September 18,
2024
Iran faces
probably its most difficult decision since its 1979 victory in the Iranian
Revolution.
Israel has
launched strikes deep into the heart of Tehran and Beirut’s southern suburbs,
significantly strengthening its strategic position.
[On Tuesday,
Israel was accused by U.S. officials of planting explosives in pagers made in
Hungary, which were sold to Lebanon and then remotely detonating them, killing
12 people and injuring more than 2,700. Hezbollah vowed revenge on Israel.]
Before the pager
terrorist attack, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah conceded that the two
earlier strikes on Iran and Lebanon were an Israeli achievement, a rare
concession from any Arab leader.
But Israel’s
bold and risky aggression must be understood in the context of Tel Aviv’s
strategic failure to eliminate Hamas in its war on Gaza.
Israel’s Free
Hand to Kill
Israel has
succeeded in exterminating tens of thousands of Palestinians and rendering much
of Gaza uninhabitable. A state that has historically shown little compunction
for ethnically cleansing the native Palestinian population in favor of European
immigrants, has once again prioritized its occupation’s security over
humanitarian concerns and international law.
As long as
Israel enjoys unconditional American support, it knows it can violate
international norms and laws of war, and perhaps even resort to the deployment
of nuclear weapons — with U.S. backing.
Since the
assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the former chief of the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard Corps, during the Trump administration, Iran has struggled to reassert
its sovereignty and project deterrence against Israel.
Iran’s
relatively open society presents vulnerabilities, unlike Saddam Hussein’s
tightly controlled Iraq, for instance, where foreigners were thoroughly
scrutinized or banned altogether. Iran’s tourism industry and dual citizenships
have allowed the Mossad to infiltrate Iranian society and to recruit spies and
saboteurs.
Several
assassination attempts, some successful, have targeted Iranian scientists and
regime figures. Additionally, Israel and Saudi Arabia have collaborated to fund
and support domestic ethnic opposition groups and the terrorist organization
Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), which was previously supported by Saddam Hussein’s
regime and is now backed by the Mossad, the Saudi regime, and the Israel lobby
in Washington. (The U.S. once classified
it as a terrorist organization for its resort to indiscriminate bombings, but
Israel managed to have it delisted).
Iran, a nation
with diverse ethnicities and religious groups, has long seen its adversaries
exploit these internal divisions. These enemies leverage inequalities to stir
unrest and recruit spies for the Mossad and other hostile forces.
The U.S., under
a president with questionable mental acuity, continues to support Israel
unconditionally, even as Israel’s mass violence against Palestinians escalates.
There seem to be no red lines for the White House, perhaps even if Israel were
to resort to nuclear weapons against its enemies.
Iran does not
wish to confront Israel directly while the U.S. is prepared to deploy warships
across the region in Israel’s defense. Israel’s need for direct U.S., European,
and even Arab military intervention to defend itself against non-state actors
in Palestine and Lebanon exposes its own strategic vulnerabilities.
Israel used to
be able to take on several Arab armies without external military support and
now it cries for help from NATO when threatened by the relatively small armies
of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Political
Dissent in Iran
The recent
Iranian presidential election revealed significant dissatisfaction among the
Iranian population. Opposition to the regime is no longer confined to young
college students in major cities. In this election, a candidate aligned,
openly, with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards faced off against a
representative of the so-called reformist opposition, and the latter emerged
victorious.
The regime faces
a crisis of legitimacy as the revolutionary credentials that once sustained it
wane over time. Economic reform and job creation have become the government’s
top priorities — more important even than retaliation against Israel.
Furthermore,
recent visitors to Iran report strong manifestations of dissatisfaction among
the population regarding generous Iranian support for the Palestinian struggle.
Many Iranians maintain that the needs of the Iranian people should be
prioritized over the military requirements of Arab resistance against Israel.
Foreign policy
is a big priority for the regime but less so for the populace, and we should
not rule out the possibility that Western propaganda has actually succeeded
inside Iran as it succeeded in the former Soviet bloc countries during the Cold
War.
Iran under the
Shah was not only unconcerned over the plight of Palestinians but the Shah was
a very close ally of Israel and helped fund and arm its clients in the region
including the Phalange and their allies in Lebanon — as early as 1958 during
the mini-civil war (and the later civili war in 1975).
It was Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini personally who injected Palestine into the core of the ruling
doctrine of the government and even of the religious-political ideology that
came to power in Iran.
Some elements of
the reformist opposition, who are aligned with the duo of former President
Hassan Rouhani and former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, believe that if Iran
were to make further concessions, the U.S. will lift the sanctions and usher in
economic prosperity.
The Rouhani
government operated under this assumption, negotiating a nuclear deal that
ultimately did not serve Iran’s interests. Foolishly, they agreed to the pact
in the final days of the Obama administration without securing a durable, U.S.
Senate-approved treaty. As a result, when Donald Trump took office, he easily
dismantled the agreement, despite its earlier endorsement by a United Nations
Security Council resolution with U.S. assent.
Iran’s Decision
Iran must take
all these factors into consideration when contemplating how to responded to its
sovereignty being directly violated by Israel multiple times over the past year
— first with the attack on its consulate in Damascus, and more recently with the
assassination of a Hamas leader in a government guesthouse in Tehran.
While Iran’s
response to the first violation was symbolic but strong, a similar symbolic
response to the second could harm Iran’s strategic position with Israel. Iran
wants to send a clear message of deterrence but does not want to escalate into
an all-out war.
It also naively
fears that Israel could drag the U.S. into a military confrontation with Iran.
Although it’s
possible that a second Trump administration, or the present one, might support
Israel in an attack on Iran, it is highly unlikely that the U.S. would
participate in a full-scale war against Iran, especially after the failures of
recent U.S. military interventions in the Middle East.
As former
Defense Secretary Robert Gates famously warned once at West Point, any
president who considers starting a new war in the Middle East should have his
head examined.
For Iran,
relying too heavily on its regional allies to respond to Israeli aggression
could damage its standing in the Arab world. It must respond on its own terms,
or its regional influence will suffer.
Gulf media
outlets have already accused Iran of avoiding direct confrontation with Israel,
even though there is no geographical border between the two nations. These same
outlets rarely miss an opportunity to undermine support for Iran on behalf of
Israel.
This war,
involving key Iranian allies Hamas and Hezbollah, is one of the longest in the
history of the Arab-Israeli conflict (perhaps with the possible exception of
the war of attrition between Egypt and Israel, 1968 and 1970).
While Iran
remains the only country willing to risk its own stability and economic
well-being to provide military and financial support to Arab resistance groups,
there is growing pressure from Arab public opinion for Iran to take more direct
action against Israel if it is to benefit from its continued support for the
Palestinian cause.
Iran can’t leave
its sovereignty violated repeatedly by Israel, in both Syria and Iran. This is a major vulnerability that the
“resistance axis” has to address at some point, and probably in coordination
with the Russian government, which still remains aligned with Netanyahu over
Israeli aggression in Syria.
Iran will
eventually need to address Israel. But it will do so on its own terms, not on
the timeline dictated by its enemies.
Iran will have
to decide: how to protect Iranian sovereignty and strategic deterrence without
starting a regional war with Israel and instigating a direct U.S. military
intervention against the Islamic republic.
Thus it has
little choice but to wait out this period of intense U.S. attention and
presence in the waters of the Middle East.
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