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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/20/world/middleeast/iran-israel-strike-tensions.html
Strike Was Meant to Show Iran that Israel Could Paralyze Its Defenses
(New York Times) Farnaz Fassihi and Ronen Bergman - An Israeli weapon deployed in a retaliatory strike against Iran on Friday damaged a defense system responsible for detecting and destroying aerial threats near Natanz, a central Iranian city critical to the country's secret nuclear weapons program, according to two Western officials and two Iranian officials. The strike, the Western officials said, was calculated to deliver a message to Iran that Israel could bypass Iran's defense systems undetected and paralyze them, using a fraction of the fire power Iran deployed last week when it launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel. Officials confirmed that Israel had deployed aerial drones and at least one missile fired from a plane far from Israeli or Iranian airspace that included technology that enabled it to evade Iran's radar defenses. Neither the missile nor the aircraft that fired it entered Jordanian airspace. Israel's use of drones launched from inside Iran and a missile that it could not detect was intended to give Iran a taste of what a larger-scale attack might look like. The attack was calibrated to make Iran think twice before launching a direct attack on Israel in the future.