Iran has vowed retaliation for an Israeli assault on its consulate in Damascus final Monday.
The strike was a part of a sample of escalated Israeli assaults in Syria for the reason that eruption of the Gaza struggle final October. These assaults have typically focused warehouses, vehicles, and airports, and Israel’s declared goal for them is degrading Iran’s transnational provide community for the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Monday’s assault was totally different, nevertheless, in that it struck a diplomatic facility – straight difficult Iran’s sovereignty – and killed senior leaders within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Essentially the most high-profile casualty was Brigadier Common Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a veteran commander who led the IRGC international operations wing, the Quds Drive, in Syria and Lebanon.
How will Iran reply? Because it seems, Tehran has loads of choices – however none of them are excellent.
Allies and energy politics
A serious participant in Center East politics, Iran typically tasks its energy by way of a community of ideologically aligned allies and non-state teams – a community that kinds itself the “Axis of Resistance”.
These teams embody the Houthis of Yemen, Hamas of Palestine, Hezbollah of Lebanon, and Shia militia factions like Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq, plus Bashar al-Assad’s authorities in Syria.
The actors fall on a spectrum starting from hardcore IRGC loyalists and proxies, like the 2 Hezbollahs, to autonomous however typically dependent companions and allies of Tehran, like Hamas, the Houthis, and the al-Assad regime.
Collectively, they profit from Iranian help whereas their actions assist Iran preserve deniability and hold its conflicts with Israel, america, and Gulf Arab states like Saudi Arabia at arm’s size.
In 2020, nevertheless, Iran took the bizarre step of responding to the US assassination of the Quds Drive chief Qassem Soleimani – which was itself unprecedented – by staging a direct assault on US forces, launching a barrage of ballistic missiles on the Ain al-Assad base in Iraq.
US troopers on the base have been injured however none have been killed, largely as a result of that they had acquired warning from the Iraqi authorities.
It was a powerful demonstration of Iranian missile expertise, however underwhelming as a retaliatory motion.
Iranian leaders continued to voice imprecise threats about extra future retaliation and helped Iraqi militias harass US forces – and, over time, the urgency of all of it light away.
A foul second for escalation
Iranian Supreme Chief Ali Khamenei is seen as being in a bind. It’s extensively assumed that he desires to retaliate visibly, not simply to avenge the killing of senior officers but additionally as a result of not doing so would tarnish Iran’s credibility as a regional energy.
However now is just not a great time. The area has been aflame for the reason that begin of the Gaza struggle, following Hamas’s October 7 assault in Israel, which killed greater than 1,100 Israelis, and the Israeli authorities’s brutal response, which has killed greater than 33,100 Palestinians so far and pushed Gaza into famine situations.
Since October, vicious tit-for-tat violence has raged alongside the Israel-Lebanon border, there was an extended string of assaults on US forces in Syria and Iraq, and Crimson Sea transport has been disrupted by Houthi missile and drone strikes.
Though strategies and targets differ from nation to nation, these assaults all take pleasure in Iran’s help and so they all goal to strain Israeli and US leaders to cease the struggle in Gaza.
Though Iran could also be keen to tolerate the danger of an unintended regional struggle, it has repeatedly proven that it doesn’t need direct battle with Israel or the US and can attempt to hold violence beneath that threshold.
When Iran-backed teams killed three US troopers in Jordan earlier this yr, Washington retaliated with air assaults on Syria and Iraq.
Tehran appeared to again down: Quds Drive commander Esmail Qaani reportedly instructed pro-Iran factions in Iraq to cease focusing on US troops. Since then, they’ve largely been sending drones towards Israel, with little impact.
However failing to reply – or responding solely by way of low-key proxy actions – doesn’t look like an choice for Tehran, provided that it has publicly dedicated itself to avenging the consulate assault.
Khamenei has mentioned Iran’s “courageous males” will punish Israel, one in all his advisers has warned that Israeli embassies “are not secure”, and two officers lately instructed the New York Instances they are going to retaliate straight towards Israel, to revive deterrence.
Failing to reside as much as these public threats might make Iran appear weak within the eyes of associates and foes alike, doubtlessly placing it at a drawback throughout regional unrest and signalling to Israel that continued escalation carries no price.
Iran is probably going additionally involved that assaults on Iranian high-level officers and state property might turn out to be a traditional characteristic of its tit-for-tat battle with Israel, at a really dangerous second in time.
Maintaining battle with Israel and the US below management was all the time an necessary aim of Iranian international coverage. However it’s doubly so now, provided that probably the most anti-Iranian president in modern US historical past, Donald Trump, could also be about to reclaim the White Home.
From Tehran’s viewpoint, surrendering management over the escalatory dynamic to Israel simply earlier than the beginning of one other Trump presidency can be very, very dangerous coverage.
Many choices, all problematic
What to do? Iran has many highly effective proxies and allies within the Center East, however none of them appears effectively positioned to impact a retaliatory motion calibrated to Iran’s issues about longer-term dangers.
The Houthis in Yemen have been waging a extremely profitable marketing campaign towards service provider transport since final yr, utilizing Iranian-supplied arms. However though they’ve additionally proven themselves able to launching high-tech Iranian missiles and drones at southern Israel, these assaults usually are not very efficient.
