Iran’s frightening new playbook for war
THE SUBURBS south of Beirut are emptying as residents flee to the mountains. Airlines are cancelling flights to Beirut, Tehran and Tel Aviv. Civilians in Lebanon are filling their cars with petrol; stressed-out Israelis are ordering more fast food. The Middle East has been on tenterhooks for more than a week, awaiting the latest escalation in ten months of fighting between Israel, Iran and its militant allies. As The Economist went to press, that escalation had yet to happen—but much of the region expects it will in the coming days.
It has seemed inevitable since July 30th, when Israel bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs and killed Fuad Shukr, a top commander in Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shia militia. That was in response to a rocket fired from Lebanon on July 27th, which killed 12 children on a football pitch in the Golan Heights. A few hours later Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, while he was visiting Tehran. Both Hizbullah and Iran have vowed to retaliate. If they do, their attacks will probably be co-ordinated, and may involve other Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, Syria or Yemen.
For years, analysts focused on Iran had two core assumptions: that it wanted to fight Israel through proxies, rather than directly, and that it wanted to keep the conflict below the threshold of all-out war. Both assumptions look increasingly fragile. Iran launched a barrage of more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel in April, after an Israeli air strike killed two generals at Iran’s embassy compound in Damascus. It spent the first week of August contemplating whether to do so again. The taboo against direct conflict seems broken.
And Iran’s recent rhetoric has suggested a new appetite for risk-taking. In meetings with their Arab counterparts, Iranian diplomats have been uncompromising, promising to retaliate harshly against Israel even if it plunges the region into all-out war. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah, struck a similar tone in a speech on August 6th. He vowed to avenge Shukr’s death “whatever the consequences”.
If Iran and its proxies sound more willing to gamble, it is because Israel has grown less restrained, too. Since October 7th, when Hamas fighters massacred more than 1,200 Israelis and started an ever-widening war, Israel has carried out a spree of assassinations. It has struck Iranian officers in Syria and Lebanon, commanders of Hizbullah’s elite Radwan force in south Lebanon, and much of the top Hamas leadership in Gaza, Beirut and Tehran.
Though assassination is hardly a new tactic for Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, had been reluctant to order high-level hits during his many years in office. But that caution has seemingly evaporated since October 7th. From Israel’s perspective, Hamas has already done its worst and Hizbullah and other Iranian-backed groups have joined the fight. No need to fear that assassinations might cause a regional escalation: it is already here.
Add to that Mr Netanyahu’s personal and political calculations. Israelis are eager to avenge October 7th, and the assassinations are another way for the prime minister to try to revive his plummeting popularity. For Israel’s security chiefs, meanwhile, such killings are an opportunity to prove they have not lost their touch.
The strike on the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus forced Iran to respond. Its attack in April caused little damage. Most of the projectiles were shot down by an ad hoc coalition of Western and Arab armies, or by Israel’s air defences. But physical damage was, at best, a secondary goal of the strike. Iran’s main objective was to lay down a marker: any attack on its territory would be answered in kind.
Israel ignored that marker. To be sure, there are differences between the killing of Haniyeh and the embassy strike in Damascus. Though Haniyeh was killed on Iranian soil, he was not Iranian. Israel did not take responsibility for either attack, but the method of Haniyeh’s assassination—which seems to have been a bomb smuggled into his guesthouse—has muddied the waters. Israeli officials hope this will allow Iran to avoid a dramatic reprisal.
But Iran seems bent on one. If it holds back, it will concede that it cannot deter Israel. Yet as it weighs a direct response, it is confronting an awkward reality. Its reliance on proxies was not only a way to keep conflict away from its borders, but also to mask the weakness of its conventional forces. Even if Iranian diplomats threaten an all-out war with Israel, the Iranian armed forces cannot wage one.
Though Iran has more than 3,000 ballistic missiles in its arsenal, not all of them have the range to reach Israel (see map). Its liquid-fuelled missiles, like the Emad used against Israel in April, need hours to fuel and prepare for launch—time an adversary can use to target the launchers.
Iran also has thousands of cruise missiles and drones with the range to reach Israel. But they need hours to cover the more than 1,000km between the two countries, giving Israel ample warning. That distance also means any sort of ground offensive is out of the question. Geography matters. Iran is too far away to bring overwhelming force to bear against Israel.
Proxy fright
Some of its proxies face a similar problem. The Houthis in Yemen managed to kill an Israeli civilian in July using a long-range drone that slipped through Israel’s air defences. But most of the more than 200 missiles and drones they have fired at Israel have been swatted away.
Even in a new era of direct conflict with Israel, Iran must rely on Hizbullah, its most powerful proxy. Yet to unleash the Lebanese militia now would carry a dual risk. It would prompt a heavy Israeli bombardment—and possibly an invasion—of Lebanon. Israel cannot destroy Hizbullah, which has deep roots in Lebanese society, its economy and political system. But it can damage the military capabilities that Iran has spent decades building up.
The bigger concern, though, is that Israel might not stop at hitting Lebanon. When it bombed the port of Hodeidah in Yemen on July 20th, in retaliation for the deadly Houthi drone attack, Israel was trying not only to deter the Houthis. It was also sending a message to Iran: Hodeidah, after all, is farther away from Israel than most of Iran’s big cities.
Iranian strategists might wonder, in hindsight, if they erred in April. The barrage they fired at Israel did not create deterrence. Instead it may have locked them into escalating the war yet again—at great risk to their proxies, and to themselves. ■
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