Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on David’s Tent, a ministry of Israeli believers Avner and Rachel Boskey. The Boskey’s have ministered at Tabernacle of David, and we consider them trustworthy and Biblically sound.
The Iranian bombardment of Israel on April 13-14, 2024 is only the second time in modern Israel’s brief history that the Jewish state was attacked by rocket fire from a non-adjacent country – Saddam Hussein’s SCUD barrages in January-February 1991 were the first of such attacks. This is a significant event with geopolitical ramifications. On Sunday April 14, 2024, Israel’s U.N. envoy, Gilad Erdan, told the Security Council regarding Iran’s assault on the Jewish state with over 300 rockets, missiles and drones: “This attack crossed every red line.”
We will be sending out three newsletters on this subject. Part One deals with Iranian background, strategic planning militarily and diplomatically, and unsettling historical parallels going back to 2020. Part Two will delve into battle details – the blow-by-blow description of the Iranian attack, as well as the amazing counter-offensive by Israel and her allies of the massive barrage of Iranian drones, ballistic rockets and cruise missiles – with a 99% successful destruction rate. Part Three will present what American and Israeli strategic perspectives on the situation, and what their realpolitik goals are for the future.
Instant news in the age of sifting sands
“But as for you, Daniel, keep these words secret and seal up the book until the end of time; many will roam about, and knowledge will increase” (Daniel 12:4).
We live in the age of information explosion. Fiber-optic cables stream the entire body of available information at 70% of the speed of light from data centers in Iceland to the screen of your home computer, laptop or cellphone. The blow-by-blow recounting of battles, or dark superpower intrigues – these happenings (which years ago took months or decades to come to public knowledge) are now brought into your living room at the click of a mouse. The recent Iranian missile, rocket and drone attack on Israel (April 13-14, 2024) is an example of this digital dynamic.
In George Orwell’s magnum opus 1984, wars were constantly raging between the three superpowers Oceania. Eurasia and Eastasia. Shifts in geopolitical alliances meant that the news needed to be re-written, expressing new loyalties, ‘new facts,’ and new political positions. Previously published news items needed to be immediately edited – newspaper columns needed to be retyped, and new photos needed to be glued over old ones. Orwell’s dystopian science-fiction is present reality. A current example touches on this weekend’s military clash. There is a significant measure of behind-the-scenes intrigue which has to be unpacked – in order to grasp what has just happened and what is yet to come.
The assassination of the jihadi General
On April 1, 2024, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force commander in Syria and Lebanon Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi was killed near the Iranian Embassy in Damascus in what is assumed to be a targeted Israel Air Force assassination. Two other top jihadi generals and four IRGC officials (all terrorist masterminds) were also eliminated in the strike. The question begs to be answered: why was he targeted, and what was he doing in a building next to the Iranian Embassy?
The answer was provided by official Iranian authorities two days later, on April 3, 2024. The Iranian Coalition Council of Islamic Revolution Forces (headed by Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as well as father-in-law to Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei) published a notice of mourning and appreciation for General Zahedi: “The strategic role of the martyr Zahedi . . . in the planning and execution of ‘al-Aqsa Flood’ [Tufan al-Aqsa, طوفان الأقصىed – the Arabic name for the Hamas massacres of October 7, 2023] is part of the great pride that will transform the quiet efforts of the great commander into the eternal history of the struggle against the occupation by the Zionist regime.”
This statement was essentially an official admission of Iran’s involvement in both the planning and the execution of the October 7 Hamas jihadi terror attack on Israeli civilians bordering Gaza.
Assuming the likelihood of Israel’s responsibility in helping Zahedi to move on from his terror activities and to come face to face with his Maker, the motive for the Iranian general’s elimination is obvious: Zahedi planned and oversaw the murder of over 1,500 Israelis on October 7 – atrocities planned down to the last detail, including mass rapes, torture, horrific murders and kidnappings. The God of Israel gives His perspective on the judgment coming to such a man: “Rejoice, you nations, with His people! For He will avenge the blood of His servants, and will return vengeance on His adversaries, and will atone for His land and His people” (Deuteronomy 32:43).
Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations Amir Saeid Iravani declared to the Security Council on Sunday, April 14, 2024 that “Iran’s operation was entirely in the exercise of Iran’s inherent right to self-defense. This concluded action was necessary and proportionate.” This is diplomatic double-speak since, in matter of fact, it was not the Embassy which was hit. The building targeted was located outside the fenced compound of the Embassy. The targets in that annex were arch-terrorists, deadly enemies of the Jewish state and of the Sunni world.
The irony is dry: the world’s main exporter of terrorism stands on an international platform at a world forum, appealing to the principle of ‘inherent right to self-defense’ when its state-sponsored terrorist generals are taken out. And the world media offers no ethical pushback or analysis of Iran’s claims in this regard. It should be mentioned that Iran was not the only nation that fired ballistic missile/drone/cruise missiles at Israel. Syria, Iraq and Houthi Yemen, as well as Lebanon all joined in. Were these countries also “acting in self-defense”?
Iran’s prophetic vision
Iranian war strategy did not begin the day after the Damascus hit. Their Shi’ite Islamic jihadi goals are broader than a focus just on Israel. Fatah Revolutionary Council (PLO) member Muwaffaq Matar writes in the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida: “The ultimate goal of the [IRGC’s] so-called ‘Qods Force’ is to take over [Amman], the capital of the Hashemite Jordanian Kingdom, invade the East Bank of the Jordan and eliminate the Palestinian national enterprise” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 2, 2024).
Iran’s goals involve a total take-over of the Middle East and its transformation into a Shi’ite caliphate/dictatorship. This would include includes overrunning Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt.
Recent confirmation of these plans comes from an April 1, 2024 Telegram post of an Iraqi Kata’ib Hezbollah (pro-Iranian) militia official, revealing Shi’ite operative plans to establish a Jordanian militia with 12,000 armed members that would act in Jordan against Israel, subordinate to Iranian commands.
In our December 2018 newsletter https://davidstent.org/three-red-cherries-and-a-one-armed-bandit/ the following quotes put meat on the bones here:
- Over 2,500 years ago ancient Persia (modern Iran) marched its 500,000 strong army up to the shores of the Mediterranean and invaded Greece. The modern dream of Iran’s ayatollahs and its Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps is to conquer the world for its Shi’ite version of Islamist jihad. Its initial goal is an Iranian-controlled superhighway – a Shi’ite (or Shi’a) Crescent stretching from Iran through Iraq, into Syria and Lebanon.
- According to Dr. Azeem Ibrahim (Ph.D. Cambridge, International Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, Adjunct Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College), “Iran now dominates, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, and may also end up doing so in Yemen. It is successfully extending the ‘Shiite crescent.’”
- In January 2016, a confidant of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman claimed (in desert hyperbole which is not far off the mark) that the Arab world is being confronted not by a Shi’a Crescent (a sliver of moon) but “by a Shia full moon.”
Iran telegraphs its punches
Iran’s jihadi leaders were not going to let the April 1, 2024 assassination of Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi go unanswered. Iran began preparations for their attack on Israel, and their labors were intensively covered in world media. At the same time, behind-the-scenes communications with the United States were also going on. Iran passed a message through Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan (for it to be conveyed to Washington) concerning the targets and goals of its upcoming attack on Israel. An anonymous Turkish diplomatic source stated: “Iran informed us in advance of what would happen.” A Turkish security source said that CIA chief William Burns had spoken to Ibrahim Kalin, head of Turkey’s MIT intelligence agency, over the Eid al-Fitr holidays (April 9-12) and asked Turkey to act as a mediator between Iran and the USA.
On April 4, Fidan and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met in Brussels on the sidelines of a NATO meeting. On April 11, 2024, U.S. Department of State Spokesman Matthew Miller noted that “Secretary Blinken has been engaged in diplomacy over the past 24 hours through a series of calls to foreign counterparts, including Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan . . . [Blinken] talked to the Turkish Foreign Minister last night [April 10].” During that conversation, Fidan conveyed to Blinken Iran’s message. On April 14, 2024 U.S. Department of State Spokesman Matthew Miller said: “Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke today with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan . . . Secretary Blinken thanked Foreign Minister Fidan for his ongoing engagement to prevent further escalation in the region.” According to the Arab news source al-Monitor , “Turkish officials revealed over the weekend that [prior to April 13] Turkey served as a mediator in the escalation, channeling Tehran’s and Washington’s expectations to each other.”
In the exchange of messages between America’s Blinken and Turkey’s Fidan on April 10, the anonymous Turkish diplomatic source explains: “Iran informed us in advance of what would happen. Possible developments also came up during the meeting with Blinken, and they (the U.S.) conveyed to Iran through us that this reaction must be within certain limits. In response, Iran said the reaction would be a response to Israel’s attack on its embassy in Damascus and that it would not go beyond this.
A senior Biden administration official stated on Sunday April 14, 2024, that the US had “a series of direct communications through the Swiss channel” (Swiss intermediaries) both before and after Iran’s mass drone and missiles attack against Israel. That senior US official stated that Iran communicated through the Swiss channel: “We received a message from the Iranians as this was ongoing, through the Swiss. This was basically suggesting that they were finished after this, but it was still an ongoing attack.” Mohammad Bagheri, the Iranian armed forces’ chief of staff, told Iranian state television that “we sent a message to America through the Swiss embassy.”
Iraqi, Jordanian, Qatari officials added that Iran provided them with early warning of the attack, as well as various details concerning targets. An Iraqi security official and a government security advisor said that “Iran had used diplomatic channels to inform Baghdad about the attack at least three days before it happened.” The Iraqi government, said the security official, “clearly understood from the Iranian officials that the US military in Iraq was also aware of the attack in advance.” A senior Jordanian official said that Iran had summoned Arab envoys in Tehran on Wednesday April 10, 2024 to inform them about the coming attack. Asked if Iran had also given details about the targets and kinds of weapons to be used, the Jordanian official did not respond directly but indicated that this was the case.
- It is jolting to see that the US State Department, the POTUS, the US intelligence community and military – all were involved in negotiating with the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding its upcoming attack on American ally Israel – the extent of the attack, the weapons to be used, and the projected casualties. As is the case in such circumstances (see the case of Jonathan Pollard, where the US concealed intelligence information from Israel regarding Saddam Hussein’s chemical warfare program targeting the Jewish state, and denied its existence to its ally Israel), the US did not seriously block or threaten Iran over the projected attack, but manipulated the situation for its Middle Eastern strategic goals.
April 13-14 2024 – a Star War clash without casualties
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Sunday that Iran gave neighboring countries and Israel’s ally the United States 72 hours’ notice before it launched the strikes and that these attacks would avoid civilian casualties. A senior official in US President Joe Biden’s administration denied the Iranian statement, saying that Washington did not get 72 hours notice in advance. “That is absolutely not true,” the official said. “They did not give a notification, nor did they give any sense of . . . ‘these will be the targets, so evacuate them.’ They were clearly intending to destroy and to cause casualties . . . [in a] highly destructive [attack].” U.S. defense officials have characterized the Iranian attack on the ‘high end’ of what was anticipated, and deny reports that Tehran had given three days’ notice of the attack: “The intent was clearly to cause significant damage and death.”
The only person wounded in Israel by the Iranian rocket attacks was a 7-year-old Bedouin girl, Amina Hassouna of the al-Fura Bedouin community between Beersheva and Arad, She was struck while lying in her bed, and was severely injured by shrapnel from an intercepted ballistic missile.
