuccessful. Of the roughly 200 Shahed drones and cruise missiles, not a single one is believed to have impacted its intended target inside Israel, and of Iran’s ballistic missiles, just a small handful were claimed as successful hits.

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According to Iran itself, the intended targets were Israel’s Nevatim Airbase and an intelligence center in a mountain cluster called Mount Hermon, as well as the Ramon Airbase in Israel’s south. According to Israel, five Iranian ballistic missiles struck the Nevatim airbase and four hit the Ramon airbase, but the extent of the damage was limited to a hit on a parked C-130 transport aircraft, a runway that had not been in use, a few empty storage hangars, and scattered locations around the airbases where not much was happening. Iran has claimed far more substantial damage, but as of yet, no evidence of that sort has been made public.

There were no deaths due to the attack, in Israel or anywhere else, although several people sustained minor injuries from shrapnel, and a seven-year-old Bedouin girl living in Israel was seriously injured. By any measure, the strike inflicted little of consequence on the country it was aimed at.

Show of Force, or the Real Thing?

In the early hours following the attack, the relatively limited destruction led many news outlets to conclude that the strike had been meant for show, making brazen flyovers of third nations but choosing points of impact where not many people would be put at risk. It is not an uncommon feature of global flashpoints to see that sort of attack, designed to pacify hardliners at home and defuse tensions abroad at the same time. There was real potential for a less dangerous strike, one that Iranian leaders could show their people to say “see, we’re doing something,” while crafting it in a way that would let Israel repel it easily, signaling that Iran did not want to take the matter further.

Critically, though, most international experts have concluded that this particular attack was not meant to be a simple expression of token retribution. The tactics Iran chose, the weapons it relied on, and the sheer scale of the assault all indicate that this was real. Although Iran chose slow-flying, easy-to-spot Shahed drones for its attack, the addition of large numbers of ballistic missiles indicates that Iran telegraphed its attack not to give Israel a chance to repel it, but to soak up Israeli air-defense capability and allow at least some missiles to get through. The attack was not meant to do massive or disproportionate amounts of damage, but it was meant to work, and it failed.

The Spark: The Damascus Consulate Strike

To make sense of the attack, one has to work backward across the timeline, beginning with the Israeli action that directly preceded it. On the first of April 2024, Israel launched an airstrike against an Iranian consulate building in Damascus, Syria, part of a larger compound that also housed the Iranian embassy there. The consulate that was struck included the living quarters of Iran’s ambassador to Syria, but that was only collateral damage. The real target was a meeting happening inside the building, between several members of non-state militias allied with Iran and seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC.

Among their number was Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, alongside his deputy, Brigadier General Mohammed Hadi Haji Rahimi. All seven IRGC soldiers were killed, alongside seven other associates of military organizations that Israel considers its enemies, and two civilians.

The attack was a major blow to Iran, not just because it directly targeted an Iranian diplomatic target in a third nation, flagrantly breaking one of the few rules of the international order that most of the world actually sticks to. Even more important were the deaths of Brigadier Generals Zahedi and Rahimi, two senior commanders of Iran’s Quds Force. The Quds Force is Iran’s premier special-operations, military intelligence, and unconventional warfare branch, and it props up a range of Iran-allied organizations around the world, from Hamas in Gaza to the Houthi rebels in Yemen to Hezbollah in Lebanon and more. Zahedi and Rahimi are the most senior Revolutionary Guard Corps members to be killed since America’s 2020 assassination of Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani, a strike whose ripple effects many international observers have cited as directly leading to Israel’s current war against Hamas.

A Retaliation Foretold

Since Israel’s strike, it was no secret that an Iranian retaliation would hit sooner rather than later. Iran publicly vowed revenge, and Israel-allied nations around the world, including the United States, took care to express to Iran and the global public that they had not had any advance notice of the strike. Western nations applied intense pressure on Iran to deter an attack, while Israel threatened direct retribution on Iranian soil if Israelis were made the targets of a retaliatory strike.

Iran directly cautioned the US against intervening in any way, passing a threat through Iran’s Swiss embassy to America’s that US military bases could be attacked in the Middle East if the US took part in an Israeli defense. That is a sore spot for the US, after three American reservists were killed and thirty-four were wounded in a strike on an American base near the Jordan-Syria-Iraq border in January. Regional nations that host American bases also lodged requests that America not use their territory to launch a counterattack, in the event that a strike did come. Finally, Iran warned nations of the region three days before the attack, knowing full well that those warnings would eventually make it back to the Americans and the Israelis.

