IDF) / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images
- Israel over the weekend launched strikes on Iran.
- Observers feared that Israel would hit Iranian energy infrastructure.
- Instead, it hit those sites' defenses — making it easier to launch more strikes later.
Israel's recent attack on Iran's air defense network was limited in its scope, but all the same left a significant opening.
Though Israel fell short of a major strike some feared, its attack over the weekend means Iran is more vulnerable to follow-up attacks should they come, according to experts on the region.
The long-anticipated attack was retaliation, almost a month later, for Iran launching ballistic missiles at Israel.
It is an unprecedented back-and-forth between two nations that used to do their fighting arm's length.
Unnamed officials told The New York Times that the strikes specifically targeted air-defense systems around key energy sites, though not the sites themselves.
They are said to 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 the Russian-made S-300 air-defense systems.
The loss, it said, undermined Iran's ability to counter future strikes.
The IDF strike also appeared to hit drone and missile production facilities across Iran, with satellite imagery published by The Guardian showing damage near the Parchin military base, a site previously linked by the International Atomic Energy Agency suspects to Iran's nuclear explosive development.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on 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. Iran's military joint staff claimed in a statement that planes were intercepted and the attack only caused "limited damage."
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, offered an unusually measured response on Sunday, saying that the strikes should neither be "downplayed nor exaggerated."
Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a cabinet meeting that Iran would respond "appropriately," saying that Tehran was not seeking war.
On Monday, a senior advisor close to Khamenei told the Financial Times that the Israeli strikes were "much ado about nothing."
Ali Akbar Velayati, who told the publication 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 set the regional powder keg alight."
Oil prices fell on Sunday and continued to drop on Monday after it became clear that Israel had not directly targeted oil and gas sites.
Ori Wertman, a research fellow 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 substantial because now it made Iran vulnerable to any Israeli attack from the air," he said, suggesting that Israel now has an opportunity, should it choose, to directly target Iran's 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 had illusions that the Russian S-300s are going to protect them, clearly that's 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."