In light of Iran’s public declaration that it avoided causing Israeli civilian casualties, it is worth remembering a sobering event in Iranian history. Two days before Iran’s rocket and missile attacks, on April 11, 2024, the Argentinian Federal Court of Criminal Cassation ruled that Iran and Hezbollah had committed crimes against humanity and are responsible for the bombing murders (300 tons of explosives) of 85 Jews on July 18, 1994 at the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) and the suicide bombing of the Israeli Embassy on March 17, 1992 (29 murdered, 242 injured), both in Buenos Aires. The court said on that the AMIA bombing “was organized, planned, financed, and executed under the direction of the authorities of the Islamic State of Iran within the framework of Islamic jihad and with the main intervention of the political and military organization – Hezbollah.”
- In light of Iran’s recent UN Security Council declaration that its rocket attacks against Israel were “entirely in the exercise of Iran’s inherent right to self-defense” of its Embassy in Damascus, how would the IRCG explain their terror bombings of the Israeli Embassy and the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires?
January 3, 2020 – The American Reaper over Baghdad skies
On January 3, 2020, just after midnight, a US MQ-9 Reaper drone had been loitering in the airspace above Baghdad International Airport, waiting for an Airbus A320 Cham Wings plane from Damascus International Airport. On board was Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Quds Force) chief Qasem Soleimani (known as ‘the Shadow Commander’) and other Iranian military figures. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (leader of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces) was waiting on the tarmac to welcome him.
According to Saudi-based Arab News, a USAF Air Combat Command drone that attacked Soleimani’s convoy had been launched from CENTCOM US-operated Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, remotely controlled by operators at the Creech Air Force Base in Clark County, Nevada. Iran’s Air Force stated that Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait also participated, According to Ahmed al-Asadi, a member of the Iraqi Parliament, drones also took-off from the Iraqi military airbase of Ayn al-Assad and returned directly to the Ain al-Assad base after carrying out the assassination.
At 00:47 hours Baghdad time, as the jihadi entourage was driving away toward downtown Baghdad in a Toyota Avalon and a Hyundai Starex, the Reaper launched several missiles, striking the convoy on an access road. The two cars were engulfed in flames, and ten people departed from the life.
According to veteran Israeli journalist Ehud Yaari, the taking down of this Iranian mass murderer was “the most important assassination from the Jewish point of view since the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the Final Solution, in Prague in 1942 … This man was the brains and the engine of the Iranian machine that is trying to wrap the Middle East in the arms of an octopus … He was the head of the octopus in this regard.”
January 4, 2020 – Initial Iranian response to Soleimani’s assassination
An Iranian government spokesman said the country’s top security body would hold an extraordinary meeting shortly to discuss the “criminal act of attack.” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned that “harsh revenge” is waiting. On January 4, 2020 POTUS Donald Trump warned Tehran that any retaliation for the assassination would result in the U.S. targeting 52 Iranian significant sites. The 52 sites were reported to represent the 52 American hostages held during the Iran hostage crisis.
The deep scar inflicted by this January 2020 American assassination of Iran’s top jihadi general has left echoes which still reverberate to this day, in 2023-24. Here is an example: on December 27, 2023, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman Ramazan Sharif said that the Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023 devastating attack on Israel was in revenge for the 2020 American assassination of IRGC Quds Force head Qasem Soleimani.
Shortly after Soleimani’s death was confirmed (January 4-5, 2020), US intelligence agencies reported that Iranian ballistic missile regiments had moved to heightened readiness. Iran was about to initiate an attack on US troops stationed at the Ain al-Assad in Iraq.
