How did the Israeli Air Force enter Iranian airspace on Saturday without raising alarms? Why did Tehran fail to activate its anti-aircraft defence systems before the Israeli payloads were dropped? Is it so easy for enemies to fly unnoticed to the Islamic Republic and hit multiple targets?
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Questions are galore after Israel carried out a "retaliatory strike" on Iran, reportedly crippling its rocket-manufacturing ability apart from claiming the lives of four personnel. Another theory, vehemently denied by Tel Aviv, claimed that Iran was warned well in advance ahead of the Israeli jets' takeoff to conduct the so-called strike.
Radars jammed ahead of attack
As the debates wage on, prominent Jewish media have reported quoting the the country's public broadcaster KAN that the country's Air Force managed to evade Iranian radars ahead of the strike due to a "breach" in the defense systems. When Iran needed its radars the most on Saturday, their screens froze, limiting its capacity to intercept incoming threats, the reports said.
While the Iranian military was busy working on restoring the systems, the first wave of the Israeli strike occurred -- targeting these radars and similar strategically important defence systems. In other words, the glitch helped Israel to send the first wave of aircraft unnoticed into enemey territory, which was tasked with taking out the warning facilities before the glitch was fixed.
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Once this objective was accomplished, it became risk-free for the remaining waves of Israeli pilots to shower hell on military bases in the subsequent attacks.
Did Israel jam Iranian radars?
However, none of the media reports claimed that the radar glitch was caused by a cyber attack by the Israel Defense Force (IDF) or any other security wing of the country. During the initial days of the war against Hezbollah, a coordinated blast of numerous pagers across Beirut had mortally injured several operatives of the organisation. Mosad was named the brain behind the attack that shocked the world.
Israel's cross-border attack came after Iran on October 1 launched around 200 ballistic missiles at Israel. Saturday's attack by the IDF is said to be a response to this largely ineffective aggression from Tehran -- its first recorded direct move against the rival nation.