Iran's retaliation against the Israeli attack on its consulate in Syria was not totally unexpected. However, the meticulous planning and massive scale of the attack marked a watershed moment and the beginning of the end of the occupying regime.
A powerful message was delivered through a barrage of missiles and drones fired at midnight from different Iranian cities, which sent shockwaves in the power corridors of Tel Aviv.
Iranian armed forces first launched Shahed-131/-136 type, low-cost, one-way-attack drones, widely filmed as they flew over Iraq. These drones needed about 6 hours to reach their targets.
About four hours after the Shahed-131/-136 drones were fired, Iran's Paveh land-attack cruise missiles were also launched for simultaneous landing in the occupied land. Both types of weapons represent the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) aerospace forces’ lowest-cost, long-range strike assets.
Their task in this operation was to force the enemy to spend its resources on them, committing its airpower and spending significantly more expensive air-to-air missiles to intercept them.
Here the higher speed of cruise missiles and their unknown quantity forced Israeli, British, Jordanian, and potentially French fighter jets to use air-to-air missiles instead of guns to save time.
The cost ratio between the assets Iran committed to the operation and the Israeli regime required to counter it was massive. Israel's fear of its GPS jamming not working against drones and cruise missiles led to the costly decision of intercepting them kinetically.