Israel’s choice: retaliation or a reset?
By launching more than 300 missiles and drones against Israel, Iran did what it had never before dared to do.
The Islamic Republic fought in its own name, from its own soil, against the Jewish state.
What started as a religious fight, before becoming a proxy battle, could culminate in all-out war. Unless both sides pull back.
Until now, Iran has acted as a puppeteer, rather than the pointy tip of the spear. It has armed and outfitted proxy forces in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen — choreographing from afar while sending others into battle on its behalf.
In that proxy war, it is often said in the Middle East that Iran and Israel — ancient Persians against Israelites — are now fighting it out to the last Arab. That paradox was perpetuated by Iran in its weekend onslaught, when the sole casualty was an Arab Muslim girl — an Israeli citizen severely injured by shrapnel in the Negev desert (so-called collateral damage while Iranians and Jewish Israelis escaped unscathed).
All along, the Iranian playbook has been encirclement of Israel: Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia wielding weapons from the north, smuggled and supplied by Syria to the northeast, with Hamas perched directly to the south in Gaza, Yemen’s Houthi fighters farther to the south launching drones and Iraq’s Shia militias positioned to the east.
Against that backdrop, Israel had taken to quietly retaliating against Iran both from the inside and the outside — disrupting supply lines while assassinating scientists and killing commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. But Israel’s latest attack against an Iranian embassy building in Damascus — also unacknowledged — provoked a humiliated Iran into an unprecedented response.
For the first time, Tehran opted for open warfare without any pretence of proxy fighting. But its putative show of force turned out to be more symbolic than forceful.
Now it has changed everything and nothing.
Iran crossed a line in the sand, to be sure. Yet the sands of the Middle East are forever shifting, which means the battle lines — and alliances — are always changing.
Israel successfully repelled the Iranian attack — 99 per cent of incoming weapons were shot down. But, at risk of being overwhelmed, Israel outsourced part of its defence to an ad hoc coalition of countries that are either allied to it or allergic to Iran.
Help came not just from America, Britain and France, but also Jordan and almost certainly other Arab Gulf countries. All are equally aghast at Iran’s political ambition and territorial encroachment, which means that the enemy of my enemy is my friend — or at least my frenemy.
It is true that Iran telegraphed its intentions well in advance, calibrating its attack to avoid catastrophic damage in Israel that would invite yet more escalation. But damage control is a relative concept, and the Iranians certainly took a calculated risk.
It’s not as if they lobbed just a couple of cruise missiles, a handful of slow-moving drones and one ballistic missile for show. When a country sends more than 300 such weapons in the air on the same night, it is courting catastrophe by dint of complexity, because so much can go so horribly wrong in the fog of war.
Today, both Israel and Iran are perhaps breathing a sigh of relief in the aftermath, having averted conflagration and escalation. Deconfliction is surely the best prescription.
Far better to take stock than to take revenge. Today, Israel is enjoying a brief reprieve from global opprobrium after six months of military overkill in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre and hostagetaking in Israel.
After the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis, Gaza has lost more than 33,000 Palestinians (that’s according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants; Israel counters that more than one-third of the dead are Hamas fighters). Global sympathy and solidarity can be fickle, but they are better than the alternative, which is diplomatic isolation and military hesitancy.
Jordan’s supportive actions represent an unexpected strategic bonus for Israel. Retaliation would jeopardize not only the momentary global goodwill, but the enduring western political will to stand by the Jewish state militarily.
One of the unintended effects of the Iranian attack has been to take the world’s attention off the carnage in Gaza, in much the same way as the Hamas attack on Israel — and its counterattack — have distracted the global media from Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and Sudan’s brutal civil war, both of which are in their second year of carnage. If only Ukrainians could count on similar military support to shield it from 99 per cent of the drones and missiles fired at civilian targets by Russia; if only the 25 million Sudanese displaced by military rivalry could find sanctuary.
As the world’s attention returns to Gaza in the days ahead, perhaps there will be more questions about why there is still no ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Lost in the weekend’s headlines from Iran was the latest news that Hamas had yet again rejected yet another ceasefire proposal handed over by Arab mediators from Israel.
We live in a world of protests and proxy wars, collateral damage and damage control. Meanwhile, the fighting continues in Gaza as it does in Sudan and Ukraine.