Iran's botched air raid has put Israel in the ascendency

0NE night during the Blitz in 1940, the senior RAF officer Arthur Harris stood on the roof of the Air Ministry in Whitehall and watched the German bombs fall on the East End of London. 

- Leo McKinstry

Turning to a colleague, he said, "Tonight they are sowing the wind. But they will reap the whirlwind." As head of RAF Bomber Command from 1942, Harris made good that pledge.

The Israeli government will be feeling similar today following the mass air assault by Iran. Until now, the brutal regime of Tehran has used proxies like Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon to launch rocket attacks on Israel.

But at the weekend, in a dramatic escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, Iran decided to unleash its own direct strike against its most bitter foe. Historically unprecedented in scale, the barrage featured 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles and 110 ballistic missiles.

MORE than any other state in the region, Iran loathes the very existence of Israel. But the immediate cause was Tehran's retaliation for Israel's deadly bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria at the beginning of April, which killed seven commanders of the elite Revolutionary Guards, including the overall chief of operations Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi.