Barely one week after calling for diplomacy at the United Nations General Assembly, Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, launched his own October surprise — about 180 missiles aimed at Israel. Iran can now claim it has responded forcefully to what it sees as Israel’s incursions on its turf.
The surprise is the response came, not from proxies, but with a state-on-state attack targeting Israeli civilians.
It’s no surprise that Iran responded to Israel assassinating a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon last week. The surprise is that the response came, not from proxies, but with a state-on-state attack targeting Israeli civilians. Tuesday marks the second state-on-state attack Iran has launched this year, both aimed at Israel and both predictably blocked by the American-funded Iron Dome defense system. The Israeli military said it was not aware of any casualties in this strike. In the before times, after Iran conducted a dramatic, terrifying, but less impactful face-saving operation, both sides would retreat to their corners. But, for reasons explained below, today’s actions are unlikely to be an end. To the contrary, we’re likely to see Israel and Iran continue to raise the stakes further, dragging their allies into deeper conflict.
Iran has been embarrassed twice now by Israeli leadership: the targeted assassination of a Hamas leader inside Iran this summer and the current ground invasion of turf run by Hezbollah in Lebanon. These actions, which Netanyahu’s government argues are meant to de-escalate further war by eliminating Iranian-backed militants for good, are a strike at the heart of Iran’s power in the region. Indeed, the Israeli prime minister has underscored that his statement at the U.N. that “there is no place in Iran the long arm of Israel cannot reach” was not a rhetorical flourish, but a promise he means to keep.
At the same time, despite new leadership in Iran, there remains the long-standing need to appear strong in the Middle East and also on the world stage. Masoud Pezeshkian is a cardiac surgeon who in July beat out hard-liners and who told the world at last week’s United Nations General Assembly, “We’re willing to have peace. We do not want to fight. We do not want war. In what other language do we need to express this to everyone?” But even he must give way to the Revolutionary Guard in the wake of the decimation of Iran’s “forward defense system” in recent weeks, that is, the armed militias operating near Israel’s borders in Syria and elsewhere.
This is no longer a proxy conflict where Israel and Iran can plausibly hide behind the language of diplomacy to claim a degree of remove from military action and violence. In fact, Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon on Monday intended to eliminate the threat of Hezbollah and Iran, but it has also united the Israeli factions that have disagreed with one another about the treatment of Gazans. The United States has already followed through on its promised defense of Israel and moved warplanes and troops into position in the Arabian Sea. With Iran and Israel’s leader both promising “consequences” and “crushing attacks” after each incident, this is no longer a game of chicken. It’s a race toward disaster.