Israel’s Damascus strike on April 1 will go down in the corpus of literature on war and diplomacy as an act of high-intensity deception. Iran wouldn’t have expected a cowardly attack using stealth fighters on its diplomatic compound.

Israel’s a priori national deception practices provided no clues. But the asymmetry in the aura of secrecy makes the Iranian retaliation rather challenging. Speculations are rife.

Israel seems confident about its counter-deception system. The Israeli Defence Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi stressed on Sunday that Israel knows “how to handle Iran.” He said, “We are prepared for this; we have good defensive systems and know how to act forcefully against Iran in both near and distant places. We are operating in cooperation with the USA and strategic partners in the region.” [Emphasis added.]

The bit about the USA is disconcerting because the bazaar gossip is that Americans quietly assured the Iranians that they had no clue about Israel’s Damascus attack, leave alone a role in it. But the deployment of F-35 jets for such a mission wasn’t a coincidence, after all.

The Biden Administration routinely gives assurances to Russians whenever Ukrainians strike deep inside Russian territory with Americans or Brits providing satellite intelligence, logistics, weaponry — and increasingly with NATO countries’ military personnel controlling the operations.

Russia’s dilemma is similar to what Iran faces. The big question, prima facie, would have four parts: 1. To what extent were Americans in the loop? 2. Going forward, will the US go the whole hog in an election year to kickstart another Middle Eastern war? 3. Is this any longer an exclusive affair between Iran and the Axis of Resistance on one side and Israel on the other side? 4. What are the US motivations if it indeed conveyed any assurance to Tehran?

In the commentariat, there is a delusional opinion that in the action-reaction........

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