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Time to Call Iran's Bluff
(Telegraph-UK) Con Coughlin - Saturday night's drone and ballistic missile attack on Israel demonstrated the Iranians' true status as a hostile state that is intent on waging war against the West and its allies. Until now, Iran has avoided a direct confrontation with Israel, preferring to rely on a deadly network of terror groups, such as Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon, to do its dirty work. This has enabled Iran to maintain a cloak of deniability about its true intentions, one that has persuaded naive leaders in the West to engage with the Iranians in the belief that compromise was possible. Iran's attack on Israel has revealed the Islamic Republic's true intent for all to see, a watershed moment that is likely to have a profound impact on how the world's major democracies view the ayatollahs in future. Iran will now be regarded as a tangible threat to Western security that must be tackled head-on. Iran claimed its assault on Israel was in response to an attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1. Yet, far from being engaged in diplomatic activity, the building served as a command and control center used by Iran's Revolutionary Guards to supervise its nexus of terrorist activities throughout the region. This is why no Iranian diplomats were reported killed in the attack, just high-ranking members of the IRGC's Quds Force, a unit established by the ayatollahs to export Iran's Islamic revolution throughout the Muslim world. Western leaders should accept that they are now at war with Iran, and act accordingly.