After years of vowing to destroy Israel, Iran faces a dilemma

For more than forty years, Iran’s rulers have promised to destroy Israel. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rarely appears in public without wearing a black-and-white checkered Palestinian kaffiyeh.

Iranian military commanders welcome training and arming groups in the region that are enemies of Israel, including Hezbollah and Hamas. And when Hamas carried out the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7 that killed 1,400 people, Iranian officials praised it as a momentous achievement, disrupting the Jewish state’s sense of security.

Now Iran faces a dilemma, weighing how the country and its proxy militias – known as the Axis of Resistance – should respond to Israel’s invasion of Gaza and the killing of thousands of Palestinians, and whether it should bolster its revolutionary credentials at the risk of sparking a wider battle. regional war.

“There is no need for Iran to get directly involved in the war and attack Israel itself because the country has a resistance axis militia that follows Iran’s policies and strategies and acts on its behalf,” said Nasser Imani, an analyst who is close to the government. a telephone interview from Tehran. “Right now, Iran is in control mode – it’s telling all of them, including Hezbollah, to keep things on the boil but show restraint.”

For now, Iranian officials have publicly stated that they do not want a full-scale war.

“I want to reiterate that we are not pursuing the spread of this war,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said in a recent interview during Iran’s mission to the United Nations. He was in New York to attend UN meetings related to the war. But he added: “The region is at a boiling point and could explode at any moment, and this may be inevitable. When this happens, all parties lose control.”

He warned that regional militias in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria could open multiple fronts against Israel, with a high potential “that the result will be that things will not go the way the Israeli regime wants.” He did not elaborate on what would drive the groups, which he said act independently.

Still, Iran does not want a regional war that would pose risks to the nation and its religious rulers, according to three Iranians linked to the government and familiar with internal deliberations who insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues. The military capabilities of its allies could be significantly reduced by a prolonged battle with Israel, and even more so if the US military enters the fray.

The Islamic Republic views the militias as its extended weapons of influence, capable of striking while providing Tehran with a degree of deniability. They give Iran influence in international negotiations and a means to tilt the balance of power in the Middle East away from arch-enemies like Israel and the United States, and rivals like Saudi Arabia.

But if Iran does nothing, its fiery leaders risk losing the credibility of their voters and allies. Some Iranian hardline conservatives have wondered why Iran’s actions do not match the rhetoric of “liberating Al Quds,” or Jerusalem, from Israeli rule. Many supporters of the Iranian government have even symbolically signed up as volunteers to be deployed to Gaza and fight against Israel.

“In the first scenario, Iran risks losing an arm; in the second scenario, Iran risks losing face,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran director of the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention research and advocacy group. “Iran could try to close this loop by allowing its allies to escalate their attacks on Israel and the US in a calibrated manner.”

Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi militia in Yemen have launched recent attacks on Israel, but their scope has been limited. The goal for now is not all-out war but to keep pressure on the Israeli military, potentially limiting Israel’s ability to wage war against Hamas, the people familiar with Iran’s strategy said.

Hezbollah, one of Iran’s closest and most powerful allies, and Israel have exchanged artillery and small arms many times since October 7, but have limited their attacks to border areas. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, is expected to make his first public comments since the war began on Friday. Observers expect this will set the tone for what the group does next.

“We have said from the beginning that we are present in this war,” Hashem Safieddine, head of Hezbollah’s executive council, told Iranian media on Tuesday. Hezbollah will not discuss its plans, he added, because “we will act when necessary, we do not talk.”

The Houthis have also indicated their involvement. launching missiles and drones – including a barrage on Tuesday – that American and Israeli forces shot down.

“There is total coordination at every level between all heads of the resistance axis,” Houthi spokesman Mohammed al-Bukhaiti told Iranian media on Tuesday.

Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to General Mohammad Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said in a Telegram post that regional militants were deliberately calculated. “In practice, other fronts have already been opened, but the scale of attacks is being controlled,” Mr Mohammadi said.

Iranian-backed militant groups in Iraq and Syria have stepped up attacks on US military bases in both countries after a period of calm. Tehran wants to pressure the Biden administration to rein in Israel, or at least create the appearance that the United States is paying a price for its staunch support of Israel.

Retaliation, US forces bombed facilities in Syria last Thursday, the Pentagon said they were outposts of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Mr Amir Abdollahian called the US strikes ‘for show’.

Mr Imani, the Tehran analyst, said there is no doubt that Iran has helped finance, train and arm the militants, and provided technological know-how to build up their own arsenal of drones and missiles – especially in Gaza and Yemen, where blockades make it virtually impossible to deliver heavy weaponry.

The Iranians familiar with government deliberations say Iran and Hezbollah are monitoring whether Hamas faces a serious existential threat from Israel, which would prompt them to accelerate attacks on Israel. Senior commanders of Iran’s Quds Force and Hezbollah believe that if Israel succeeds in eradicating Hamas, it will come for them, the Iranians said. Quds Force commander General Esmail Ghaani has been in Beirut for most of the past three weeks, the Iranians said.

The deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Brig. General Ali Fadavi said in a speech at a ceremony in support of Gaza on October 22 that “Iran will fire rockets towards Haifa if necessary,” according to Iranian media. He said Iran has helped transform the military capabilities of Palestinian groups from “rocks and arrows” to “drones and missiles.”

The risk of war spreading has increased alarmed the United States and Israel. The Biden administration publicly warned Iran and its allies against expanding the conflict, indicated it is not seeking war with Iran and urged Tehran to restrain its allies.

Mr. Amir Abdollahian confirmed that Iran and the United States exchanged messages. “We have told Americans clearly that when you fully support the Zionist regime during a war, America is not in a position to tell others to restrain themselves,” he said.

But the risk remains high for all parties that miscalculations will occur that could cause the conflict to get out of hand.

“In addition to what Tehran can control, there is also the dangerous possibility that some of its regional partners with looser ties, or a track record of ignoring Iranian advice, may engage in uncoordinated action that presents Tehran with a fait accompli,” he said. Mr. Vaez. “For nearly four decades, Iran’s defense policy has protected its own territory from foreign attacks. The conflict in Gaza is testing the limits of that policy in an unprecedented way.”