Israel for the first time used a seaborne missile defence system to shoot down a drone approaching from the Red Sea that had set off sirens in the port city of Eilat, the military said on Tuesday.
Eilat has been a frequent target for launches by Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen as a show of support for Hamas, the Palestinian group that rules Gaza and is also backed by Iran.
Israel positioned missile boats in the Red Sea after the start of the war in Gaza, the military said. One of those missile boats shot down the drone with the new system called the C-Dome.
"Overnight, for the first time ever, an IDF Sa'ar 6-class corvette missile ship successfully intercepted a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) that had approached from the east and had crossed into the area of the Gulf of Eilat," the military said.
The C-Dome is the naval version of the Iron Dome, Israel’s rocket-defense system that has intercepted thousands of rockets fired from Gaza. The Iron Dome, which has been active since 2011 with an impressive success rate of approximately 90 percent, works by using radars to detect short-range rockets before destroying them with its own missiles.
The C-Dome was first unveiled in 2014 and was declared operational in November 2022. It works similarly to the Iron Dome, using some of the same technology, except that it is mounted on ships.
It bookends Israel's multi-tier air defence array opposite Arrow-3, which is designed to intercept ballistic missiles outside the earth’s atmosphere.
“We know that Iran has made very public threats against Israel itself,” John Kirby said in an ‘on-the-record press gaggle’. "And one of the things that the President said in his call with Prime Minister Netanyahu was that the Israeli government could count on the United States’ support for any self-defense needs against threats directly by Iran to Israel.”
The world has been anticipating an Iranian retaliatory operation, after a precision Israeli strike on its Damascus embassy killed two top IRGC generals and five other officers on April 1.
Iranian officials have been threatening retaliation and many observers have indicated that most likely, Tehran will use it proxy forces to target Israel instead of launching attacks from its territory. Another type of operation mentioned by some Iranian insiders is a possible attack on an Israeli diplomatic mission in a third country.
However, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, claimed Monday that Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has decided that the response to Israel’s attack has to be "direct" as opposed to an operation “in another country.” This still does not necessarily mean an attack from Iranian territory, rather an attack directly on Israel.
“The Americans have accepted that there’ll be an Iranian response,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech, “even the Israelis have accepted that there’s an Iranian response. And the whole world has accepted that this is a natural right for Iran.”
This is the message that Iranian officials have been sending out more or less consistently: that there will be retaliation, even though some voices inside Iran have been calling for ‘patience’ and ‘strategic thinking’ and ‘not playing into the hands of Israelis’.
An unconfirmed report Monday suggested that the regime in Tehran has conveyed to the Biden administration that it would refrain from attacking Israel if the US could pressure Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza.
“I don’t really have a comment to make on the report that Iran claims they would refrain from responding if there was a ceasefire,” Kirby told reporters Monday. “But if Iran is serious about a ceasefire, they’ll use the influence they have with Hamas to press for a positive response to that proposal…We want a ceasefire too. They can lean on Hamas. That would be the best outcome.”
It is not impossible that Iran could come up with such a proposal, given that a ‘direct’ attack on Israel –as Nasrallah has suggested– can have dire consequences for the Islamic Republic.
Not responding may not be an option for Khamenei, whose state propaganda machine has been built around the notion of standing up to Israel and the US. Giving up the right to respond in exchange for a ceasefire in Gaza could therefore be the face-saving formula he looks for. The risk, of course, is that if there’s no ceasefire, he’d be even more obliged to retaliate not to lose more credibility.
A CNN report Monday quoted sources ‘familiar with US intelligence’ that Iran’s retaliation against Israel will likely be carried out by Iranian proxy groups rather than by Iran directly.
“US intelligence assesses that Iran has urged several of its proxy militia groups to simultaneously launch a large-scale attack against Israel, using drones and missiles, and that they could attack as soon as this week," the CNN report read, contradicting previous reports in American media.
Last week, a New York Times report stated that both American and Israeli military analysts have reached the conclusion that “it is more likely that Iran would strike Israel itself than that it would have its proxies attack U.S. troops in the region, including in Iraq and Syria.”
It seems no one knows for a fact what a potential response from Iran may look like. Or if there would be any response after all.
"From Damascus, I declare loud and clear that Israel will be punished,” Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Monday. But even such a seemingly categorical statement is qualified. "The manner in which Iran will respond to Israel will become clear on the battlefield,” he said.
A new April analysis by the US-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) of the pro-Hamas demonstrations on the streets of Amman sounded the alarm bells about the role of Iran’s revolutionary Islamic ambitions in Jordan.
