I know what hezbollah is. If you are so scared about the battle why even poke the giant?? Its not like Israeli's have not made their intent clear. Israelis have publicly and multiple times made their intent clear. Still, Mullah and Hezbollah continued the antagonistic rhetoric. What they were expecting in return?? Israel will wet itself??
Take the cue from Pakistan. Once Modiji made it clear that India will bring justice to the families of murdered Hindu tourists in Pahalgam. The porkies went on overdrive to distance and play victim. Have you even seen a terrorist organization issue a statement of auditing itself and retracting back from its earlier claims???
But no Hezbollah and Mullah with their power of Allah had to chimp.
If wars were based on pure logic, many of them would never have happened. Iran thought the fall of Assad unlikely or never even considered it. Once it did and Israelis immediately neutralized every piece of Machinery Syrian state had which would allow it to contest their own airspace, it became a grazing ground for Israeli refuellers.
At the very start of the conflict, way before the unconfirmed sightings of their refuellers over Deir Ez Zour, my very first question on this thread was-
Where are the Israeli refuellers flying to allow F35s such range?
Over international waters? Gulf airspace?
I don't think F35s have enough max range to allow them to infil and exfil back to Israel so where are their refuellers? Are gulf countries letting them use their airspace?
I never even considered the Syrian Airspace because I didn't know Israelis bombed inactive SAMs too when SAA got overrun (incredible intel work probably because inactive SAMs aren't eating HARMs so their location was probably pinpointed by GIS, OSINT or HUMINT). Also doesn't seem like Shara is too intent on being bombed himself so even if some SAM systems remain, he isn't going to risk it or himself for Iran. Iran actively used Hezbollah against Al Nusra during the civil war.
Back on topic, Iran probably never imagined SAA would lose total control of Syria overnight and extend Israeli AF's reach right up to Tehran.
Even then, they maybe considered the stop-gap measure of having their puppet PMU militiamen in Iraqi Parliament to manage to keep control of their airspace and unfortunately for them, the best Iraqi SAM (AFAIK) is Pantsir. It's stupid easy to avoid for Israeli planes with it's garbage range (and Iraqi parliament's word doesn't supersede USA's boot).
Iranians getting caught off guard is entirely their own fault. Overreliance on unconventional tactics with zero capabilty to defend themselves but they probably believed they would stay safe and even if Israelis do manage to hit them kinetically, it would be a strategic zero day exploit strike after which they would fire a few missiles at Tel Aviv and call it a day.
NO ONE expected Israelis to use their planes like mobile artillery over entirety of Iran and continue to bomb whatever they want with zero inhibitions for weeks.
I can not honestly blame the Iranians there.
They were in a very good place to continue chimping out till they suddenly weren't.
