The Middle East braces for war as Iran weighs its response to Israel
FOR A FEW hours over the weekend Israelis could enjoy an illusion of normalcy, as they watched their athletes in the Paris Olympics win three medals in a single day. Then they went back to scanning the headlines, as more foreign airlines cancelled flights to the country for fear of imminent conflict between Israel and Iran.
It seems all but inevitable that Iran will respond to a pair of Israeli assassinations carried out last month. On the night of July 30th an Israeli strike in Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, a senior commander of Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shia militia and political party. A few hours later another strike assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group.
Haniyeh was killed in a government guest house in Tehran, just hours after he attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president. That makes his killing impossible for Iran to ignore. In April, after Israel assassinated an Iranian general in an air strike on his country’s embassy compound in Damascus, Iran responded with a salvo of over 300 missiles and drones. After decades of using proxy militias to harass Israel, Iran set a new precedent: a direct attack on its territory would be answered in kind.
How it will answer, however, is impossible to predict. The first question is timing. In April it took Iran two weeks to retaliate. It wants to keep the Israelis on edge yet does not want to be seen as dithering. Another question is whether Iran will target only Israeli military bases, as it did in April, or attempt to hit a civilian target.
Then there is what Israeli intelligence analysts call “the blend”. Will the attack come solely from Iran, or will Hizbullah and perhaps other members of Iran’s Shia coalition, such as the Houthis in Yemen, fire as well? Since October Israel has taken fire from all directions, but Iran’s proxies have yet to unleash their full arsenals. Hizbullah, for example, has used mainly short-range rockets in its near-daily attacks on Israel. It could launch some of its larger missiles to avenge Shukr.
America has considerable forces in the region, including an aircraft-carrier strike group in the Persian Gulf and a marine expeditionary unit in the eastern Mediterranean. A squadron of F-22 stealth fighters is being rushed in; General Michael Kurilla, the head of America’s central command, has also arrived in the region. As it did in April, America is working with its Western and Arab allies to set up a defensive screen. Together with Israel’s own missile-defence capabilities, they hope to intercept most of the Iranian projectiles. Indeed, Iran itself may be waiting for this screen to be in place: that would allow them to retaliate against Israel but contain the potential fallout.
Iran and Hizbullah are not looking for all-out war. August 4th is the anniversary of the devastating explosion at Beirut’s port in 2020, which killed more than 200 people and wrecked much of the city centre. The blast was caused by a stockpile of ammonium nitrate at the port, and many Lebanese suspect Hizbullah had a hand in storing it there. The group is wary of inviting more destruction on the city.
There are voices calling for moderation in Tehran as well. Yousef Pezeshkian, son of the newly inaugurated president, wrote on his website that war with Israel is not a priority for Iran; rather, it should wage war on “poverty, corruption, discrimination, inequality and wasteful political factions”.
Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, and the hardline circle around him are unlikely to heed his call. But they will be aware that provoking further Israeli attacks, the next time perhaps on critical infrastructure, will not endear the regime to a population already suffering from frequent power cuts and water shortages. “The regime has to respond to a direct attack on Tehran,” says Raz Zimmt, an Iran watcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “But they fear they can’t rely on domestic support for an all-out war with Israel.”
The regime is also jittery about threats from within. Details of the explosion that killed Mr Haniyeh are murky, and Tehran is full of rumours about suspected collaborators. Iran has detained dozens of people for interrogation, among them senior intelligence officials. Mistrust within the security services will complicate their decision-making about a strike on Israel.
Israel will rely on the American-led coalition to help it fend off any barrage. If missiles do get through this time and cause major damage, they would force Israel to launch its own retaliatory strikes. Many Western governments have already called for their nationals to leave Lebanon (which is hard to do, since many airlines are cancelling flights there too). But America’s willingness to stand beside Israel is fraying.
The key to ending the spiralling violence in the region remains a ceasefire in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed since October. Israeli and American negotiators believe that a framework for such a ceasefire exists: first a temporary truce, and then a more lasting one. In a tense phone call on August 1st, President Joe Biden accused Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, of not being serious about a deal. “Stop bullshitting me,” Mr Biden said, according to a report on Israel’s Channel 12.
Mr Netanyahu has told the Americans he supports the deal. But he has also repeatedly added new conditions to gum up the talks and told far-right coalition partners that he will not agree to end the war before “total victory”. Israel’s generals and spy chiefs are in consensus over the need for a ceasefire; they have held their own tense meetings with the prime minister in recent days.
The assassination of Haniyeh will delay any ceasefire talks until Hamas can appoint a new interim leader. The obvious candidate is Khaled Meshaal, Haniyeh’s predecessor. But he is estranged from Hamas’s Iranian patrons; he is also an opponent of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, who will have the final say over any deal. With talks at an impasse until both Israel and Hamas can get their affairs in order, the chances of a much wider war continue to increase. ■