Israel and Iran directly struck each other on their own territory for the first time in history this week. I think the weapons, tactics and targets each side chose just revealed a lot to us about their respective capabilities and the message each side intended to send to the other. So the big question everyone wants to know is what extent of Iran’s offensive capabilities did they use? How much damage did they actually intend to deliver, was this all essentially the equivalent of a warning shot, a limited strike or was it meant to inflict massive damage? I think There is some evidence to support both theories so I’ll present each side to you now with some of my own insights so that you can make up your own dang mind. First the facts, Iran’s April 13th attack on Israel included 130 ballistic missiles, 30 cruise missiles and 170 smaller kamikaze drones or a total of 330 munitions. In military parlance we call that a “strike package” which refers to a coordinated grouping of different military assets deployed to execute a specific strike mission against an enemy target. The Evidence to support the first theory that this was not Iran’s full capabilities, comes from the Iranian officials claims that they gave the United States, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq 72 hours of warning that they would launch this attack. They claim they added a diplomatic tag onto that strike package by essentially telegraphing in advance that they would launch an air attack on Israel. Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq all confirmed that Iran gave them 3 days warning. If we take them at their word and believe that then it’s also likely that one of them passed on that information to the United States under the table. The reason to believe this is because of the US military’s close relationship with all of those countries. However the United States claimed they were given no such warning.