Iran’s unprecedented strikes on Israel this weekend have shaken Israel’s assumptions about its adversary, undermining its long-held calculation that Iran can best be deterred by a wider Israeli offensive.
For years, Israeli officials have argued, both publicly and privately, that the harder Iran is hit, the more cautious it will be about fighting. Iran’s barrage of more than 300 drones and missiles on Saturday — Iran’s first direct attack on Israel — turned that logic upside down.
The attack was in response to last month’s Israeli strike on Syria that killed seven Iranian military officers there. Analysts said it showed that the leaders in Tehran are no longer content to fight Israel through their various proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Houthis in Yemen, but are instead ready to face the Israel directly.
“I think we made a mistake,” said Sima Shine, a former head of research for the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency.
“Israel’s accumulated experience is that Iran does not have a good way to retaliate,” added Ms. Shine. “They feel strongly that they don’t want to be involved in the war.”
Instead, Iran has created “a completely new paradigm,” Ms. Shine.
Iran’s response ultimately caused little damage to Israel, in large part because Iran telegraphed its intentions in advance, giving Israel and its allies several days to prepare a strong defense. Iran also issued a statement, even before the attack, that it no longer plans to strike Israel.
However, the Iranian strikes have become a direct confrontation of the year-long shadow war between Israel and Iran — albeit one that may yet be contained, depending on how Israel responds. Iran has shown that it has considerable firepower that can only be negated by intensive support from Israel’s allies, such as the United States, underscoring how much damage it could potentially cause without such protection.
Iran and Israel once had a more murky relationship, with Israel even selling weapons to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. But their relationship broke down later after that war; Iranian leaders have been increasingly critical of Israel’s rapprochement with the Palestinians, and Israel has been wary of Iran’s efforts to develop a nuclear program and its increasing support for Hezbollah.
For more than a decade, the two countries have quietly targeted each other’s interests across the region, while rarely announcing any individual actions.
Iran has supported Hamas and funded and armed other regional militias fighting Israel, some of which have been involved in a low-level conflict with Israel since the deadly October 7 Hamas attack. Similarly, Israel regularly targets those proxies, as well as assassinated Iranian officials, including on Iranian soil, killings for which it avoids taking formal responsibility.
Both countries have targeted merchant ships with links to their adversaries, as well as conducted cyberattacks on each other, and Israel has repeatedly sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program.
Now, that war is in the open. And in large part, it was due to what some analysts see as a miscalculation by Israel on April 1, when Israeli strikes destroyed part of an Iranian embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, one of the closest which is an ally and proxy of Iran, which killed seven Iranian military officers. , including three top commanders.
The attack followed repeated suggestions from Israeli leaders that greater pressure on Iran would encourage Tehran to scale back its ambitions across the Middle East. “The increased pressure placed on Iran is critical,” Yoava Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, said in January, “and could prevent regional escalation in additional arenas.”
Instead, the attack on Damascus led directly to Iran’s first attack on Israeli sovereign territory.
Israel may have misunderstood Iran’s position because of Iran’s lack of response to earlier Israeli assassinations of senior Iranian officials, analysts said.
Although Israeli leaders have long feared that Iran would one day build and fire nuclear missiles at Israel, they have become accustomed to targeting Iranian officials without direct retaliation from Tehran.
In one of the most brazen attacks, Israel killed Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in 2020 on Iranian soil. As recently as December, Israel was accused of killing a top Iranian general, Sayyed Razi Mousavi, in a strike in Syria, where Iranian military officials were advising and supporting the Syrian government. Those and several other assassinations did not prompt retaliatory Iranian strikes on Israel.
Iran’s decision to respond this time was partly motivated by anger in some circles of Iranian society at Iran’s past passivity, according to Ali Vaez, an Iran analyst.
“The level of bottom-up pressure I’ve seen on the regime in the last 10 days, I’ve never seen,” said Mr. Vaez, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research group.
Iran also needs to show proxies like Hezbollah that it can stand up for itself, Mr. Vaez added. “To show that Iran is too afraid to retaliate against such a brazen attack on its own diplomatic facility in Damascus would be very damaging for Iran’s relations and the credibility of the Iranians in the eyes of their regional partners ,” he said.
For some analysts, Israel’s strike on Damascus may prove to be a smaller miscalculation than it first appeared. Iran’s aerial assault has already distracted from the uncertainty of Israel’s war against Hamas, and reaffirmed Israel’s ties to Western and Arab allies that have been increasingly critical of Israel’s behavior in Gaza.
The fact that Iran gave Israel so much time to prepare for the attack may indicate that Tehran remains relatively deterred, seeking to create only the optics of a major response while trying to avoid a significant escalation, said Michael Koplow, an Israel analyst at the Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based research group.
“For me, the jury is out,” said Mr. Koplow.
“The question is whether it was intended to be something that would really damage Israel, or whether it was supposed to be something that they seemed to be responding to forcefully, but really indicated that they weren’t,” Mr. Koplow added.
But for others, it is clear. Aaron David Miller, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based research group, said Israel has now made two major strategic mistakes in less than a year: Before October 7, the Israeli officials have publicly — and wrongly — concluded that Hamas has been prevented from attacking Israel.
Hamas then launched the deadliest attack in Israeli history.
“When it comes to conceptions, Israel is batting 0 for 2,” said Mr. Miller. “They failed to read Hamas’ capacity and motivation correctly on October 7 and clearly misjudged how Iran would respond to the April 1 hit.”
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.
