Iran retaliated directly against Israel for the killings of its top generals in Damascus, Syria, with an attack of more than 300 drones and missiles aimed at restoring its credibility and deterrence, officials and analysts said.
That represents a moment of great danger, with fundamental questions yet to be answered, they say. Will Iran’s attack be enough to meet its calls for retaliation? Or because of the relatively small results – almost all drones and missiles were intercepted by Israel and the United States – does it feel obliged to attack again? And will Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, see the strong performance of his country’s air defenses as a sufficient response? Or will he choose to escalate by attacking Iran itself?
Now that Iran has attacked Israel as it has promised to do, it will want to avoid a wider war, officials and analysts say, noting that the Iranians have targeted only military sites in an apparent effort to avoid civilian casualties and advertise their attack in advance. .
“The Iranian government seems to have decided that the strike on Damascus is a strategic turning point, where failure to retaliate will bring more downsides than benefits,” said Ali Vaez, Iran’s director of International Crisis Group. “But in doing so, the shadow of the war it has waged with Israel for years threatens to become a real and very damaging conflict,” one that could drag the United States down, he said.
“The Iranians have so far played their card,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House. “They decided to call Israel’s bluff, and they felt they had to do that, because they see the last six months as an ongoing effort to bring them back to the whole region.”
On Sunday, Iranian leaders said the military operation against Israel was over, but warned they could launch a larger one depending on Israel’s response.
Brig said. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, Iran’s top military official, said the “operation has yielded complete results” and “there is no intention to continue it.” But, he added, if Israel attacked Iran on its own soil, or elsewhere, “our next operation will be much bigger than this one.”
For many years, Iran took one blow after another from Israel: assassinations of its nuclear scientists and military commanders, explosions at its nuclear and military bases, cyberattacks, intelligence infiltration, a shameful theft of nuclear documents and recent attacks on its critical infrastructure.
But since the October 7 Hamas-led attack prompted Israel to go to war in Gaza, Israel has intensified its attack on Iran’s interests and commanders in Syria. In a series of strikes from December onward, Israel killed at least 18 Iranian commanders and military personnel from the Quds Force, the elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that operates outside Iran’s borders, Iranian officials said. media.
The Iranian government has been criticized by hard-liners for its cautious posture during the Gaza war.
On this weekend’s attacks, Ms. Vakil: “I think Tehran saw the need to draw this red line and make it clear to Israel that Iran has red lines and will not continue to tolerate the slow erosion of its position.”
Tehran felt it had to respond, even as its attack prompted strong American support and widespread Western diplomatic support for Israel, taking some of the heat off Israel in its war on Gaza, at least temporarily, and isolate Iran again.
Today, Ms. Vakil, the two sides are in a standoff where both are ready for progress despite knowing that it will cause great harm to themselves.
At the same time, the old equation changed, with Israel and Iran hitting each other directly, on each other’s territory, and not through Iranian proxies abroad.
Israel’s strike on Iran’s Embassy compound in Damascus, followed by Iran’s direct strike on Israel, represents a dangerous new chapter in the long, sometimes hidden war between Israel and Iran, which it says it wants out of Israel on the map. Sometimes known as “the shadow of war,” the conflict has been fought mainly between Israel and Iran’s allies and proxies — in Gaza, southern Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.
Both sides say they are acting in national self-defense — Israel against groups committed to its destruction, with Iran as their main ally and controller, and Iran against any potential Israeli war against it, often in the name of Palestinians.
Iran increasingly refers to its rapidly expanding nuclear program, which has enriched uranium to near weapons-grade levels, as a deterrent against Israel, while at the same time denying that it has any intention of developing a nuclear weapon. But Iran is increasingly regarded by experts as a nuclear-threshold state, capable of producing weapons-grade nuclear material within weeks and a crude nuclear weapon within a year or so.
Iran is also going through a slow and complicated transition as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader and commander-in-chief, is said to be ill and faces an uprising within 2022, led by women, who request an end to clerical rule.
Mr. Khamenei himself ordered the strikes on Israel from inside Iran to send a clear message that Iran is moving from “strategic patience” to a more active deterrence, according to four U.S. officials. Iran, two of them are members of the Revolutionary Guards. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
“The Iranian operation has a clear message to Israel and its allies that the rules of the game have changed and from now on, if Israel hits any Iranian target or kills any Iranian, we are ready to strike in a big way and from our own soil,” said Nasser Imani, a prominent Tehran-based analyst close to the government, in a telephone interview. “The days of covert operations and patience are over .”
Iran also wants to seize what it sees as a “golden opportunity” to retaliate on this scale, since Israel is widely criticized in Gaza, including by its main allies, such as the United States, Mr. Imani said.
Iran’s reach for regional hegemony, enhanced by its proxies and its nuclear capabilities, has antagonized the region’s traditional Sunni Arab governments, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf states. The Islamic Revolution that overthrew the monarchy in 1979 was initially aimed at a regional revolution, to overthrow these governments, most of them monarchies or military dictatorships, so Israel’s efforts to limit the power of Iran, a non-Arab Shiite country, has had tacit support from Arab countries, including Israel’s war against Hamas.
Now the risks of regional escalation have increased significantly. Iran has been careful during the Gaza war to prevent its proxies surrounding Israel against major strikes, and to avoid major Israeli retaliation against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in particular. Hezbollah, with thousands of rockets aimed at Israel, is considered a major obstacle preventing Israel from directly attacking Iran and especially its nuclear and missile programs.
Because of Iran’s new isolation after this attack, Israel should not respond, said Bruno Tertrais, the deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in France. “But a threshold has been crossed,” he said. And the threshold for “a massive Israeli attack on Iranian territory,” he continued, “always an extreme option for Israel regardless of what commentators say — is now being lowered.”
Mr. Netanyahu, who has warned of the threat from Iran for two decades and faces intense pressure to respond from within his shaky far-right coalition, may choose to retaliate with greater force, either with Iran directly or to Hezbollah. But Washington, which was not warned about the attack on Damascus, is likely to insist on the preliminary consultation now.
But the modest results of Iran’s attacks “may reinforce an Israeli perception that Tehran is on the back foot, lacking the strength and capacity for deeper engagement, and now is the moment for Israel to deal a long-sought deeper blow to Iran and its regional proxies,” said Julien Barnes-Dacey, the Middle East and North Africa director for the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Israel’s challenge has always been “to block the main thrust of the attack while still leaving an opening that would allow the Iranians to say they achieved their goal,” wrote Nahum Barnea, a commentator for Yedioth Ahronoth, an everyday Israeli. The danger is from two extremes, he continued: “A very successful Iranian operation is liable to end up in a regional war; a very failed Iranian operation will invite another Iranian operation.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations suggested in a statement on social media on Saturday that if Israel did not respond, Iran would stand down.
“The matter can be considered over. However, if the Israeli regime makes a mistake, Iran’s response will be more severe,” said the statement. It also warned that “The US must stay away!”
Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting from Leuven, Belgium.
