“You got a win. Take the win.”
Those reportedly were President Biden’s words to Prime Minister Netanyahu shortly after Israel led an impressive multinational effort to intercept almost all of the over 300 drones and missiles launched by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxies — the largest such attack in history and the first ever from Iran directly against Israel.
Chalking this up as a victory and a chance for de-escalation, however, will prove Pyrrhic and encourage further Iranian aggression. Tehran launched such an audacious and massive assault to halt Israel’s successful strategy of dismantling the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “ring of fire” around the entire region. The regime desperately wanted to force Israel to end its airstrikes that have picked apart Iran’s yearslong entrenchment in Syria and, in turn, degraded its ability to empower attacks by Hezbollah and other terrorist proxies all across northern Israel.
By overtly conducting strikes from its own territory that crossed unspoken redlines, Tehran showcased the range, precision and plenitude of its attack drones, cruise and ballistic missiles to dissuade further Israeli military action and deter the United States from fulfilling its pledges to support Israel.
In the same stroke, the Iranian regime sought to entice the United States with an offramp, pry it away from Israel and coalesce world opinion around an immediate cessation of hostilities — ironically by framing any response to its then ongoing attack as destabilizing and escalatory. It did so after telegraphing its impending punch, first via diplomatic channels and then by launching mass salvos of slow-moving drones hours before the ensuing barrages of faster cruise and ballistic missiles.
With many projectiles mid-flight, the regime then announced publicly that it considered the matter concluded. Thus, at the same time that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials quickly claimed “a new equation” of directly targeting Israel, they also said their responses to any Israeli or U.S. action would be “proportional” and “reciprocal.”
In this light, Jerusalem and Washington “won” only in the narrowest sense, and only thanks to air defense cooperation with key Arab and European partners that shot down 99 percent of all projectiles launched by Iran and its proxies. Without Israel’s world-class air and missile defense architecture — backed by U.S.-led coordination of regional early warning and interceptor systems and more than 70 combined shootdowns by the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Army —Tehran’s glaring head-up would have afforded Israelis little more than time to run for shelter.
In less ideal circumstances, far smaller attacks could have turned out much differently. Until this weekend, the most notable examples of projectile attacks from Iranian territory — on Saudi energy facilities in 2019 and on U.S. forces in Iraq in 2020 — were highly effective against targets with minimal early warning or air defenses, despite each attack being an order of magnitude smaller than the assault against Israel.
Similarly, Russia continues plaguing Ukraine with coordinated missile and drone barrages — including the Iran-designed Shahed drones just fired at Israel. Meanwhile, Hezbollah maintains an arsenal of roughly 150,000 projectiles of all types and could overwhelm Israeli defenses by firing 6,000 or more per day at the outset of a major conflict.
Iran’s dangerous potential to launch additional strikes, or simply leverage threats to do so, means the United States must disabuse Tehran of any notion that its aggression gave it the final word or upper hand.
The Biden administration must amplify its strong statements and actions prior to the Iranian regime’s attack, reiterating its “ironclad” commitment to Israel’s defense and coordinating closely and publicly on defense planning against shared Iranian threats. President Biden must make clear this includes Israel’s right to respond to such grave attacks since any “win” will be fleeting if Tehran believes it coerced Israel and the United States into inaction.
Having already pledged more robust multilateral diplomacy against Tehran, President Biden should work with the United Kingdom, France and Germany to snap back United Nations Security Council sanctions on the Iranian regime’s drone and missile programs and press the European Union to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in its entirety as a terrorist organization.
The scale and severity of the Iranian regime’s attack, and the impressive defenses against it, should spur Congress to pass its long-stalled bill funding vital military assistance for Israel. The administration should expedite the overdue transfer of key aerial platforms and munitions to Israel, like those that just helped prevent disaster. It should ensure Israel has adequate stocks of air defense interceptors that are co-produced with the United States, and it should replenish and upgrade America’s prepositioned weapons depot in Israel.
Simultaneously, the United States must closely support its Arab partners, foremost Jordan, who courted Iran’s wrath by openly helping defeat waves of drones and missiles before they reached Israel. Enhanced cooperation and U.S. leadership would underline the demonstrable if nascent successes and the serious need for more formally integrated U.S.-Israel-Arab air and missile defenses. Tangible progress here will help correct Tehran’s misperception that Israel and the United States are isolated, weak and vulnerable to further intimidation.
Indeed, a true win for both the United States and Israel will come only once Iran’s regime fears launching such a misguided assault again.
Jonathan Ruhe and Ari Cicurel are the director of foreign policy and assistant director of foreign policy, respectively, at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).