Iran is acting more rationally than Israel — for now
Had
Iran wanted to seriously escalate its conflict with Israel, its
response to the Damascus embassy bombing would have looked very
different.
By Lior Sternfeld April 16, 2024
+972 news website
Iran’s
dramatic attack on Israel on April 13 was no bolt from the blue. It had
been building for years, in response to Israel’s increasingly brazen
attacks on Iranian targets across the region — from weapons depots used
by Iran’s regional allies to the Islamic Republic’s own nuclear
scientists and senior military officials. After October 7, these attacks
accelerated further, culminating in Israel’s April 1 bombing of the
Iranian Embassy compound in Damascus that killed several senior Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers.
While Israel’s
leaders patted themselves on the back for another successful operation,
the world looked on in bewilderment, knowing that this time Israel has
crossed all red lines. Under countless international agreements,
embassies have an inviolable right to protection. When this right is
violated, conflicts and wars quickly escalate.
The past 50 years
provide no shortage of examples of this. The takeover of the American
Embassy in Tehran and the ensuing hostage crisis in November 1979 led to
the severing of relations between Iran and the United States. The
attempted assassination of Israeli Ambassador Shlomo Argov in London in
1982 was one of the catalysts of the First Lebanon War. The bombing of
the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 exposed Hezbollah, as well
as Iran, to harsh sanctions.
Therefore,
from the moment Israel attacked the Iranian Embassy in Damascus two
weeks ago, most analysts were expecting a response. The one that
followed was remarkably restrained.
By all estimates, Iran was
not seeking a regional escalation. Immediately after Israel’s April 1
attack, Tehran opened a direct channel of communication with the United
States, reportedly telling the Americans that if they compelled Israel
to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, Iran would refrain from retaliating at
all. When it became clear that this was not on the table, an Iranian
military response soon followed: late Saturday night, Iran declared the
beginning of its attack by launching around 170 drones, which would take
several hours to reach Israel. Thus, in effect, Iran alerted Israel and
its allies with plenty of advance warning, allowing the vast majority
of the drones — along with the missiles that followed — to be
intercepted.
Had Iran sought to catch Israel by surprise, it
could have unleashed the ballistic missiles that were deployed in the
final phase of the attack, whose flight time is 10-12 minutes, without
any warning. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of these missiles were
aimed at Israeli military bases — that is, Iran refrained from targeting
civilian population centers. Only one person was seriously wounded as a
result of the attack: a 7-year-old girl from an unrecognized Bedouin
village, who was injured by a fragment of a missile that was intercepted
by the Iron Dome (unrecognized villages, home to over 100,000 Arab
Bedouin citizens in the Negev/Naqab desert, are not provided with
shelters, leaving them completely exposed to rockets and falling
shrapnel). Immediately afterward, Iran announced that as far as it was
concerned, the issue was settled, unless Israel insisted on retaliating
further.
In January, I wrote for Local Call (+972’s Hebrew
partner site) about Iran’s moderating role in the war, despite its
bellicose rhetoric. I still believe that Iran refrained from entering
the war, restrained Hezbollah, and did not provide the logistical or
military umbrella that Hamas expected after its October 7 attack.
According to Israeli intelligence estimates, Hezbollah is equipped with
hundreds of thousands of missiles that can reach Haifa and cities south
of it; if Iran had an interest in inflaming the region, it would have
coordinated the attack from Lebanon too, rather than alerting the world
to the drone attack hours in advance of their arrival.
Of
course, there are many crimes for which to hold Iran accountable —
primarily its murderous policies toward the Iranian people, treatment of
dissidents, mass executions in the aftermath of the Mahsa Amini
protest, and more. Internationally, too, the Iranian regime has
contributed to instability in the region and beyond: its proxy wars with
Saudi Arabia and the UAE in Yemen, its support for and close
cooperation with Hezbollah in Lebanon, its newfound love for Putin’s
Russia, and the worrying progress of its nuclear project since the
collapse of the JCPOA.
The Islamic Republic cannot get a
free pass for these actions, and the international community must hold
it to account while working to mitigate the sources of regional tension.
Recent Iranian agreements with Saudi Arabia
and the UAE point to how these conflicts can be de-escalated, and
further concentrated diplomatic efforts in this vein are essential.
Still, so long as Israel’s assault on Gaza continues, there remains a
risk that the region could explode.
The right thing for Israel to do now
is to end this terrible war — in Gaza, and with Iran. We must reach an
agreement to return the hostages who are still alive, bury our dead,
allow the Gazans to bury their dead, and start thinking about new
directions in order to ensure the security of all the region’s
residents. That would require Israel’s government to do something that
almost no Israeli government has done for decades: put our safety above
the settlements and the desire to live forever by the sword. Jordan’s involvement in intercepting Iran’s missiles provides a glimpse of what that alternative future could look like.