Iran’s dilemma: How to punish Israel, but not incite wider war
CHALLENGE APPEARS TO BE DELAYING STRIKE ONCE THOUGHT TO BE IMMINENT
Iran faces a dilemma over how to deliver a meaningful blow to Israel without prompting a war that could engulf the Middle East. That challenge appears to be delaying an attack that was widely thought to be imminent days ago.
“Iran is stuck between a rock and a hard place,” according to Dina Esfandiary, a senior adviser on the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group.
“It’s going to want to retaliate in a way that’s significant enough to deter Israel from increasing the escalation spiral. However, it’s not going to want to do something to prompt a regional war that will drag the US in.”
Iran has said it wants to punish Israel for last week’s assassination of a leading Hamas figure in Tehran, but not to the point of starting a region-wide war.
It emphasised the need to reestablish “deterrence” against its arch enemy, which has neither confirmed nor denied being responsible for the death of Ismail Haniyeh.
The options before Iran
Iran could choose to target military sites in Israel — similar to the rocket and drone barrage it carried out in April. That did minimal damage, partly because the move was effectively telegraphed in advance, helping the Israeli air force to shoot down the vast majority of the projectiles with help from the US, UK, France and Jordan. Under pressure from the US, Israel responded with a limited strike on an Iranian airbase that meant tensions soon eased.
Another option is to use Iran’s network of armed proxies including militias in Iraq, Lebanon-based Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen to hit Israel with missiles and drones.
The aim would be “to overwhelm Israel’s air defence capabilities and disrupt military and, potentially, civilian infrastructure,” said Burcu Ozcelik, who is a senior research fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute. “The assault could take place over a series of days,” he added.
It might be hard to do so with real surprise, though. While ballistic missiles would take over 10 minutes to cover the 1,200 kilometres from Iran, cruise missiles and drones could take hours.
Israel and its allies would probably have time to detect the threats and mount interception strikes.
‘No red lines’
Within Iran, there was shock that Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader, was assassinated in the heart of Tehran in a government guesthouse.
“The Islamic Republic and its Axis of Resistance have no red lines when it comes to punishing” Israel, Kayhan, a conservative newspaper in Iran, said yesterday in an editorial, referring to Tehran’s network of non-state allies.
Fears about a reprisal have prompted the US to send more fighter planes, warships as well as missiles to the region to back Israel.
There’s been a surge of coordinated diplomatic activity involving officials from Western and Arab countries. The Group of Seven and Qatar have reached out to Iran in a bid to temper its next move, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
Calculated response
Jordan’s foreign minister made a rare visit to Tehran with a similar aim.
All the diplomacy may result in a “more calculated, limited response” from Iran, according to Ozcelik.
Middle East geopolitics have been upended since October 7 when Hamas, listed as a terrorist organisation by the US and the European Union, swarmed into Israel from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage.
Israel’s subsequent offensive against Gaza has killed more than 40,000 people, according to the health officials in the Hamas-run enclave.
As Iran contemplates its next step, the risk remains that a miscalculation, most likely from proxies taking their missile and drone attacks too far, will draw a much stronger counter attack from Israel. That could be hugely costly for a clerical leadership already experiencing high levels of dissent at home.