Iran's 2024 drone retaliation
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Iran's 2024 drone retaliation is John Kiriakou's account of Iran's response to an Israeli strike on its diplomatic facility in Syria. He identifies the precursor as Israel's bombing of the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, which killed two Iranian generals, a major violation of international law, in his assessment. Iran launched hundreds of slow drones that took roughly six hours to reach Israeli airspace, warning both the Americans and the Jordanians in advance, Kiriakou says Iran gave Jordan's ambassador direct notice of the roughly 600 drones' flight path, which allowed Israeli, US and British jets to scramble. Of the roughly 600 drones, seven got through despite the Iron Dome, which Kiriakou says shows the system is less effective than advertised, a particular concern were any future payload chemical or biological. Kiriakou reads it three ways: Iran showed its public it had retaliated, avoided being drawn into a wider war, and, most importantly, learned that the Iron Dome is not flawless, since about seven cheap drones "you can buy at a hobby shop" got through, an "incredible intelligence collection lesson."

Kiriakou later gave the restraint a name, taking it from the Iranian press: strategic patience. On that reading the drone wave was the second step of a sequence rather than a one-off, Iran did not strike back at all after the first Israeli attack, answered the second with drones slow enough that it could and did warn Israel they were coming, and only then absorbed the decapitation of its military leadership. He repeats the count, "something like seven got through", and draws the same conclusion, sharpened: the Iron Dome is not perfect "even against slow motion drones."

Diego Garcia, a range test, not an attack

In a later assessment of Iranian capability, John Kiriakou says Iran fired two stripped-down, payload-less rockets at Diego Garcia, a rocket that normally cannot reach that far, sent with no warhead, "just an engine and a cone," purely to see how far it could travel. Both were intercepted and shot down.

Supersonic missiles and the Qatar strike (Austin and Matt)

John Kiriakou adds detail to Iran's retaliation: after the telegraphed drone wave, Iran launched supersonic missiles, which, unlike America's still-in-testing hypersonics, several got through Israeli defenses. When Israel then bombed Qatar and killed Hamas's chief negotiator, Kiriakou notes Qatar is a "major non-NATO ally" the U.S. is treaty-bound to defend, so Washington could only give Israel "a stern talking-to" and "look like fools."

Designed not to land

Kiriakou reads the retaliation as a message engineered to fail. "Look at the Iranian response last weekend: you launched drones and ballistic missiles that take four hours to reach Israel, knowing that they have the Iron Dome, knowing that the US has Patriot missiles in the region, knowing that the Jordanians are also watching the skies. They knew they weren''t going to hit anything. But the point was that they responded, and they didn''t respond hard enough to make the Israelis really do something terrible. I think it was a very good decision on the part of the Iranian government."

Military targets only

Asked whether Iran would continue to confine itself to military targets, he answered from what had already been spared. "They could have targeted Tel Aviv, and civilian population centres, like the Israelis have, frankly, and they didn''t do that. So my guess is that if there is going to be more Iranian targeting, it''s going to be of Israeli military facilities. I think that''s actually a wise policy." He had seen the same reports as the questioner: a strike on the Golan, and one rocket getting through to the edge of an Israeli base.

See also

- Benjamin Netanyahu
- October 7 attack
