Fueling Israel-Iran escalation: Dangerous parallel universes
People take shelter during an air raid siren after Iran fired a large salvo of ballistic missiles, amid cross-border hostilities between Iran's ally Hezbollah and Israel, in central Israel, Oct. 1, 2024.
Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
TEL AVIV, Israel; and LONDON
As Iran unleashed an unprecedented ballistic missile barrage at Israel Tuesday evening, real-time air raid warning maps were crowded with red location spots. The image of the entire country under simultaneous attack – shared repeatedly on social media and in news reports – shook Israelis.
How Israel chooses to respond, and how Iran reacts, could decide the future of the Middle East.
Iran explained its attack as revenge for a recent surge of Israeli strikes against Iran’s most powerful allies, including the assassination Friday in Beirut of Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese Hezbollah militia chief. It warned of catastrophic consequences if Israel should make the “mistake” of escalating again with its own use of force.
Why We Wrote This
A nation’s need to establish deterrence as a guarantor of its security has always risked cycles of escalation with an adversary. As Israel and Iran trade blows, their competing views of the same events are sending tremors through the Middle East.
For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran had made a “big mistake.”
“Those who attack us, we attack them,” he said in a televised address to the nation.
The dueling reactions point to the distinct and dangerous parallel universes that Iran and Israel now inhabit, at a threshold moment that risks spiraling into an uncontrollable succession of retaliatory raids that could spark an all-out war.
“The Israelis have upped the ante more than Iranians could bear” with their assault on Hezbollah, says Hassan Ahmadian, an assistant professor of Middle East studies at Tehran University.
“You can sense it in the public, [which] started pushing for something to be done to stop Netanyahu,” says Dr. Ahmadian. “‘We need to do something to stop them.’ ... You could hear it all over the place.”
Iran’s calculation appears to have shifted. Until only a few weeks ago, it had been making clear that it wanted to avoid a regional war. Now Tehran appears to have decided that the price of doing nothing in response to Israel’s recent actions outweighs the heightened risk of triggering a wider war that might draw in the United States.
“There’s a hope that last night would deter Israel, but personally I don’t envision that,” says Dr. Ahmadian. “The next round might be really more devastating, on both parties. The Israelis might do something bold, which then will push the Iranians ... to adopt a more assertive posture. That means a stronger and broader attack.”
In Israel, the government is choosing from a range of options, including attacking Iran’s oil production installations, its military command and control facilities, and even its nuclear production sites. President Joe Biden said Wednesday he would not support any Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Still, Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister, said Israel had the “biggest opportunity in the past 50 years” to reshape the Middle East in its favor, and called for strikes to “destroy” Iran’s nuclear program and energy facilities.
“The tentacles of that octopus are severely wounded – now it’s time to aim for the head,” Mr. Bennett posted on social media.
With Iran’s allies, Hamas and Hezbollah, on the defensive, “This is a unique opportunity,” says Chuck Freilich, former Israeli deputy national security adviser. “The question is ... What can we achieve? If we have the capability to achieve a long-term postponement” of Iran’s nuclear program, “this may be the last good opportunity to try and do something.”
Israel’s next move, suggests Mr. Freilich, should be “to hit them hard, and to deter, but with the goal of not leading to a further escalation.”
That is a delicate balance.
In an apparent effort to fend off an Israeli response to Iran’s Tuesday night missile barrage, Tehran is stepping up its warnings about the potential consequences.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Israeli air defenses were “more fragile than glass” and that if Israel “makes a mistake again, the next response will be much more devastating.”
Iran’s defense minister, Brig. Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh, urged Europe to control Israel’s reaction, or “They will face Iran’s response, and the region will enter into a big war.”
And Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf warned that Iran had “devised an unexpected plan to counter any potential madness” from Israel, and advised the United States to “tighten the leash of its rabid dog to prevent it from self-harm.”
Israeli experts brush off such talk.
The lack of casualties and strategic damage resulting from Iran’s missile barrage Tuesday, as in a previous Iranian attack in April, reveals “a certain picture – that this is not a show of Iranian strength but one of strategic weakness,” argues Ambassador Jeremy Issacharoff, former vice director general of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs who dealt extensively with Iran in his career.
Most of the missiles were neutralized by American and Israeli air defense systems, as Iran targeted three Israeli military bases and the Tel Aviv headquarters of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service. One fatality was reported, a Palestinian in the West Bank reportedly struck by debris from a missile shot down in midair.
Iran can do no more than fire more of the same kinds of missiles that they used on Tuesday, says Mr. Freilich, and “Israel can weather the response.”
Ambassador Issacharoff argues that Israel should “take our time, weigh options, and decide how to go forward,” in a manner that is closely coordinated with Washington. But, he cautions, “You cannot only have a military response to Iran; you need a political response at the end of day.”
The current hostilities between Israel and Iran, says Dr. Ahmadian in Tehran, are “about the escalation dominance that the Israelis are trying to achieve, to then translate it into a balance in their favor. And the Iranians ... are trying to prevent the Israelis from establishing that.”
Meanwhile on Wednesday, Israel deployed more troops in its ground assault on southern Lebanon, designed to destroy Hezbollah tunnels and hideouts so as to make northern Israel safe again for residents who were evacuated a year ago because of Hezbollah rocket fire.
The first report of Israeli soldiers killed in combat – eight in total – were announced just as Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, was about to be ushered in Wednesday evening.