Tehran launched fresh missiles strikes against Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed further strikes on Iran in a military operation that has targeted the nuclear and military facilities of his country’s arch enemy.
Shortly after midnight on June 14, Israel said its military had intercepted a new round of Iranian surface-to-surface missiles in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem on the second consecutive day of Iranian air strikes that followed a damaging Israeli air assault on sites linked to Tehran’s nuclear program.
A paper tiger doesn’t necessarily mean that a country is weak, it just means that a country is weaker than it is perceived. It’s a relative term. Iran is much stronger than my home country of Iraq, whom they have thoroughly abused. However, Iraqis in general think that Iran is actually a weak country relative to, say for example, Turkey, who has similar base stats.
The Iranian regime portrays itself as this mighty and powerful power that contend with the West, and here in the West we make Iran seem like it’s as powerful as the Soviet Union was… But in reality their strength has been greatly exaggerated by propaganda both inside and outside the country, and their actual capabilities are far less than they are on paper, hence why it’s a paper tiger.
You could make the same argument for Russia. Before the Ukraine war both Putin’s regime and the West believed that Russia’s military was world’s second most powerful and that they’re strong enough to take on the US… At least in theory. But as it turns out, Russia is way weaker than anybody expected and they keep getting pushed back by Ukraine. Russia is still strong, but they’re also a paper tiger.