So, when looking at the Iranian attack that ultimately did strike Israel, it is hard to miss the retaliatory nature of the assault, and that was intentional on Iran’s part. Although Iran appears to have meant this attack to be a major success, it was also a direct response to the Israeli strike on that consular building in Damascus. Even the targets Iran chose were ones that had been directly involved: the airbase where Israel’s warplanes took off in order to launch the strike, and the intelligence station believed to have tracked the Quds Force generals.

The intent was to make Israel pay, but it was not meant to start a war, at least not yet. It is the geopolitical equivalent of elbowing back and forth with a sibling in the back of a car: neither side really wants to break the other’s nose, but each means every bit of those elbows, and neither is about to let the other get the last shot in.

The Shadow War and the Axis of Resistance

To really make sense of this attack, one has to understand the longer recent history between Iran and Israel. The history of religious, ethnic, and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East goes back a very long time, but among the by-products of that long and troubled history is a shadow war between Iran and Israel that has gone on for decades. WarFronts has dedicated extensive coverage to the long-running, three-way cold war in the Middle East, between Israel, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. To give the short version, all three nations have battled economically, diplomatically, and via proxy warfare to build their control and influence over the Middle East as a whole.

While Israel tends to fight that cold war through mostly economic and diplomatic means, relying on its strong relationship with the global West and its immense military strength relative to the rest of the region, Iran has taken a different tone, building what it and its own proxy forces refer to as the Axis of Resistance. That axis is made up of numerous non-state actors: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and a network of other militias in Iraq and Syria. The Syrian government also relies heavily on Iran, and the Iraqi government is getting increasingly cozy with Iran as time goes on. Iran provides those groups with financial, military, and intelligence support, primarily relying on its Quds Force, the same organization that the prominent Iranian generals killed in Israel’s first-of-April airstrike helped to lead.

Introduce that context, and the attack starts to come into focus for what it really was: the clearest indication that this long, cold war is at risk of going hot. Iran has pulled the strings behind attacks on, and resistance against, Israel for years, and especially since the start of the Israel-Hamas War. Hamas solicits strong, direct support from Iran, while Hezbollah in southern Lebanon has traded near-daily fire with Israel since that war kicked off, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen have embarked on a large-scale campaign against global maritime shipping.

Israel has fought back, retaliated, and launched a large-scale counteroffensive against Hamas in the wake of its terror attack on October 7, 2023. But even Israel’s direct strike on the Quds Force leaders took place in a third nation and could be interpreted as something other than a direct attack on Iran on its own soil. Now, Iran has chosen to shatter the thin veneer of indirect conflict that still existed.

An Unprecedented Strike

In the aftermath, an accounting of Iran’s attempted strike revealed not only its unprecedented scope but its major effect in disrupting the international order of the last several decades. Given how many Shahed drones were used, Iran has now blown past the historical record for the biggest drone strike ever, even if it was largely unsuccessful in achieving its tactical aims. Not only that, but it was the first time since 1991, thirty-four years earlier, that Israel had been attacked directly by the military of another global nation.

With Iran’s attack now concluded, it fell to Israel to decide what to do next. Here, there are three basic options: Israel could draw down the conflict, respond proportionally, or escalate. Drawing down would involve launching either a less severe strike than Iran’s in response, such as a limited attack on low-level Quds Force members operating abroad, or no military response at all.

According to conventional geopolitics wisdom, that would signal to Iran that Israel would like to take steps toward both nations deciding not to attack anymore. A proportional response would see Israel attempt to craft an attack that basically matches what Iran did, sending the signal that this is not over but that Israel does not intend to go to war over it. An escalation would involve an even larger retaliatory response by Israel, basically telling Iran to brace for full-scale hostilities.

The Global Reaction

Iran, Israel, and the entire rest of the world have reason to care which response Israel decides. In the wake of the attack, most of the global response focused on both telling Iran how bad an affront to the international order its attack was, and telling Israel just how bad it would be if the situation escalated further. Iran’s strike was strongly condemned by Israel’s allies, including the UN, the UK, Canada, Japan, and the nations of Europe.

Nations generally more open to engaging with Iran declined to offer any support, with China and Russia both urging restraint, and Turkey and Saudi Arabia exerting pressure on Iran to wrap up its retaliation rather than carrying it on further. The United Nations, too, came down hard against Iran, and even direct allies of Tehran held off on calling for further escalation.

But although Israel’s allies remained committed to its national defense, with the US insisting that its commitment to the country’s military defense is “ironclad,” even the US stressed that its active support did not include backing for further Israeli strikes against Iran. The US flatly denied that it would participate in an Israeli retaliation. Quoting a senior American official who spoke to ABC: “We believe Israel has freedom of action to defend itself, in Syria or elsewhere.

