The dawn sky over Israel was a canvas of dread, streaked with the lingering smoke trails of Iranian missiles. The latest barrage, an “early Monday” assault as the news had just confirmed, had claimed five more lives. Yet, despite the immediate horror, a chilling realization was beginning to dawn on Israel’s military strategists: the true epicenter of their vulnerability lay not in Tehran, but in Baghdad.
Brigadier General Effie Defrin, his voice raspy from days of minimal sleep, had just declared “full air supremacy in the Tehran airspace.” His words, intended to reassure, instead echoed hollow in the war room. They had indeed decimated Iranian missile launchers, a third of their arsenal, and could now, theoretically, fly over the Iranian capital with impunity. But the truth, known to everyone in that room, was that this “supremacy” was a hollow victory, a mirage of control.
The real threat, the insidious vulnerability, lay hundreds of miles to the east, in Iraq. Iran’s bombing forces, their missile trajectories, their very ability to strike Israel, were inextricably linked to Iraqi airspace. As long as Tehran’s arsenal had to traverse Iraqi territory, Israel was, in essence, paralyzed. Their vaunted aerial superiority meant nothing if Iraqi airspace remained a no-fly zone for their retaliatory strikes.
The conflict, therefore, was morphing into something far more complex than a direct confrontation with Iran. It had become a desperate, existential test of Iraq’s allegiances. Would Baghdad, buffeted by its own internal divisions and external pressures, tolerate Israel’s pursuit of its enemies? Or would it throw its weight, however tacitly, behind Iran, effectively ceding its skies to the very forces threatening Israel’s existence?
The frantic intelligence reports piling up on the central table weren’t focused on Iranian troop movements anymore, but on the subtle shifts in Iraqi political currents, the pronouncements of its leaders, the movements of its air traffic controllers. Every diplomatic cable from Baghdad was scrutinized, every ambiguous statement dissected.
“We can bomb Tehran all we want,” muttered Colonel Avi Ben-Hur, tracing a frustrated finger across a digital map displaying the vast expanse of Iraqi territory. “But if we can’t get our jets through Iraq to hit the staging grounds, to dismantle their long-range capabilities before they even launch, then all this… all this is just mopping up after the flood.”
The true battle, it was now chillingly clear, was not for the skies over Tehran, but for the silent, invisible highways of Iraqi airspace. The conflict with Iran, in its cruelest irony, had become a referendum on Iraq, and Israel held its breath, waiting for Baghdad to cast its vote.
All names of people and organizations appearing in this story are pseudonyms
Israel claims aerial superiority over Tehran amid ongoing missile exchanges with Iran
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