Iran and the USA coordinate the January 2020 attack against US troops in Iraq
In a January 8, 2020 Iran Wire report, an unnamed Iranian diplomat had revealed that Iran decided to launch a missile attack against US troops after several days of discussion by the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, and was “deliberately aimed at military bases and infrastructure and not personnel.” Some IRGC officers had insisted that Iran’s vengeance against the U.S. must be restrained “because killing Americans will cause an all-out war, which will cause massive destruction in Iran and might even bring down the regime.” Iran’s foreign minister at the time, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said that the Iranian regime coordinated with America about these attacks by informing America ahead of time. Iran informed Iraq of its plans to launch missiles at the U.S. bases, with the intention that Iraq would then inform the US – so that precautions would be taken to prevent loss of life. Iraqi PM Adel Abdul Mahdi concurred that his government had been warned by Iran of the coming attack. The PM’s advisor told Reuters that Iran had notified Iraq, another Arab country and one European country (probably Switzerland) of the coming attack on US troops.
POTUS Donald Trump substantiated these events on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, February 4, 2024:
- “Do you know, we hit them [Iran] very hard [Soleimani’s assassination] for something that they did, and they had to hit back. They feel they have to do that and I understand that. Do you know, they called me to tell me ‘We’re going to hit a certain location but we’re not gonna hit it, it’s gonna be outside of the perimeter’ . . . They let us know. And we had 16 missiles that went off . . . And we knew they weren’t going to hit. And now I reveal it . . . So they aimed those missiles and they said, ‘Please don’t attack us! We’re not going to hit you.’ That was respect, we had respect.”
In Yigal Carmon and M. Reiter’s excellent November 10, 2021 MEMRI article ‘Iran’s January 2020 Strikes on U.S. Ayn al-Asad Airbase’, they inform us:
- “USAF unit commanders at Ayn Al-Asad described the day of the attack on a U.S. Air Force website. Lt. Col. Staci Coleman, who was the Commander of the 443rd Air Expeditionary Squadron, and members of her squadron testified that they had been briefed about an impending Iranian ballistic missile attack almost six hours before the attack. Captain Wesley Florez, the Executive Officer of the 1st Expeditionary Rescue Group, said that he had received information about the attack early the previous afternoon. According to reports by Iraqi soldiers at Ayn Al-Asad, U.S. forces started preparing for the missile attack and evacuating the base approximately eight hours before it took place.
- Team Sergeant Karla Maldonado and Staff Sergeant Shane Rehbein, who were Air Traffic Controllers with the 442nd Air Expeditionary Squadron at al-Taqqadum Air Base, which is less than 100 miles away from Ayn Al-Asad, reported that a few hours before the attack on Ayn Al-Asad, they had landed 28 helicopters that evacuated from “nearby bases” to Al-Taqqadum. The report does not specify the location from which these helicopters evacuated. At approximately 4:00 AM, less than two hours after the missile barrage on Ayn Al-Asad was over, the evacuated helicopters began leaving Al-Taqqadum.
- The American forces at Ayn Al-Asad airbase apparently had enough advance warning to evacuate 1,000 soldiers and 50 aircraft, and U.S. Army Major Alan Johnson, an intelligence officer who was present at Ayn Al-Asad airbase, said that the intelligence reports even included information that the Iranian ballistic missiles were being fueled.”
On 8 January 2020, Iranian forces launched ballistic missiles at US troops stationed at the Ayn al-Asad Airbase and at an airbase near Erbil, both in Iraq. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared that the strikes were part of their retaliation for the killing of Soleimani. No Iraqi or American casualties were initially reported, though the later Pentagon confirmed that several dozen servicemen had been injured to varying degrees of severity. According to the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), the country’s state-run news outlet, Iran fired tens of ground-to-ground missiles at the base in two waves, about an hour apart. A military spokesman for U.S. CENTCOM said a total of 15 missiles were fired: ten hit the Ayn al-Asad airbase, one hit the Erbil base, and four missiles failed. The attack left gaping craters in the ground, but caused no known US casualties.