That’s a long-standing policy and that remains. But no, we would not envision ourselves participating in such a thing.” In private phone calls, US President Joe Biden reportedly emphasized to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel could claim its successful defense against the Iranian assault as a victory, and that it does not stand to gain anything further by continuing to engage in a cycle of escalation.

Reading Israel’s Next Move

At the time of analysis, Israel’s decision was not yet made. As it pursued a broad counteroffensive in Gaza and worked to establish favorable terms for both a possible ceasefire and a possible assault against the city of Rafah, it was under pressure to exercise care with how it selected a response. Israel reconvened its war cabinet for two consecutive days to discuss potential responses, indicating that a decision was not yet made on whether, or how, Israel would act next.

One fairly good indicator came from Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz, a man who is both a longtime political opponent of Prime Minister Netanyahu and a current ally in the political coalition governing Israel’s military action in Gaza and abroad. The day after the attack by Iran, Gantz stated that Israel would indeed respond to Iran “in a way and at the time that suits us.” Although Gantz is a war hawk in his own right, he is generally perceived to be less inclined to these sorts of major military actions than Netanyahu, implying that if he is on board, the prime minister probably is too.

Israel and Iran traded barbs at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, seeming outwardly unmoved by any talk of a complete drawdown. There, Israel’s UN ambassador called Iran both “the number one global sponsor of terror” and a “pirate state,” while Iran’s ambassador defended his country’s actions as a proportional response that it had no choice but to undertake. Israel further claimed that it “reserves the right to retaliate.”

On Iranian state TV, IRGC generals were careful to express that any retaliation to this strike, not just an escalatory response, would prompt a much larger attack from Iran. Iran had, in effect, indicated in advance how it intended to interpret an Israeli response, drawing a hard line in the sand and signaling that Israel’s next move would decide just how big this thing gets.

The Political Calculus Behind Escalation

At the same time, Israel appeared to be banking on the idea that at least some of its allies’ resistance to a retaliation was just talk. The Israeli government appeared to be working toward the assembly of a larger regional coalition that would allow it to strike, potentially on a scale that would suggest escalation rather than proportional response. And as for why Israel would be willing to take that chance, the international support given to it to defend against this attack indicated to both Israel and global observers that its partner nations were not willing to leave it isolated in the face of a major threat.

For months, many experts have speculated that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s motivations for pursuing such a massive and heavy-handed retaliation against the Hamas organization are at least partially political in nature. Netanyahu is unpopular among the Israeli public, especially at this phase of the war, and he is likely to face political challenges once the war ends. In order to stay in power at all, he has to both placate partners within Israel’s hard right who want an even bigger military response, and work with Israel’s larger opposition movement toward a ceasefire and the return of hostages still being kept prisoner by Hamas. The US and other close allies have put on their own increased pressure recently, in the wake of mass-casualty incidents killing Gazan civilians, an emerging famine, and the killing of several international aid workers in a recent Israeli drone strike against a humanitarian convoy.

But what this latest attack has shown is that Israel’s support gets a lot less qualified when it enters into larger hostilities with Iran. The West rallied behind the Netanyahu government after the Iranian attack in a way that has been rare to see since the start of the Israel-Hamas War. While it is unlikely that a wider war would see America, the UK, the European Union, Egypt, or Jordan bombing Tehran directly, it is very likely to keep those same nations arrayed on Israel’s side of the conflict, and thus on Israel’s side of the war against Hamas. For a consummate political survivalist like Netanyahu, that would be a massive boon to his future prospects, if his motivations are indeed what global-affairs analysts tend to agree they are.

Iran’s Miscalculation

As for Iran, it is likely that the nation is coming to grips with a miscalculation around just how effective its aerial weapons were going to be. Unlike Russia’s use of similar tactics against Ukraine, these hundreds of drones and missiles were not enough to overwhelm Israel’s much more robust system of air defenses. And while the involvement of other nations certainly made Israel’s job easier, there is no clear indicator that Iran would even have been successful if Israel was defending alone. A majority of Iran’s aerial weapons were dealt with outside Israeli airspace, and those that came closer did relatively little damage even with their shrapnel, when measured relative to the size of the attack Iran launched.

It is unknown just how many drones Iran has in its arsenal, but it just burned nearly two hundred of them in this assault, along with almost a hundred ballistic missiles. If it is going to launch a more successful attack, it is going to need to devote a great deal more firepower.

And then there is the foreign-relations angle. After months of posturing, Iran finally presented a situation to the nations of the world that would force them to show where their loyalties lie, and the result, at least broadly, was not in Iran’s favor. The participation of nations like Jordan and France in Israel’s defense, and the active involvement of the US after it was warned about potential retaliation against its own bases by Iran, indicate that Israel would have major military support on its side if it and Iran choose to make this conflict bigger.

