Eye for an eye

The Government of Benjamin Netanyahu has not been able to resist the temptation of having the last word in its dangerous fight with Iran. Ignoring the calls of its allies, led by the United States, and its neighbors, early Friday morning it launched a retaliatory attack against a military base in the province of Isfahan that, as is its practice, Israel has not confirmed or confirmed. denial. In the absence of knowing the precise damage, Tehran’s first reaction minimizing the scope of the operation gives hope that the scuffle will stop there for the moment.

With the cunning that characterizes them, the Iranian officials have seized on the lack of a signature on the attack to advance that there will be no immediate response. “It is not clear who is behind it,” justified a senior Iranian official to the Reuters agency. The head of the army immediately declared that the explosion that occurred in Isfahan was due to the firing of anti-aircraft defense systems against “a suspicious object” that did not cause any accident or damage.

This cool-headed reaction gives the impression of having been calculated in advance. In fact, from the moment the explosion of at least one missile near the city of Isfahan became known, Iranian state media has downplayed the matter. The official line is to mock the attack as lacking in magnitude and ineffective. What is striking is the speed with which the Revolutionary Guard, the true power of the regime, has disseminated images of microdrones that, it claimed, were the type that Israel had used.

Also important to reduce tension has been the statement from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) specifying that Iran’s nuclear facilities have not been damaged. The Natanz uranium enrichment plant is located in Isfahan province, as well as a Nuclear Technology Center that operates a miniature reactor. Iran’s nuclear program is an obsession for Netanyahu, who has been warning for years that the Islamic Republic is on the verge of achieving an atomic bomb. An Israeli strike on any of the Iranian nuclear facilities would not have gone unanswered.

For now, the target has been a military base that stores obsolete F-14 bombers. Everything indicates that Israel sought to avenge last week’s Iranian attack against its Nevatim base, which in turn was a retaliation against the Israeli bombing against the consular section of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus (Syria), a dangerous succession of blows that have lowered the threshold of conflict between the two and have put the region on alert. The fact that throughout the morning, oil moderated its initial rise gives some respite… until next time.

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