Iran’s barrage of missiles against Israel may have inflicted minimal military damage on its regional foe, but analysts say that Tehran saw it as a critical move to shore up regional support — and a signal to Western powers that without quick diplomatic pressure the conflict could spiral even further.
Israel, encouraged by the decapitation of the leadership of Iran’s most powerful regional ally, Hezbollah, and its assassinations of Iranian allies across the region, is unlikely to be deterred after Iran’s overnight strike, in which the majority of more than 180 ballistic missiles were shot down by Israeli air defenses with the help of the U.S. military.
Citing what it said were Western promises of renewed diplomacy to end the conflict, Iran had largely stayed restrained in the face of the July assassination in Tehran of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, and as Israel intensified the fight against Hezbollah over recent weeks, culminating with the killing of the group’s leader and a ground invasion in Lebanon.
But with no diplomatic solutions in sight, Iran found itself facing an inversion of its regional strategy: It had built the partnerships of its “Axis of Resistance” — with groups in Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere — on the theory that they could fight on its behalf, avoiding a direct and more dangerous confrontation with Israel. Instead, it was Iran that had to strike.
Iran’s success in crafting an alliance across the region was ironically helped on by the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003, as its yearslong occupation spurred the formation of many Shiite Muslim militias, with support from the regional Shiite power, Iran. These militias helped Iran forge a chain of alliances across the region, linking it geographically with its most important and powerful ally, Hezbollah, in Lebanon.
Their potency seemed to culminate with Iran’s success, thanks largely to Hezbollah’s forces, in helping Syria crush a rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad. In more recent years, Hezbollah and Iran began fostering ties with another militant group in Yemen, the Houthis, offering it more leverage against its longtime regional Gulf rival, Saudi Arabia, with whom it has now established diplomatic relations. But now, under heavy pressure from Israeli attacks, Iran fears that network is at risk of unraveling.
Even facing the risk of blows from Israel that could threaten their power at home, Iran’s leaders have worried that the cost of inaction was higher: If Iran did not retaliate for Israel’s assassination last week of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, perhaps the most influential figure in its network, unease could spread among its partners.
“The strategic advantage at this point is that it maintains the loyalty of these groups across the region, and therefore maintains its influence,” said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital.
That could prove useful in a war that drags on and offers more openings to Israel’s weakened enemies.
The Houthis in Yemen or the Shiite militias in Iraq have been relatively unsuccessful at striking major blows with missiles inside Israel, despite repeated efforts, but there are other levers they have not pulled. Iraqi militias, for example, could inflict damage on U.S. military bases inside Iraq. And Iran could gain support from U.S. rivals like China or Russia in a bid to make the regional chaos more costly for Washington, Israel’s most important ally, though it remains far from clear that they would do so.
But, though the situation has recently looked dire for Iran’s allies, in particular Hezbollah, many analysts predict the dynamic could change if Israel were to push forward with what it has called limited ground operations in Lebanon. Ms. Yahya called that possibility a “favor to Hezbollah,” whose roots in guerrilla warfare could make a troop presence costlier for Israel than attacks by air.
Reports from southern Lebanon underline such claims, with Israel announcing the deaths of eight of its soldiers by Wednesday.
“Israel cannot kill the octopus — they won’t be able to eradicate it,” said Kassem Kassir, a Lebanese expert on Hezbollah who is close to the group. “The fight will continue.”
Some experts see Iran’s latest attack more as a message than an attempt to inflict serious damage, though it did manage to strike an Israeli air base and near the headquarters of its intelligence services, the Mossad. At the same time, Iranian officials said they had informed Switzerland, a country they often rely on as an intermediary, when they launched their attack, allowing for some advance warning.
A similar attempt, however, failed at restoring deterrence in April, when Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel in retaliation for a strike on its embassy in Damascus — an attack it telegraphed well in advance, in what was seen as attempt to avoid causing so much damage that escalation was inevitable.
Iranian leaders said they refrained for months from a second attack on the back of promises and gestures from the United States and Europe that Iran’s restraint would enable a cease-fire in Lebanon and Gaza, experts said, as well potentially restarting negotiations on a nuclear deal.
They now feel such overtures were “entirely false,” as Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said this week.
“The view in Iran is that the West is, at best, unwilling to restrain Israel, and at worst, has a direct hand in the escalation,” said Mohammed Shabani, an Iran analyst and editor at the independent news site Amwaj.media. “The latest Iranian operation against Israel, therefore, certainly is accompanied by a message that Biden should act to draw a line under things.”
And with officials in Israel, and Republicans in Congress, calling this a moment to go after Iran, experts say the leadership in Tehran may see few reasons not to rapidly pursue nuclear weapons.
Deterrence or no, Iran and its allies may feel there is now little left to lose, said Ms. Yahya.
“There have been increasing noises from different policymakers saying ‘regime change, new order in the Middle East’ — this is the language we heard in 2003 when the United States invaded Iraq,” she said. “And we can see the disaster that ended up in.”
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