The strike on the Iranian consular compound in Damascus on April 1, 2024, which killed senior IRGC advisers, has sharply raised the prospect that Tehran might respond beyond proxies and that Israel could soon face strikes originating from Iranian territory or from Iran‑enabled proxies across the region. Reporting from the day describes Iran’s vow to respond and analysts warning of the escalation risk created by attacking a diplomatic compound with alleged military functions.
As of April 2, 2024, there was no confirmed direct Iranian missile strike on Israeli territory. That narrow window matters because it gives policymakers and defence planners a brief but critical opportunity to review how Israel’s air and missile defence architecture would perform against any future direct strikes from Iran or massed coordinated salvos from multiple launch sites and proxies.
Three structural realities should frame that assessment. First, Iran possesses a large and diverse inventory of ballistic and cruise missiles and has matured its long‑range drone and cruise missile options in recent years. Its missile families span short‑ and medium‑range ballistic missiles as well as cruise missiles capable of striking well inside the Levant. These arsenals give Tehran a mix of high‑speed, relatively short‑warning weapons and slower cruise/drone options that can be launched from distant or proxy launch points.
Second, Israel operates a layered missile defence architecture that was designed to address precisely this kind of threat mix: Iron Dome for short‑range rockets and artillery, David’s Sling and Patriot for medium‑range cruise and ballistic threats, and the Arrow family for long‑range ballistic missiles and exo‑atmospheric threats. That layering is conceptually sound but operationally brittle when faced with high‑volume, simultaneous salvos or novel low‑observable, manoeuvring warheads. Public explainers and IDF reporting since late 2023 underscore both the systems’ successes and their limits under saturation stress.
Third, missile defence is not only technical. The ability to survive a salvo depends on logistics, stockpiles, allied support, decision‑making under pressure, and civilians’ confidence in civil defence measures. Interceptor inventories are finite. Sensors can be degraded by EW or overwhelmed by quantity. Political decisions about when and how to cue interceptors matter as much as radar returns. These non‑kinetic layers are perennial weak points in any country’s defensive posture and must be considered with equal weight.
From these realities follow five concrete lessons for Israel and its partners.
1) Prioritise resilience over perfection. No defence can guarantee 100 percent protection. The best practical objective is managed risk reduction: hardening critical infrastructure, dispersing high‑value assets, prepositioning medical and repair capacity, and rehearsing national civil defence plans so that a limited number of penetrations do not produce strategic shock. Investments in hardened shelters, redundant communications and rapid repair teams reduce the political pressure to escalate after a limited number of successful strikes. (This is a policy imperative rather than a technological one.)
2) Reassess interceptor economics and stockpile management. Systems like Iron Dome perform well against selected short‑range threats but are costly per intercept and vulnerable to massed launches that exhaust magazine depth. Allies should jointly review stockpile levels, production surge plans, and cross‑servicing agreements for interceptors and launchers. Contingency plans for allied re‑supply and surge production must be certified and exercised ahead of any direct confrontation.
3) Harden and diversify the sensor layer. Early detection and discrimination are the decisive advantages in modern missile defence. Satellites, over‑the‑horizon radars, maritime sensors and airborne early‑warning assets increase cueing time and improve interceptor allocation decisions. Conversely, any campaign by an adversary to blind sensors through electronic attack, decoys, or stealthy cruise missiles will sharply degrade outcomes. Integrating allied ISR assets, sharing telemetry, and pre‑authorising automated cueing among trusted partners materially raises the probability of successful defence.
4) Prepare for salvos and combined arms attacks. Iran and its proxies have shown a preference for mixing weapon types: ballistic missiles to saturate high‑end defenders, cruise missiles and swarms of UAVs to exploit gaps, and proxy launch points to complicate attribution. Defenders need doctrine and training for multi‑domain, simultaneous engagements that prioritise threats not by type but by consequence. That requires robust command‑and‑control, pre‑delegated engagement authorities during crisis periods and a clear political playbook so defensive efforts do not become the principal escalatory trigger.
5) Match tactical defence with strategic messaging. Technical improvements buy minutes to hours. But deterrence and escalation management are political. If Tehran were to consider a direct strike, its calculations would include the expected military effect and the political cost. Clear communication channels, calibrated signalling with allies, and credible defensive posture statements can reduce incentives for miscalculation. At the same time, reliance on massive missile defence success as a substitute for diplomacy or de‑escalatory politics is a dangerous illusion.
Beyond those operational lessons there are longer‑term implications. A protracted campaign of missile exchanges will favor the party that can produce or assemble large numbers of delivery systems, or that can import them through proxy networks. That creates a strategic arms‑production race dynamic in the region. The second implication is cost asymmetry: high‑value interceptors are expensive compared with the low unit cost of many offensive rockets or drones. Unless procurement, production and stockpile replenishment are addressed, defenders risk effective protection becoming unsustainable in a prolonged conflict.
Finally, this moment must be treated as a policy inflection point. Striking a diplomatic compound, regardless of the target inside that compound, ratchets the political temperature. Tehran’s public vows to respond are logical in that context. Policymakers in Washington, Brussels and regional capitals should press parallel tracks: strengthen the defensive posture and intensive diplomacy that reduces the incentive for full‑scale retaliatory direct strikes. Military preparations without diplomatic outreach risk locking actors into a tit‑for‑tat dynamic that spirals beyond control.
If there is any constructive takeaway, it is that missile defence works best as part of an integrated strategy. Technical layers buy time and impose costs on attackers. Robust civil resilience buys political space. Clear crisis doctrine and allied burden‑sharing convert short‑term survival into longer‑term strategic advantage. In the days and weeks ahead, the urgent task for planners is to translate those principles into rehearsed, resourced and politically authorised contingencies before a direct Iranian response, if it comes, makes such choices far harder.