The newspaper reported that Biden and his National Security team were increasingly concerned on April 13th about the details of the launch of over 100 ballistic missiles and drones towards Israel.<\/p>\n
It added that there were many cruise missiles and drone swarms in the air, and Biden and his aides feared that they would overwhelm the reinforced defenses provided to Israel a week before the attack.<\/p>\n
Worst-case scenarios from US intelligence agencies<\/h3>\n
In a related context, US officials later said that the scale of Tehran’s first direct attack on Israel matched the worst-case scenarios described by US intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n
During the meeting held in the operations room at 5:15 PM that day, Biden and his aides were unable to confirm that Israel’s missile defense systems would prevent nearly 99% of Iranian missiles.<\/p>\n
A senior official in the Biden administration’s operations room that day said that the results of the defense were not clear until the moment of the attack.<\/p>\n He added that waiting during the Iranian bombardment was among the difficult moments, as they found themselves unsure about what both Israel and Iran were planning during critical times.<\/p>\n When the attack began, American officials in the operations room and the Pentagon tracked the three waves of aircraft and missiles that left Iranian airspace, crossed Iraq and Jordan, heading towards Israel.<\/p>\n Officials in the administration mentioned that even with the prior warning they received, the scale of the bombardment was a significant shock, with a senior official saying, “I think this was at the highest level of what we were on and what we expected.”<\/p>\n The report explained that 150 unmanned combat aerial vehicles would take 7 hours to reach Israel, followed by the first batch of 30 cruise missiles for ground attack.<\/p>\n It added that the hastily deployed defense systems in the days leading up to the attack successfully repelled Israel’s largest attack in decades.<\/p>\n It confirmed that no country had attempted to intercept such a large number of ballistic missiles at once before.<\/p>\n According to the newspaper, Washington believed that its forces and Israeli forces could deal with 50 ballistic missiles, but more than 100 were in an unknown area.<\/p>\n The report concluded that Israel’s Iron Dome defense system intercepted most of the ballistic missiles, while American destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea intercepted several others.<\/p>\n It said that an American Patriot missile battery in Erbil, Iraq, intercepted many missiles.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, drones were shot down by a group of American, British, French, and Israeli aircraft.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"Iranian](\"https:\/\/www.watanserb.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Iran-launched-more-than-100-ballistic-missiles-and-drones-towards-Israel.jpg\")
Israel’s largest attack in decades<\/h3>\n
How were the missiles intercepted?<\/h3>\n