Israel weighs response, with each choice carrying a risk
TEL AVIV » Israeli leaders on Tuesday were debating how best to respond to Iran’s unprecedented weekend airstrike, officials said, weighing a set of options calibrated to achieve different strategic outcomes: deterring a similar attack in the future, placating their American allies and avoiding all- out war.
Iran’s attack on Israel, an immense barrage that included hundreds of ballistic missiles and exploding drones, changed the unspoken rules in the archrivals’ long- running shadow war. In that conflict, major airstrikes from one country’s territory directly against the other had been avoided.
Given that change in precedent, the calculus by which Israel decides its next move has also changed, said the Israeli officials who requested anonymity to discuss Iran.
“We cannot stand still from this kind of aggression,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the spokesperson for Israel’s military, said Tuesday. Iran, he added, would not get off “scot- free with this aggression.”
As Israel’s war cabinet met to consider a military response, other countries were applying diplomatic pressure to both Israel and Iran in the hopes of deescalating the conflict.
Almost all of the missiles and drones fired in Iran’s attack early Sunday were intercepted by Israel and its allies, including the United States and Britain.
The attack, Iran said, was a response to an Israeli airstrike this month, in which several armed forces commanders were killed inanattack insyria. That attack on an Iranian embassy building in Damascus was so different enough from previous targeted assassinations of individuals in the shadowwar that it provided Iran with an opportunity to recalibrate its own red lines.
The strike also destroyed a building that was part of the Iranian embassy complex, normally considered off- limits to attack. Israeli officials said the buildingwas diplomatic in name only, and used as an Iranian military and intelligence base, making it a legitimate target.
Iran, which signaled that it saw the attack as an Israeli break in the norms of the shadow war, felt compelled to retaliate strongly, analysts said, to establish deterrence and maintain credibility with its proxies and hard- line supporters.
Israel does not want Iran to conclude that it can now attack Israeli territory in response to an Israeli strike on Iranian interests in a third country, some of the officials said, summarizing the internal Israeli debate. But, they added, Israel also does not want and cannot afford a major conflict with Iran while still fighting a war in Gaza and skirmishing with Iranian proxies along its borders.
Themembers of Israel’s small but fractious war Cabinet, officials said, are considering options big enough to send a clear message to Iran that such attacks will not go unanswered, but not so big as to spark a major escalation.
The officials described the following options, and their downsides, from which the Israeli leaders are choosing a response:
• Conduct an aggressive strike on an Iranian target, such as a Revolutionary Guard base, in a country other than Iran like Syria. ( The drawback is that it lacks the symmetry of responding to a direct attack on Israel with a direct attack on Iran.)
• Strike a mostly symbolic target inside Iran. ( Such a move would likely require U. S. consultation and would risk angering the Americans who have advised against such a strike.)
• Conduct a cyberattack on Iran’s infrastructure. ( Doing so could expose Israel’s cyber capabilities prematurely and would not be an in- kind response to a major airstrike.)
• Accelerate small attacks inside Iran, including targeted assassinations, carried out by the Mossad. ( Israel does not claim responsibility for such attacks.)