Why hasn't Iran attacked Israel yet? It's scared, calculating or both
Posted 1h ago
1 hours ago
A group of men wearing muslim garbs with khmanei in the middle looking over two coffins with the palestinian flag
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (middle) vowed a harsh response to the assassination of Hamas chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.(Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency) Handout via Reuters)
Israelis have become used to, perhaps even resigned to, being at war.
Now that they are facing "revenge" from the country's two biggest enemies, Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, they are once again alarmed and on edge.
Both adversaries have promised to punish Israel; Iran for the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh on July 31 and Hezbollah for the assassination of military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut a few hours earlier.
The question is how, and when.
A man with a white beard wearing all black and a black head cover, on a screen with a crowd below watching
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah told his supporters a response to the killing of Fuad Shukr is coming in some form.(Mustafa Jamalddine)
"The waiting is part of the punishment," the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, told his followers this week.
Both groups lose nothing by making Israel sweat.
But they also face the near-impossible task of calibrating their responses to restore a degree of deterrence against Israel while trying to stop a cycle of escalation that causes an all-out regional war.
Iran, in particular, has multiple ways it can attack.
Since it fired 300 missiles and drones at Israel in April, retaliation for a presumed Israeli strike that killed senior Iranian military commanders in Damascus, Iran set new rules of open confrontation between itself and Israel.
The April 13 launches were the first time the Islamic Republic had directly attacked Israeli territory.
This time they could do it with faster missiles and without giving prior warning to the United States, which coordinated the shooting down of most of the projectiles with countries like the United Kingdom, France and Jordan.
That tactic would raise the risk of a direct Israeli response on Iran.
Iran has reportedly asked Russia for better air defence systems to foil any Israeli attack, indicating it may be taking more precautions before launching.
Iran could also coordinate firing with the groups it funds and arms around the Middle East, which it calls the "Axis of Resistance".
These groups, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shia militias in Iraq and the Houthis who rule northern Yemen, have all been attacking Israel in uncoordinated ways since October 7.
white smoke rises from green hill with houses
Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire across the border for months.(Reuters: Karamallah Daher)
Their aggression towards Israel is part of Iran's "ring of fire" strategy to encircle the Jewish state with hostile groups, which also bear the brunt of any retaliation rather than Iran itself.
While a broad-scale, coordinated response from them would be a greater threat to Israel, it would also provoke a larger response, including potential reprisals from the United States, which has moved more ships and planes to the region.
Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, has indicated Iran wants to keep everyone guessing for as long as possible.
"Our retaliation, God willing, is coming. By ourselves or with the Axis," he said.
"We might respond at the same time (or) maybe everyone will respond at the time of his choosing and the targets he chooses."
Both Iran and Hezbollah could also opt for an attack elsewhere, perhaps targeting Israelis on holiday.
Hezbollah has been accused of this before, most recently when a suicide bomber targeted a bus transporting five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria in 2012.
Iran has also been accused of planning to murder Israeli tourists and diplomats in multiple locations and Iranians were arrested in Thailand when a plot to bomb Israeli diplomats failed.
Such attacks though would counteract the new Iranian government's plan to improve relations with Europe and the United States.
They also require significant operational capability and intelligence sophistication, which Iran has not exhibited recently.
Israel's security establishment is reportedly against further escalation — viewing a regional war as too great a risk — but the October 7 Hamas attacks and Hezbollah's sustained rocket launches against northern Israel have dented Israel's sense of military superiority and have led to increasingly risky decisions.
"Israel may be pushing the limits in its regional actions not because it feels strong but because it feels weak," Dalia Dassa Kaye, a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, wrote for Foreign Affairs magazine.
The danger is that Iran feels the same and the perception of weakness by both parties is fuelling the risk of escalation.
There are voices in Iran which want to play the long game — rebuilding the country's failing economy, repairing relationships with the West, subduing internal turmoil and improving Iran's military capabilities.
They reportedly include the newly-elected President Masoud Pezeshkian and his deputy for strategic affairs, former foreign minister Javad Zarif.
But the voices advocating a fast and harsh response include the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful military body aligned with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.
"My sense is that right now, mainly due to the fact that Pezeshkian is new, inexperienced and has not yet come up with his new administration, the position or the power of the more hardliners in Iran, led by the Revolutionary Guards, seems to be higher and therefore I think we will see that in the upcoming Iran's retaliation towards Israel," Raz Zimmt, from Israel's Institute of National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, told Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Khamenei with a white beard wearing black and a head covering sitting to the left of Pezeshkian in a suit
Iran's new president, Masoud Pezeshkian (right), seems to not want a larger regional war. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters)
A great risk for Israel is that its presumed attack in Tehran pushes Iran closer to weaponising its uranium stockpiles.
There is a debate within Iran about whether to move from being close to nuclear weapon capability to actual making nuclear warheads.
A failure to restore a sense of deterrence against Israel will be used as an argument for progressing from "threshold state" to nuclear capability.
"We have (made) no decision to build a nuclear bomb but should Iran's existence be threatened, there will be no choice but to change our military doctrine," Kamal Kharrazi, a senior adviser to the supreme leader, said in May.
Iran has previously waited or not responded strongly to previous attacks by Israel, saying it was exercising something called "strategic patience".
It may be doing that now or it may simply have too many risks to consider, and few good options.
Israel too, is seeing its best long-term defence, a regional agreement with countries like Saudi Arabia and settlement of its many disputes with its neighbours and the Palestinians, slip away.
Ultimately, both sides know a war will not benefit them.
The question is whether they start one anyway.
Posted 1h ago
1 hours ago