In Iran, Israeli Attacks Create the Ultimate Dilemma
Tehran’s 40-year-old national security policy has run its course.
By: Kamran Bokhari
Israel attacked Iran last Friday in a large-scale air assault that struck targets across the country.
The implications of the attack – long-feared by Tehran – are many.
Israel showcased its ability and willingness to hit Iran proper, while Iran demonstrated the fecklessness of its air defenses.
With the destruction of Hezbollah, Iran’s most important regional proxy, the attack dealt a major blow to Iran’s ability to project power in the Middle East.
And, crucially, it has done all of this amid an important political transition within the Iranian government.
The reaction of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s octogenarian supreme leader, was telling.
He appeared to delegate responsibility to “our officials,” who he said should be the ones to properly assess what needed to be done and “whatever is in the best interests” of the country.
This comes after he reportedly called on state officials to neither downplay nor exaggerate the significance of the Israeli strike, even as various officials and news agencies tried to dismiss its importance.
His comments show that the government was, indeed, shaken by the attack and for several reasons.
First, the attack was unprecedented.
Some even doubted Israel’s ability to carry it out.
Second, it involved nearly a hundred aircraft and required mid-air refueling capability at a scale that Israel’s air force had never before shown.
Third, most of the aircraft remained within Iraqi airspace, using stand-off munitions to strike at military targets in four different provinces.
Fourth and most important, the strikes took out Iran’s air defense systems, including the Russian-supplied S-300 system, and attacked ballistic missile production facilities.
Though the exact extent of the damage remains unclear, Israel appears to have degraded Iran’s ability to strike back on its own territory and defend itself against another round of airstrikes.
Iran, then, now faces a dilemma: If it retaliates against this most recent strike, Israel’s next response could be worse.
Future ones will likely be more lethal and more destructive and will probably go after higher-value targets such as oil facilities, transportation infrastructure and perhaps even nuclear sites.
This explains why the supreme leader did not simply order counterstrikes as he did after earlier Israeli attacks.
He and his regime have been forced into a situation in which any additional attacks on Israel could further expose their weaknesses.
Tehran was already in an impossible situation after Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah’s death: It knew that unlike the April 19 Israeli counterattack, which was relatively tame, this time Israel would respond with much more force.
But it was not an option to ignore the killing of Nasrallah and the degradation of his group.
Tehran could not afford to be seen as having stood by when Hezbollah was being pummeled; doing so would undermine its credibility among its Iraqi, Syrian and Yemeni proxies, which would question Iran’s commitment to their cause if it did not come to the aid of its crown jewel in Lebanon.
Thus, Tehran decided to proceed with the Oct. 1 barrage of Israel.
For nearly a generation, Iran has bet that the proximity and potency of Hezbollah would deter any Israeli attack on its home turf.
This assumed that Israel lacked the ability and/or the will to mount a crippling attack on Hezbollah.
But as Hezbollah struggled to defend itself against Israel’s onslaught, Tehran knew the calculus no longer held.
And now after last Friday’s airstrikes, Iran is much worse off knowing that Israel has the ability to hit it directly.
It’s not in Iran’s interest to let this become the status quo.
But to keep that from happening, it has to halt further hostile actions against Israel.
This means Tehran has to cut its losses and accept that Israel will continue to weaken Hezbollah.
The Iranian strategy is now one of trying to salvage its proxy network and, by extension, its regional position.
Importantly, this isn’t just a loss for Iran on the foreign policy front.
It will have domestic implications for a country that is on the cusp of a historic political transition.
The country’s 40-year-old national security policy has run its course.
It’s now a liability.
The major stakeholders of the regime – the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the regular armed forces, or the Artesh, both of which have eclipsed the clergy as the political establishment’s center of gravity – understand as much and will need to determine how aggressive their foreign policy can actually be.
The conundrum that Tehran faces is that it cannot simply alter course.
The regime is bitterly divided from within between the more ideological elements and the pragmatists.
Any abrupt change on the foreign policy front can lead to serious infighting at home and at a time when public support for the regime is at its lowest.
How the Islamic Republic deals with itself is about to become far more critical now that its power projection capabilities have taken a serious hit.
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