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October 1, 2024 - 7:15pm
Iran has launched a significant ballistic missile attack on Israel in response to Israel’s recent killing of Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran back in July.
An Iranian attack was always likely. Iran would have perceived a need to restore deterrence amid the devastating losses that Hezbollah has suffered in recent days. The scale and, in terms of the pager-walkie talkie attacks, very publicly embarrassing nature of these attacks would have caused Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to view the credibility of Iran’s theocratic project as jeopardised. The initiative wasn’t simply with Israel; Iran looked impotent and humbled. Khamenei needed to respond in order to show both his regional partners and adversaries that his regime has the resolve and capacity to respond.
Still, the scale of Iran’s attack is significant. Undue attention has been drawn here to Iran’s apparent warning to the United States that a missile onslaught was coming. The intent was to give the US time to tell Israel to prepare its citizens to take shelter. Instead, what matters most here is how Israel will perceive Iran’s attack. Because Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government will likely perceive this strike as highly problematic.
While Israel downed a large number of Iranian ballistic missiles, a large number penetrated the defensive effort. It’s not clear how many Israelis have been killed or injured, but that’s only one consideration that will shape Israel’s response. What matters is that major Israeli population centres have suffered a non-insignificant number of impacts by Iranian ballistic missiles. That reality will be seen as having undermined Israel’s deterrence posture against its arch nemesis.
Israel will want to restore deterrence in order to ensure Iran does not believe it can replicate this action without major cost. This point takes on additional importance in regards to Iran’s future prospective threat to use ballistic missiles loaded with nuclear or chemical/biological warheads. The psychological trauma of the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks still loom large in the Israeli civilian and security apparatus psyche. Israel wants to show it is both powerful and bold.
It’s also important to note that Netanyahu clearly senses the political and strategic wind is at his back. And because Netanyahu’s relationship with President Biden is already on life support, Netanyahu might feel that he has a window before the next US president takes office. While Israel lacks the ability to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme, for example, it could do significant damage to that programme. At a minimum, we will see significant Israeli strikes on IRGC and Iranian conventional forces. This will almost certainly include strikes on Tehran. Israeli strikes against Iranian refining capabilities may also occur.
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SubscribeDon’t underestimate Biden’s resolve to return to the beach.
Jim, I always look forward to your comments!
The Obama/Biden policy in the Middle East has been an unmitigated disaster.
It’s ironic that Trump probably did more than either to promote real peace in the region.
highly problematic
Highly problematic? I don’t think that is at all what they will be thinking.
I thought that. Woke terminology gets everywhere.
I am confident that Iran and Hezbollah will be successful in their policy “escalate to deescalate”.
After all, that is what Israel and the US are saying is the right way to approach the situation.
What could possibly go wrong?
I am somewhat worried about Israel in the long-term future – the Israelis have so many enemies, and are so reliant on the US for support, that I suspect they’ll struggle to survive once the older generations of Americans age out and are replaced by my own (27M) generation, which is much more pro-Palestine.
That said, I don’t think there’s much reason to worry about an immediate total war in the Middle East, the present crisis notwithstanding. Israel and Iran are just too far apart to deal serious damage to each others’ homelands, and attacks like the current one have to go through weak buffer states where Israel has any easy time shooting down the missiles (likewise, the supply lines to the Houthis and Hezbollah go through weak buffer states). And modern military technology is much more tilted in favor of the defender than it was during the last really big war.
I’ve written on these themes before on my own site:
https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/why-im-still-not-worried-about-world
The gist of it is that changes in geography, demographics, and weapons technology over the last 80 years have made it much less likely for regional conflicts to spiral out into global conflagerations.
So this is the Promised Land? 80 years of living in an open-air bunker? If I were a Jew I would cry false advertising. I’d rather live in Pico-Robertson.
So the maniac Israeli regime have got their response. We can now look forward to a few days of narrative framing about how the Iranian attacks were ineffectual whilst the Israelis shut down all reporting from various significant sites around their country.