Iran-Israel ‘shadow war’ at dangerous crossroads
Attack by Tehran puts old rivals in a wait-and-see mode
BERLIN — Iran has retaliated directly against Israel for the killings of its senior generals in Syria with more than 300 drones and missiles aimed at restoring its credibility and deterrence, officials and analysts say.
That represents a moment of great risk, with key questions still to answer, they say. Has Iran’s attack been enough to satisfy its calls for revenge? Or, given the relatively paltry results — almost all of the drones and missiles were intercepted by Israel and the United States — will it feel obligated to strike again? And will Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, see the strong performance by his country’s air defenses as a sufficient response? Or will he choose to escalate further with an attack on Iran?
Now that Iran has attacked Israel as it promised to do, it will want to avoid a broader war, the officials and analysts say, noting that the Iranians targeted only military sites in an apparent effort to avoid civilian casualties and advertised their attack well in advance.
“Iran’s government appears to have concluded that the (Syria) strike was a strategic inflection point, where failure to retaliate would carry more downsides than benefits,” said Ali Vaez, Iran director of the International Crisis Group. “But in doing so, the ‘shadow war’ it has been waging with Israel for years now threatens to turn into a very real and very damaging conflict,” one that could drag in the United States.
“The Iranians have for now played their card,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House. “They made a choice to call Israel’s bluff ... because they see the last six months as a persistent effort to set them back.”
On Sunday, Iranian leaders said the military operation against Israel was over but warned that they could launch a bigger one depending on Israel’s response.
For years, Iran took blow after blow from Israel: assassinations of its nuclear scientists and military commanders, explosions at its nuclear and military bases, cyberattacks, intelligence infiltrations, an embarrassing theft of nuclear documents, recent attacks on its critical infrastructure.
But since the Hamas-led assault of Oct. 7 prompted Israel to go to war in the Gaza Strip, Israel has intensified its attacks on Iranian interests and commanders in Syria. In a series of strikes from December onward, Israel has assassinated at least 18 Iranian commanders and military personnel from the Quds Force, the elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard that operates outside Iran’s borders, Iranian media said.
Iran’s government has been criticized by hard-line supporters for its cautious posture in the war in Gaza.
With the attacks this weekend, Vakil said: “I think Tehran saw a need to draw this red line and make it clear to Israel that Iran does have red lines and would not continue to tolerate the slow degradation of its position.”
Tehran felt it had to respond, even if its attack prompted firm American backing and widespread Western diplomatic support for Israel, taking some of the heat off Israel over its war in Gaza, at least temporarily, and again isolated Iran.
Now, Vakil said, the two sides were in a standoff in which both were prepared for escalation despite knowing it would cause huge damage to themselves.
At the same time, the old equation has changed, with Israel and Iran hitting each other directly and not through Iranian proxies.
Iran has said it wants Israel to be wiped off the map, but the conflict has been carried out mainly between Israel and Iran’s allies and proxies — in Gaza, southern Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.
Both sides claim they are acting in national self-defense — Israel against groups committed to its destruction, and Iran against any Israeli war against it, often in the name of the Palestinians.
Iran increasingly refers to its rapidly expanding nuclear program, which has enriched uranium to near weapons-grade, as a deterrent against Israel, while at the same time denying that it has any intention of building a nuclear weapon. But Iran is considered by experts as a nuclear-threshold state, able to create a crude nuclear weapon within a year or so.
Iran is also going through a slow, complicated transition as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader and commander in chief, is said to be ailing and faced a 2022 domestic uprising, led by women, that demanded an end to clerical rule.
Khamenei ordered the strikes on Israel from inside Iran to send a clear message that Iran was shifting from “strategic patience” to a more active deterrence, according to four Iranian officials, two of them members of the Revolutionary Guard.