The Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei may not be having such a happy 85th birthday as Israel responded to the hundreds of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles fired by the Islamic terrorist state into Israel last weekend with attacks of its own.
Details of the attack are still pending, but reportedly the targets are Iranian airbases, and the attack scope is limited.
While Israel had wanted to retaliate immediately, there was immediate pressure from the Biden administration not to “escalate” by fighting back.
My own guess would be that Israel targeted some of the Iranian facilities where the attacks had originated in demonstration strikes meant to show that it could strike deep into Iran.
So while there’s speculation, I would venture to guess this is far from the big one, it’s not a strike aimed at taking out Iran’s nuclear program, but essentially the bare minimum a country does when it’s bombed by another country.
Were the attacks deliberately timed for Khamenei’s big day? It’s possible, but the window was also on the narrow side. The Sabbath is coming up and soon afterward the holiday of Passover (at which point you’ll see fewer updates from me as Jews around the world commemorate the fall of a wicked tyrant and the Divine liberation from an oppressive Middle Eastern country). Reports were that the retaliatory attacks were going to happen after Passover, but it looks like they were moved forward instead.
One possible reason is that Islamic terrorists, including Iran, would be more likely to attack on Passover.
Hamas had originally planned Oct. 7 for the first night of Passover before having to call off the attack. A strong show of force before Passover may have been calculated to send a warning about further attacks.
This originally appeared in FrontPage magazine.
