Israel’s retaliation dilemma: Listen to its instincts, or its allies?

As explosive drones and missiles flew toward Israeli skies late Saturday night in an unprecedented attack launched from Iranian soil, the decision before Israel’s government seemed straightforward – and in line with both Israel’s mindset and military doctrine.

When and how to retaliate.

But the overwhelming success of the measures put in place to help Israel thwart the attack – including an also unprecedented, U.S.-led international and regional coalition – has paradoxically made Israeli decision-making more complex. Government ministers convening for a third day Tuesday faced a dilemma: whether to heed international pressures not to retaliate at all.

Still, the more likely response, experts say, is that Israel will strike back in some way. That would follow the nation’s traditional policy of deterrence, even if this time, they say, it might be wiser to show strength via restraint.

Israel’s policy since its founding has been that of “deterrence and renewal of deterrence,” says Professor Eitan Shamir, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University and a former senior strategic affairs adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office.

“We see deterrence as a commodity, which has a shelf life and gets eroded,” he says. “And that is why every now and then you need to renew it by taking actions, so the other side understands that you have not weakened, that you are not afraid.”

This deterrence doctrine is so entrenched in the nation’s DNA, he says, that even moderate leaders in Israel will find it hard to forge a different path.

Coalition defense

The attack Saturday from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon included some 350 drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and rockets, with about 60 tons of explosive materials, the Israel Defense Forces said.

Iran said the attack was in retaliation for Israel's killing of senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders in an airstrike on Iran’s diplomatic mission in Damascus, Syria, on April 1. Iran also said its response to the killings was now concluded, but warned that should Israel retaliate, it could face a much larger attack.

Israel said 99% of the Iranian barrage was intercepted by Israel and the U.S.-led coalition, which included Britain, France, and some of Israel’s Arab neighbors, including Jordan and to some extent Saudi Arabia. It marked the first time such a group worked together against Iran and its proxies.

Voices counseling Israel to avoid escalation and preserve that coalition have been constant. They ranged from U.S. President Joe Biden urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately to “take the win,” to German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock calling on all sides Tuesday to avoid widening the conflict, saying she would travel to Israel to convey “Germany’s full solidarity.”

Amid a whirl of reports that the Cabinet’s decision was tilting toward retaliation, the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said Monday on a visit to the Nevatim air base, which sustained minor damage from the barrage, that “Iran will face the consequences for its actions.”

Yet Tuesday, war Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz suggested Israel was at least weighing the calls for restraint, saying Israel will choose the time and place to respond, and would work with the United States to build an anti-Iran alliance.

Regional concerns

Israel’s Kan public TV channel said Israel has sought to reassure its Arab neighbors that its response will not put them at risk for Iranian retaliation. Haaretz reported there was wide consensus amid the political and security leadership for an attack, albeit a measured one that would not set the region alight.

“It is very hard to know what Netanyahu will do,” says Amos Yadlin, a former Israeli air force general and a former head of military intelligence. “On the one hand Iran is his obsession, but he will also want to be very careful not to trigger a wider regional war.”

Even if the Iran attack was foiled and caused just minor damage, Iran sees its attack as a “victory,” Dr. Eyal Pinko, a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center, said in a webinar Tuesday. And that is why, he said, “many voices inside the Israeli government” see retaliation as essential.

Israel has a range of targeting options, says Professor Shamir. It could strike in Syria or Lebanon, as it has in the past, or target sites in Iran, the most ambitious and “extreme” being facilities affiliated with its nuclear program. But that is not likely, he says.

“The timing is not right,” Professor Shamir says. “The result would be a total war with Iran, and we are not ready for that. We are submerged in Gaza, we have the situation in the north that we have not resolved, and so to enter a war with Iran now would be entering a vortex from which we don’t know how we will exit.”

Hitting a major, nonnuclear target on Iranian soil would send a clear deterrence signal to Iran but would not provide Israel any great strategic benefit, he says. “The importance of such a kind of move is ... symbolic, raising Israeli morale, showing the enemy that you can reach them. The question is if at this moment it is worth the price, as the strategic benefit is not very large.”

Outside Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing government, some political leaders counseled caution.

Thinking there must be a show of force is a “childish way of thinking,” says reserve Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, who is running for the leadership of Israel’s once-dominant but now nearly invisible Labor Party.

Attacking Iran will only be an “act of vengeance that brings us nowhere,” he says, leading to a war that “we cannot win,” a very risky undertaking after six months of a bloody conflict with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in the north.

“Strategic patience”

There is a precedent of Israeli restraint in the face of an attack, with hawkish Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in 1991 heeding a U.S. request to hold fire after a barrage of Scud missiles from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and enabling the U.S.-led coalition to respond.

If Israel does indeed attack, it should do so only in close coordination with the U.S., says Mr. Yadlin, the former air force general.

“Any unilateral action by Israel would have lower chances of success, harm President Biden’s coalition against Iran efforts, and escalate events also in the West Bank and the north of Israel,” he says. “All of this will boost [Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar, who has sought from the very beginning of the war to make it a regional conflict.”

Instead of retaliating immediately, says Professor Shamir, Israel should play the waiting game and react as it has been doing until now with its shadow war with Iran.

“Israel should have strategic patience,” he says, and leverage the unprecedented regional alliance that has now emerged to promote its interests.

Israel and the alliance’s success against Iran’s barrage, he says, has already created a different kind of deterrence.

The alliance, and a moment of renewed sympathy for Israel, could help Israel resolve its conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon and achieve its war aims in Gaza, he says.

“Israel must now capitalize politically from Biden’s support and the sympathy we have regained from the West,” says Professor Shamir. “In Gaza, Israel is seen as Goliath versus the Palestinian David. ... But against Iran, Israel is once again a David, garnering sympathy.”