Meanwhile, Iran’s friends and acquaintances on the global stage have not come to its defense with nearly the strength Tehran might have hoped. Make no mistake: Tehran does have the ability to cause immense upheaval across the Middle East, and would almost certainly have the support of its many non-state-actor allies in the case of larger hostilities. But the idea that it could pose major problems to Israel on Israel’s own territory is rather hard to believe.

What a Wider War Could Look Like

As for what a potential war between Israel and Iran could look like, that could take many forms, but none of them are particularly encouraging to think about. At a bare minimum, both nations have the capacity to inflict major damage upon the other, drawing in elements from across the Middle East for a war that would turn very bloody, very fast. Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan all risk being drawn in directly, while the wealthy Gulf states and Turkey could be forced to take part too.

Finally, there is the potential for a war to rapidly accelerate the nuclearization of Iran, where Tehran is believed to have the breakout capability to assemble multiple fission bombs in the span of weeks if it chose to do so. That would pit two nuclear-armed nations on either side of an active conflict, and set off a regional arms race that could quickly draw in Saudi Arabia and Turkey as well. The shape of such a conflict remains speculative, but its potential to spiral well beyond the two principal combatants is not.

Is the Middle East on the Brink of War?

The answer, well, it would certainly appear that way. As unsatisfying as it is, no ironclad prediction about the future of this conflict can be issued yet. After all, Israel does not even seem to know what it is going to do yet, and no analyst can see inside Bibi Netanyahu’s head. But at the very least, there are some broad indicators of which way Israel appears to be leaning, and there is data to extrapolate just what could happen next, if Israel decides to either draw hostilities down or ratchet them upward.

In the coming weeks, the world will have to wait and see what Israel will choose to do in response to this attack, and until that retaliation comes, it will be impossible to pinpoint just how bad all of this is going to get. Hopefully, Israel and Iran will be able to commit to a drawdown once the intense heat of this moment begins to cool, but that is not particularly likely, at least not right now. Will the Middle East see a full-scale war in 2024? That cannot be known for sure, and not even a reasonable guess is possible until a few more chess moves play out in either direction.

But is the region sitting on the brink? Absolutely, and for the sake of all people across the region, the hope is that this reality changes very soon.

Presented by

Simon Whistler

Simon Whistler is one of YouTube's most prolific educational creators. WarFronts is his deep dive into military history and conflict analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions

How large was Iran’s April 2024 attack on Israel, and what weapons did it use?

Iran launched roughly 170 Shahed-136 suicide drones, more than thirty cruise missiles, and over 120 ballistic missiles — the largest drone strike ever recorded. The drones flew slowly to soak up Israeli air-defense capacity while the faster ballistic missiles were timed to arrive during the resulting window of vulnerability, mirroring tactics Russia had used against Ukraine.

Why did Iran attack Israel?

The strike was a direct retaliation for an April 1, 2024, Israeli airstrike on an Iranian consulate building in Damascus, Syria. The attack killed seven IRGC members, including senior Quds Force commanders Brigadier Generals Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammed Hadi Haji Rahimi — the most senior Revolutionary Guard deaths since the US assassination of Qasem Soleimani in 2020.

How did Israel stop the attack, and how much damage was done?

Israel used a multi-layered shield — Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 for long-range ballistic missiles, David’s Sling at medium range, and the Iron Dome as a last line of defense, backed by Patriot systems and F-15, F-16, and F-35 fighters. The US, UK, France, and Jordan also intercepted incoming weapons. Not a single drone or cruise missile reached its intended target; only a handful of ballistic missiles struck, causing limited damage to two airbases and no deaths.

Was the attack meant to be symbolic, or a genuine military strike?

Most international experts concluded it was a genuine attempt to cause significant damage, not a show of token retribution. The tactics — using slow drones to overwhelm air defenses followed by a large ballistic-missile salvo — indicate Iran intended the missiles to get through, and Iran chose targets directly linked to the April 1 airstrike. The attack failed; it was not designed to fail.

What options did Israel face in responding, and what did the global reaction look like?

Israel weighed three choices: draw the conflict down with a limited or no response, respond proportionally, or escalate. Its allies strongly urged de-escalation — the US called its defense commitment “ironclad” but flatly refused to join any retaliation. Even China, Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia urged restraint. Israel’s war cabinet met for two consecutive days without announcing a decision, and war cabinet minister Benny Gantz stated Israel would respond “in a way and at the time that suits us.”