Iran must have known its attack mission on Israel would fail

Iran fired around 300 drones and missiles at Israel and pretty well failed to make any impact whatsoever. The drones, travelling at no more than 100mph, took several hours to reach their intended target which meant Israel, the US, the Brits and French and others in the maritime coalition in the Red Sea and Eastern Mediterranean had plenty of time to get their weapons ready to shoot them all down. Israel, with its heavyweight supporters both at sea and in the air, shot down 99 per cent of the barrage of missiles and drones. Pretty spectacular air defence capabilities. But Iran knew that. Just by witnessing what Israel and its backers have achieved in the last five months, shooting down nearly every missile fired by the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Tehran absolutely knew there was a very good chance every weapon they fired against Israel would be stopped. So why did they do it? Why launch drones and missiles against their hated enemy if they expected to fail abysmally. Well, first of all, it was the first time Iran had directly attacked Israel from Iranian territory. So, symbolically, a really big deal. Iran was telling Binyamin Netanyahu it wasn't afraid to attack Israel and that at some point in the future, there might be further attacks and much more serious ones. But also, even when a mission fails, you learn lessons. Iran has learnt that it cannot overwhelm Israel's defences, especially with US backing, with just 300 weapons. Israel knows this, too, of course, and will fully understand what Tehran was trying to do. It was testing the wind for future reference. My fear is that it is for this very reason that Israel will want to respond to Iran's attack - directly on Iranian soil - to see how the Iranian defences work. Israel will feel it now has justification for testing Iran's defences.