US and European warships have arrange a thick layer of air defences alongside the Crimson Sea, and Israel’s missile defences have been capable of knock down most of no matter will get by way of that gauntlet.
The Houthis have struggled to hit Israeli territory, and even then it didn’t have an effect on the struggle in Gaza or regional dynamics meaningfully. In different phrases, whereas Iran might allow and encourage ramped-up Yemeni strikes, it might most likely not do a lot to assist it out of its deterrence quandary.
Khamenei’s downside is that his greatest instruments towards Israel are additionally those most probably to attract a harsh Israeli response and set off uncontrollable escalation – which could finish badly for Iran.
For instance, Iran appears completely able to replaying its 2020 response to the demise of Soleimani, by firing a volley of ballistic missiles into Israeli territory.
However even when the impression have been pretty minor – if the missiles crash into the empty desert or detonate with out deaths in an remoted navy facility – a post-October 7 Israel is prone to reply ferociously, doubtlessly overshadowing and nullifying the symbolic impression of Iran’s missile strike. It’s not prone to appear an interesting consequence to Iran, provided that the central plank of its technique has been to keep away from a direct struggle.
Retaliating at scale by way of Lebanon is an alternative choice. Iran has spent many years boosting Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenal, equipping the group with refined ballistic and cruise missiles, and drones. Most of those precision weapons haven’t been used within the post-October battle, however they’re readily available for any choice to escalate.
Main assaults from Lebanon would, nevertheless, imply taking part in one in all Hezbollah’s greatest playing cards early, and it might additionally run the danger of destabilising an already harmful and fragile state of affairs on the Israel-Lebanon border, which is exactly what Iran and Hezbollah have tried to keep away from.
The thought has been to maintain border violence at a managed simmer since October 2023, as a method of drawing Israeli sources away from Gaza whereas incentivising a conflict-averse US to place a leash on its belligerent Israeli ally.
A serious strike from Lebanon to burnish Iran’s deterrence credentials doesn’t appear appropriate with that form of high-stakes balancing.
The ‘diplomatic choice’
Iran could attempt to hit Israeli diplomatic services, to venture eye-for-eye retaliation after Israel’s assault on the Damascus consulate. As a precautionary measure, Israel has reportedly shuttered 28 embassies worldwide.
Any Iranian strike on an Israeli diplomatic facility can be unlikely to kill a Zahedi-type safety chief and thus would not likely be corresponding to Israel’s assault.
However even a minor assault on an Israeli embassy or consulate might assist Iranian leaders argue that they’ve now evened out the rating: you hit our diplomatic services, we hit yours.
An assault on a diplomatic facility could possibly be overt, utilizing missiles or drones launched from Iranian territory. It could harm Iran’s relations with the host nation concerned, however relying on which nation that’s, Tehran could also be keen to just accept some political drama.
Final January, Iran fired ballistic missiles at what it claimed was a Mossad base within the Kurdish area of northern Iraq – with out providing proof – whereas additionally putting unrelated targets in Syria and Pakistan.
It was a wierd, sudden method of lashing out, and it’s not clear that the strikes had any impact aside from demonstrating Iran’s means to hit distant targets and make itself appear harmful and unpredictable – which can have been the meant impact.
Repeating that strike now can be a low-risk plan of action. Kurdistan Regional Authorities (KRG) authorities are unable to reply in any significant vogue and whereas the central authorities in Baghdad would possibly react angrily, the fallout would absolutely be manageable.
Nonetheless, it’s not clear that blowing up one other piece of KRG territory would fulfill these Iranian and Axis hardliners who wish to see severe vengeance after Zahedi’s demise. In different phrases, even when handy, such an assault won’t be sufficient by itself.
Covert motion – like unclaimed drone strikes, assassinations, or bombings, maybe by way of Hezbollah or another proxy – is an alternative choice. Iran has performed it earlier than and nonetheless stays able to doing it.
Then once more, the much less overt the assault and the longer it takes to execute, the much less it would assist Iran’s deterrence. Whereas killing an Israeli diplomat could be counted as successful for Iranian leaders, the issue they should resolve is the right way to make Israel and others assume twice about bombing Iranian property.
Speak loudly whereas carrying a small stick
In sum, Iran has sturdy causes to react forcefully to Israel’s Damascus assault – and even stronger causes to guarantee that its response is just not perceived as too forceful.
Furthermore, it has some ways of attacking Israel, whether or not by way of its personal navy capabilities or semi-covertly by way of the Axis of Resistance community of pro-Iran factions.
And but, the sum of all these elements doesn’t add as much as a lot. None of Iran’s retaliatory choices appears well-adapted to the present state of affairs, by which the stakes are already uncomfortably excessive as a result of Gaza battle.
The out there technique of retaliation will both not generate sufficient symbolic and materials impression to let Khamenei and his cohorts declare they’ve settled the rating – or they are going to, however at the price of uncontrollable and possibly unacceptable dangers to Iran’s longer-term safety.
It’s possible then that Iran must make do with one other underwhelming response or set of responses.
As in 2020, it should then do its greatest to patch up the all-too-visible holes in its deterrence posture with fiery rhetoric. No quantity of offended statements can hurt Israel or dissuade it from attacking once more, however they’ll no less than present some short-term consolation to the Axis of Resistance hardliners.
