Pride and fear in Iran after the attack on Israel

On both Tuesday evening and Wednesday, crowds of people gathered in the streets of several Iranian cities to celebrate the attack on Israel.

The protesters carried Iranian, Palestinian and Lebanese flags, and there were also many yellow Hezbollah flags to be seen.

The country’s state television is broadcasting the celebration, and other media have shown images of the rockets that lit up the night sky on their way west in the past 24 hours.

Down with Israel

Crowds in several cities shout slogans such as “Down with Israel” and “Down with the USA”, and some also set fire to Israeli flags.

Among those who took part in the celebrations in the capital Tehran on Tuesday evening, was the 22-year-old student Fatemeh Marzban.

– The operation made many people in the resistance front happy, she said and thanked the country’s military for the attack.

Worried

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised that Iran will pay dearly for the missile attack, and some Israeli politicians have advocated attacking Iranian nuclear facilities and oil installations.

A number of countries’ leaders urge restraint and fear a major war in the Middle East, a fear that is also shared by many Iranians.

– I am really worried. If Israel wants to retaliate, it will lead to an extension of the war, says the 45-year-old nurse Mansour Firouzabadi.

– Everyone is worried about this, he says.

Response to defeat

Analysts see the rocket attack as a result of Iran’s allies in the region having suffered a series of defeats recently, both in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.

When Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut last week, it also cost the Iranian general Abbas Nilforoushan his life. He was central to Iran’s contact with the Lebanese movement.

Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group think tank believes Iran ran a calculated risk when it fired rockets and drones at Israel in April. Most of them were then shot down as the attack had been warned in advance.

The attack in April was a response to Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital, Damascus, in which two high-ranking Iranian generals were killed.

Bold move

Tuesday’s Iranian attack was a far more daring move, believes Vaez, who believes it came because Iran’s allies are weakened on several fronts.

– If they did not respond, it could have further weakened Iran’s credibility towards these allies and created the impression that Tehran was content to be passive, he says.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has emphasized that he chose to hold back after Israel liquidated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July. That for fear that an Iranian response at the time would destroy the US’s attempt to establish a ceasefire in Gaza.

Last word

However, the promise of a ceasefire in exchange for Iran failing to respond to the killing of Haniyeh turned out to be a hoax, Pezeshkian noted on Sunday.

Although Iran has now signaled that there will be no more attacks from that side, as long as Israel does not respond, Vaez doubts whether it is thus over for this time.

– It is Israel and the USA that have the last word in this conflict, not Iran, he asserts.