• Israel launched strikes against Iran this weekend.
• Observers feared Israel could strike Iran’s energy infrastructure.
• Instead, it hit the defenses of those sites, making it easier to launch new strikes later.

Israel’s recent attack on Iran’s air defense network was limited in scope, but nonetheless left a significant opening.

Although Israel failed to carry out a major strike that some feared, its weekend attack means Iran is more vulnerable to subsequent attacks should they come, regional experts say.

THE long awaited attack it was retaliation, almost a month later, against Iran launch ballistic missiles at Israel.

This is an unprecedented back-and-forth between two nations that once fought at arm’s length.

Unnamed officials said The New York Times that the strikes specifically targeted air defense systems around key energy sites, but not the sites themselves.

These would include the Bandar Imam Khomeini petrochemical complex and the Abadan oil refinery.

In a Sunday update, The Institute for the Study of War said the Israel Defense Forces struck and disabled parts of three or four sites guarded by Russian-made S-300 air defense systems.

This loss, the statement said, compromised Iran’s ability to counter future strikes.

The IDF strike also appears to have hit drone and missile production facilities across Iran, according to satellite images. published by The Guardian showing damage near the Parchin military base, a site previously linked to by the International Atomic Energy Agency suspects to the development of nuclear explosives by Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday had “severely damaged Iran’s defense capability and its ability to produce missiles.”

In the aftermath of the attack, Iranian authorities sought to downplay the strikes, which killed four Iranian soldiers. Iranian military staff stated in a statement that planes were intercepted and that the attack caused only “limited damage.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offered an unusually measured response on Sunday: adage that strikes should neither be “minimized nor exaggerated”.

Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said at a cabinet meeting, Iran would respond “appropriately,” saying Tehran was not seeking war.

Monday, a senior adviser close to Khamenei told the Financial Times that the Israeli strikes were “much ado about nothing”.

Ali Akbar Velayati, who said he was “open” to closer ties with the West, accused Israel of further destabilizing the region and having the potential to “create the spark that would ignite the regional powder keg “.

Oil prices fell on Sunday and continued to decline on Monday after it became clear that Israel had not directly targeted oil and gas sites.

Ori Wertman, a researcher at the University of South Wales specializing in Israeli national security, told Business Insider that Israel “absolutely” made Iran more vulnerable with its attack.

“This is something really important because it makes Iran vulnerable to any Israeli air attack,” he said, suggesting that Israel now has the opportunity, if it wishes, to directly target Iranian nuclear facilities.

Alex Vatanka, founding director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute, told BI that the strikes gave Iranian officials “something to think about.”

He said: “If they were under the illusion that the Russian S-300s were going to protect them, that is clearly not the case. »

Vatanka said the attack was a demonstration of Israel’s capabilities, and also avoided pushing Iran into a position where it would have to “hit back harder.”