re: Black Monday - Iran says that it has fired first wave of Ballistic Missiles at Israel.

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Is that accurate? I thought consensus was this was like their retaliation after the assassination in Jan 2020 - telegraphed and calibrated to be "something" without actually really being anything.

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The 2020 response was something like a dozen or so missiles hitting the edges of two US air bases (along with Iran reportedly contacting Iraq just before it happened, because Iraq would notify the US to be on alert). I think an empty helicopter got its paint chipped.

They sent hundreds of drones and over 100 ballistic missiles from four different countries (Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen) at Israel. That's a massive effort well over 2020's Operation Martyr Soleimani. No one had ever tried sending that many drones at Israel before and the missiles were timed to be there just after the drones arrived.

Occam's Razor.

It may well be that had the drone attack worked and all of the missiles landed, they would have been satisfied with "see what you get!?!" but I sincerely doubt it. This is a country whose leadership has pledged to "wipe Israel off the map," they wouldn't have put such a tremendous offensive effort in play just to say "bygones" afterwards (unless it failed spectacularly).