In the hours after the attack, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted: “Iran took & concluded proportionate measures in self-defense under Article 51 of UN Charter targeting base from which cowardly armed attack against our citizens & senior officials were launched. We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression.”
CENTCOM commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie added on February 28, 2021: “We had a plan to retaliate if Americans died.”
Iran and the USA coordinated the April 2024 attack against Israel
Since time immemorial military strategy has involved confusing enemy decision makers by misrepresenting, obscuring or distorting troop strengths, intentions and positions. This tactic of warfare is called battlefield deception. From the Trojan Horse to Operation Bodyguard (the Normandy Invasion; http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/future03/future03c.htm), advantage on the battlefield can be gained by lulling one’s enemy into a disastrous lack of preparedness. Israel’s Mossad has as its motto King Solomon’s proverb circa 960 B.C.: “For by stratagems (ed. strategic deceptions) shall you wage war.” (Prov.24:6). The classic Chinese military strategician Sun Tzu (circa 350 B.C.) said, “All warfare is based on deception.”
- The recent clash between Iran and Israel appears to have many elements of deception surrounding this fog of war. Some of this will be looked at in greater detail in Part Two of this newsletter. But at this moment, it can be said that there is a burning trail of breadcrumbs available open-site, which reveals sobering parallels between Iran and America’s documented collusion in 2020, and Iran and America’s documented collusion in April 2024.
Yigal Carmon, former IDF military intelligence AMAN expert, is the founder of MEMRI – the Middle East Media Research Institute. His organization presents source documents from the Arabic and Persian-speaking worlds, casting needful light on the dark corners of jihadi realities, including Palestinian doublespeak. As well, MEMERI provides up-to-the-minute access to current Muslim and Arab perspectives. Carmon has pointed out (in Hebrew and in English) that the present developments mirror the events of 2020. Other voices raising the warning include Kenneth Timmerman, Daniel Greenfield, Melanie Phillips, et al.
Carmon’s take on current events is that Iran initially planned its attack on Israel with the intention of minimizing significant damage, as it did vis-à-vis the US four years ago. Carmon asserts that a similar scenario unfolded recently: Iran notified Jordan, Iraq, and Turkey about an imminent attack within three days. These countries then shared the information with the Americans, who subsequently warned Israel. Carmon noted, “When Hamas attacks, there are casualties. When Iran attacks, there are no casualties.” Regarding an incident in the south where a girl was injured, Carmon explains that it resulted from falling interceptor debris, not a direct missile hit, causing only minor damage to the airbase. “Is it possible, under the influence of delusions of grandeur, to explain this as the result of Iranian weakness or idiocy? To do so, one would need to be very naive,” he notes.
- The world’s focus on the amazing air war victory that Israel experienced may actually be the result of another sleight-of-hand joint effort between Iran and the US to distract all concerned as they each pursue their own geopolitical goals, their own ‘dog in this fight.’ The facts on the ground and in the air which will remove some spin from how the amazingly fought battle is being presented by most of the world’s media, will be unpacked in Part Two of this three-part newsletter.
How should we then pray?
- Pray for Iran’s Machiavellian strategies and plots for Middle East mischief and murder to be exposed and neutralized
- Pray for the physical rescue of the approximately 129 Israeli hostages (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP/PLO. At this moment some hostages are being tortured, raped and starved (this based on testimonies of recently released hostages). Sadly, at least 35 of these hostages are corpses of Israeli citizens, held in cold storage by Hamas as bargaining chips
- Pray for Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza to be decisively shattered and for all chains broken off the Palestinians living there, and for Iran’s role in jihadi deception, dissimulation and anti-Semitism to be exposed and opposed by world leaders
- Pray that Israel’s leadership be granted justice, clarity, moral courage, discernment and divine strategies in utterly destroying the jihadi threat in all of its aspects, and for minimal loss of life for Israel’s defense forces and for those Gazans who are truly innocent
- Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth
Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.
In Messiah Yeshua,
Avner Boskey
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