All Iran's mullahs have managed to do with their attack on Israel is to unite their enemies against them, writes DAVID PATRIKARAKOS

When Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his acolytes decided to torpedo a long-standing regional norm and attack Israel directly on Saturday night, they no doubt thought they had chosen their moment perfectly.

But they appear to have made an egregious strategic error.

After Hamas raped, massacred and kidnapped about 1,400 Israelis on October 7, most of the world looked on Israel with sympathy. Jerusalem set out to destroy Hamas and bring its own hostages home — as it was morally obliged to do.

But the narrative soon changed. As more footage emerged of the horrific human cost of the war, especially on Gazan civilians, opinion turned.

The Muslim world was outraged, while the Western hard Left slandered Israel as uniquely evil. With discomfiting speed, the Jewish state seemed to become a near-pariah.

Iranian politicians at an open session in the parliament in Tehran as Iran launched at horrifying drone attack on Israel

An Iranian news broadcast of rockets being launched towards Israel 

Drones being launched in a military exercise in an undisclosed location in Iran (File image)

Never mind the human suffering in other conflicts. Never mind that Hamas hides its fighters among the civilian population. Israel was found guilty — as it always is.

Iran's mullahs were watching — as they always are. To them, this was an opportunity. 

As a Persian Shia state in a largely Sunni Arab region, Iran — like Israel itself — is isolated. (Indeed, the two countries have more in common than they would admit.)

With Israel cast as the Middle East's bully, the mullahs could portray themselves as standing up to it — working to divide Israel from its neighbours and hoovering up approval from millions of Arabs frustrated at their own leaders' increasing friendliness towards the Jewish state. 

Finally, on April Fools' Day, the pretext came for Iran to attack Israel outright: Israel's strike on Iran's consulate in Syria, which killed seven senior Iranian military officials, including a top commander.

The retaliation, of course, came at the weekend, when Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel.

The result is that, yet again, Iran now faces off against a robust alliance of Israel, the democracies and a number of Arab states.

This morning, Gaza is off the front pages, and the case for military sanctions on Israel is much harder to make.

How can you deny military equipment to a country that has just suffered a mass attack by the world's foremost sponsor of terror?

Israel can also now claim that it is more imperative than ever that it destroys Hamas — Tehran's genocidal Gazan proxy — to say nothing of the other Iran-backed militias, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen.

So what happens next? It was Iran's decades-long campaign of near-ceaseless violence that helped to propel several of its Arab neighbours into signing peace treaties and normalisation agreements with Israel. The attack will only solidify their fears.

But the 84-year-old Khamenei is dying. While the succession to his son, Mojtaba, seems more or less assured, senior clerics are already jostling for positions under a new regime. 

Many will reason that being tough on Israel is the surest way to secure them. The future on that score looks bleak.

Back in Israel, war cabinet minister Benny Gantz has said Jerusalem will, when the time is right, 'exact a price' for Iran's attack. Some fear that they may strike Tehran's nuclear facilities.

This would risk a broader war, yet many still believe that Israel would be within its rights to do so. Yet more proof that the mullahs have blundered.