Why Iran used costlier ballistic missiles to attack Israel this time

Iran on Tuesday launched hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel.

Iran said the barrage was retaliation for a series of devastating blows Israel has landed in recent weeks against the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has been firing rockets into Israel since the war in Gaza began.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed late Tuesday to retaliate against Iran, which he said “made a big mistake tonight and it will pay for it.”

Iran on Tuesday fired 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in a response to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon. Experts say that for Iran, which is thought to have thousands of ballistic missiles in stock, this is a relatively cost-effective method of attacking Israel and depleting its arsenal. Tehran also wants to send Tel Aviv a message that it could do a lot of damage if the assault was not telegraphed

Iran’s armed forces joint chief of staff Gen. Mohammad Bagheri warned that Iran would respond to action against its territory with strikes on Israel’s entire infrastructure with “multiplied intensity.”

Fears that Iran and the US would be drawn into a regional war have risen with Israel’s intensifying assault on Lebanon in the past two weeks.

Earlier Tuesday, Israel launched what it said is a limited ground incursion in southern Lebanon.

But what happened? And why did Iran attack Israel with costlier ballistic missiles this time?

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Let’s take a closer look:

What happened?

In its attack on Tuesday, Iran fired more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, Israel said. Alarms sounded across Israel and explosions could be heard in Jerusalem and the Jordan River valley.

Israelis piled into bomb shelters and reporters on state television lay flat on the ground during live broadcasts.

Moments before Iran launched its missiles, a shooting attack in Tel Aviv left at least six people dead, police said, adding that the two suspects who had opened fire on a boulevard in the Jaffa neighborhood had also been killed.

Iran’s forces used hypersonic Fattah missiles for the first time, and 90 per cent of its missiles successfully hit their targets in Israel, the Revolutionary Guards said.

A BBC correspondent in Jerusalem reported that some military bases may have been hit, and that restaurants and schools were hit.

Israeli air defences were activated and most missiles were intercepted “by Israel and a defensive coalition led by the United States,” Israeli Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a video on X, adding: “Iran’s attack is a severe and dangerous escalation.”

Central Israel received “a small number” of hits and there were other strikes in southern Israel, he said. The Israeli military published video of a school in the central city of Gadera that was heavily damaged by an Iranian missile.

No injuries were reported in Israel, but one man was killed in the occupied West Bank, authorities there said.

According to AFP, the victim was killed by falling rocket debris.

A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had personally given the order for Tuesday’s missile attack.

Why did Iran used costlier ballistic missiles against Israel?

Tehran is believed to have thousands of ballistic missiles in stock.

CNN quoted Air Force General Kenneth McKenzie as saying in 2023 that Iran had “over 3,000” ballistic missiles.

The outlet quoted experts as saying Tehran used variants of the Shahab-3 ballistic missile this time.

As per The Guardian, Iran in the April attack used drones as well as cruise and ballistic missiles.

However, in this attack it used just ballistic missiles.

This could possibly be because drones were unable to penetrate Israel’s Iron Dome weapons system.

Experts say the idea is in part to bleed Israel by a thousand cuts.

A piece in the Wall Street Journal in April estimated that Israel spent around $550 million intercepting missiles and drones by Iran during a single barrage.

The newspaper credited Yehoshua Kalisky, senior researcher at the Tel Aviv think-tank Institute for National Security Studies as taking into account the David’s Sling air-defense system as well as the costs of fuel for keeping 100 Israeli warplanes in the air for six hours and weapons.

Kalisky said “these are enormous costs” – close to what Israel spent in major wars.

The Guardian noted Iran spends around $100,000 on each missile.

Meanwhile, a typical Arrow missile fired by Israel costs $3.5 million per unit.

Meanwhile, the David’s Sling interceptors cost $1 million each.

On Iran’s part, it’s simply cost-effective – and depletes Israel’s stock of interceptors.

Iran also has other reasons.

The newspaper piece noted that the volley of ballistic missiles indicated it was a serious attack that looked to overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome weapon system.

The sheer speed of the missiles makes it challenging to intercept, as per the newspaper.

Hooman Majd, a political analyst and author who served as an advisor to former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, told Drop Site News, the attack was in part a warning.

“If we don’t telegraph it, if we do this at 3:00 in the morning and nobody knows that we’re doing this, if we can manage to keep it secret, we could do a lot of damage,” Majd said.

“The fact that they did this was to really show not just Israel, but also show the regional states, the Arab states, ‘We have firepower, and it’s not going to be easy to stop us.’”

“After a string of assassinations and other Israeli escalations in recent weeks, Iran is trying to create a new deterrence equilibrium. They are saying that we can still hit you, and we can hit you hard,” Sina Toossi, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, told the website.

“Iran is actually trying to ‘escalate to de-escalate’ here. They had pursued a policy of strategic patience, but many people inside Iran had already been saying that if they had responded forcefully to the killing of Haniyeh, there would not have been the strike against Nasrallah.”

With inputs from agencies