October 28, 2024 - 7:00am

Over the past year, the current war in the Middle East has been marked by something akin to what ecologists term “shifting baseline syndrome”: while a full-scale regional conflagration has mercifully been avoided, each escalation has entered dangerous new territory. Dramatic events like the trading of direct blows between Iran and Israel, once thought almost unthinkable, are becoming routine. At the same time, each individual strike is carefully calibrated to sidestep the abyss.

Israel’s delayed retaliatory strike on Iran this weekend fits this pattern perfectly. Just as Iran’s missile barrage on Israel limited itself to a handful of precise military targets, so did Israel’s response. It was a significantly more moderate response than Israel’s previously bellicose rhetoric had suggested. Israel’s strikes seem to have focused on Iranian ballistic missile and drone production facilities. As RUSI’s Director of Military Sciences Matthew Savile observed on X, “the strikes look designed to emphasise Israeli conventional superiority and warn Iran of future vulnerability if it tries to retaliate, but they have avoided anything that looks sensitive: no indications of nuclear or senior regime targets hit, nor energy/oil targets.”

Early fears of an oil price spike should Israel hit Iranian oil facilities have now dissipated, no doubt to the Harris campaign’s relief in the US. Indeed, as the Economist’s Anshel Pfeffer notes, a “Major knock-on effect of Israeli strikes on Iran is that Iran won’t be able to supply Russia with new ballistic missiles for many months until it rebuilds its manufacturing capabilities”. This turns a potential headache for the US into an unexpected boon when it comes to the parallel Ukraine conflict, where Iranian missile and drone technology has acted as a major Russian force enhancer.

Following the strikes, the IDF’s spokesman took pains to announce that Israel had “conducted targeted and precise strikes on military targets” and that he could now confirm the Israeli response had concluded that we have concluded the Israeli response to Iran’s attacks against Israel”. Israeli government’s limited response and immediate, tension-defusing messaging aims to show that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is happy to draw a line under the matter — as long as Iran is also willing.

And so far, it seems Iran is more than willing to downplay the strikes, claiming only “slight damage” to military and military-industrial infrastructure. The apparent deaths of at least four Iranian military personnel may create pressure on Iran’s leadership from younger domestic dissenters within the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to respond forcefully.

Despite this, Iran has apparently passed messages to Israel that it has no intention of responding: for now, both regional rivals seem content to flex their potential strength rather than fully deploy it. For once, Netanyahu has erred on the side of caution: when it comes to Iran, if not Lebanon or Gaza, America’s ability to exert a restraining hand on Israel may not be entirely dead.


Aris Roussinos is an UnHerd columnist and a former war reporter.

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