According to the report authored by Ayelet Savyon, the Director of the MEMRI Iran studies project, “In recent days, the grand Iranian plan is emerging – the plan with which the Islamic revolutionary regime is continuing despite the killing, in Israeli air strikes, the senior command of its IRGC Qods Force in Syria and Lebanon. The upcoming stage of this plan involves bringing down the regime in Jordan, attacking Israel from the east while Israel is kept busy by Iran-backed resistance forces in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza. The political aim of this plan is to thwart the Saudi-American project of normalization with Israel.”
She added that “Next in Iran’s sights is the expulsion of American forces from Iraq, and the undermining of the Saudi Kingdom and the Egyptian regime, as Iran actualizes the vision of Islamic Revolution.”
She warned that “It is not clear whether the US administration, which is currently preoccupied with the IDF’s tragic mistaken killing of the World Central Kitchen charity workers, is aware of events that could impact the continued US presence in the region as well as America’s international standing.”
On Saturday, Iran International reported that the Tehran-backed Iraqi Hezbollah battalions are prepared to arm and equip 12,000 fighters of “the Islamic resistance” in Jordan. The Iranian regime-controlled news agency ISNA stated Iranian-backed proxies will supply the 12,000 combatants in Jordan.
Dr. Walid Phares, an expert in foreign policy and the author of Iran, an Imperialist Republic, and US Policy, told Iran International “What is happening in Jordan now, while it appears as chaotic, is in fact tightly organized by Hamas, the larger Muslim Brotherhood network and the Iran regime. The protests against the Israeli embassy and spill over in Amman's streets are the result of tightly coordinated moves by the Iran and Ikhwan [the Arabic term for Muslim Brotherhood] networks, with the real target being the Hashemite Kingdom itself. “
The Gaza-based Hamas movement, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is a potent ally of Iran’s regime. The former Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, worked to rekindle relations with the Islamic government of Iran.
Phares, who served as a national security advisor to US Presidential nominees, added, “Tehran always considered the kingdom as an advanced US ally in the region threatening the Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq, and a forward base for US and allied troops in the region. In fact, American and British troops have bases in Jordan that support Coalition activities in the whole region. Remember that the pro Iran militias have targeted a US base on the Jordanian border with Syria.”
The Mideast expert said, “Hence we know that Tehran and Damascus have been targeting the Hashemite kingdom for years and now it looks like they've unleashed their supporters against the regime.”
“The problem seems to be in Washington because of foreign policy decisions since the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan. It was a cascade of encouragement to jihadists and pro-Iranian forces. Jordan is getting close to a possible large domestic clash caused by Hamas, Iran, and a result of an administration that put a transaction with the Iran regime above the national security interest of America and the stability of its direct allies in the region,” Phares said.
Former Israeli Ambassador Jordan, Jacob Rosen, who lived in Jordan for nine years, told Iran International that Iran has been many years “trying to push their way” into Jordan. He said “in south Jordan in Karak there is a holy grave for the Shiites.” He added “They [the Iranians] are always pushing Jordan to open the borders to bring tourism. The Jordanians resist the idea because they know what it means.”
The town of Mu'tah in the Karak Governorate was the location of a famous battle in 629 CE between Arab Muslims and Christians. A cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib, was killed during the battle.
Rosen pushed back against the oft- cited Western journalistic narrative that Jordan is a fragile country. He said many other Arab governments “are soldiering on. What is fragile? There are no beggars in the streets and no hunger. The tribal networks are very strong. “
He added “The Jordanian government and the people are very strong and aware of the challenges. And if they need extra help from other countries, they get it.”
In a January 2024 article titled “Jordan and the Iranian Affiliates Drug Offensive,“ Rosen wrote with his co-author, Shaul Shay, a former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council, that “In last year Tehran begun to target the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan, one of the main Western allies in the region. Iran and its affiliated terrorist groups are leveraging the war in Gaza to undermine the stability and sovereignty of Jordan and the peace agreement between Jordan and Israel.”
According to the article, “Iran’s presence in Syria and Iraq provides it the ability to penetrate from two directions with proxy forces and Syrian…make it easy to exploit internal divisions. The smuggling of drugs and weapons from Syria to Jordan is seen as an attempt by Iran to expand its influence in the region and destabilize Jordan.”
The Israeli experts stressed that “Given the strategic importance of Jordan in the Middle East, it is imperative to closely monitor Iran’s actions and alliances and supporting Jordan’s stability through diplomatic, economic and military means.”