[
Iran has vowed retaliation for an Israeli attack on its consulate in Damascus last Monday.
The strike was part of a pattern of escalated Israeli attacks in Syria since the eruption of the Gaza war last October. These attacks have often targeted warehouses, trucks, and airports, and Israel’s declared aim for them is degrading Iran’s transnational supply network for the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Monday’s attack was different, however, in that it struck a diplomatic facility – directly challenging Iran’s sovereignty – and killed senior leaders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The most high-profile casualty was Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a veteran commander who led the IRGC foreign operations wing, the Quds Force, in Syria and Lebanon.
How will Iran respond? As it turns out, Tehran has a lot of options – but none of them are very good.
Allies and power politics
A major player in Middle East politics, Iran generally projects its power through a network of ideologically aligned allies and non-state groups – a network that styles itself the “Axis of Resistance”.
These groups include the Houthis of Yemen, Hamas of Palestine, Hezbollah of Lebanon, and Shia militia factions like Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq, plus Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria.
The actors fall on a spectrum ranging from hardcore IRGC loyalists and proxies, like the two Hezbollahs, to autonomous but often dependent partners 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, nonetheless, 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 had been injured however none had 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 obscure threats about further future retaliation and helped Iraqi militias harass US forces – and, over time, the urgency of all of it pale 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 in addition as a result of not doing so would tarnish Iran’s credibility as a regional energy.
However now isn’t a superb time. The area has been aflame for the reason that begin of the Gaza warfare, 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 up to now and pushed Gaza into famine circumstances.
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 Pink 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 purpose to stress Israeli and US leaders to cease the warfare in Gaza.
Though Iran could also be prepared to tolerate the danger of an unintended regional warfare, it has repeatedly proven that it doesn’t need direct battle with Israel or the US and can attempt to hold violence under that threshold.
When Iran-backed teams killed three US troopers in Jordan earlier this 12 months, Washington retaliated with air assaults on Syria and Iraq.
Tehran appeared to again down: Quds Drive commander Esmail Qaani reportedly advised pro-Iran factions in Iraq to cease concentrating on US troops. Since then, they’ve principally been sending drones in opposition to Israel, with little impact.
However failing to reply – or responding solely via low-key proxy actions – doesn’t look like an choice for Tehran, on condition that it has publicly dedicated itself to avenging the consulate assault.
Khamenei has mentioned Iran’s “courageous males” will punish Israel, certainly one of his advisers has warned that Israeli embassies “are not secure”, and two officers not too long ago advised the New York Instances they may retaliate instantly in opposition to Israel, to revive deterrence.
Failing to reside as much as these public threats may make Iran appear weak within the eyes of buddies and foes alike, probably placing it at an obstacle throughout regional unrest and signalling to Israel that continued escalation carries no value.
Iran is probably going additionally involved that assaults on Iranian high-level officers and state belongings may develop into a traditional characteristic of its tit-for-tat battle with Israel, at a really unhealthy second in time.
Preserving battle with Israel and the US beneath management was at all times an essential aim of Iranian overseas coverage. However it’s doubly so now, on condition 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 perspective, surrendering management over the escalatory dynamic to Israel simply earlier than the beginning of one other Trump presidency could be very, very unhealthy 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 nicely positioned to impact a retaliatory motion calibrated to Iran’s considerations about longer-term dangers.
The Houthis in Yemen have been waging a extremely profitable marketing campaign in opposition to service provider transport since final 12 months, 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 Pink Sea, and Israel’s missile defences have been in a position to knock down most of no matter will get via that gauntlet.
The Houthis have struggled to hit Israeli territory, and even then it didn’t have an effect on the warfare in Gaza or regional dynamics meaningfully. In different phrases, whereas Iran may allow and encourage ramped-up Yemeni strikes, it could most likely not do a lot to assist it out of its deterrence quandary.
Khamenei’s drawback is that his greatest instruments in opposition to Israel are additionally those more than likely 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 had been pretty minor – if the missiles crash into the empty desert or detonate with out deaths in an remoted army facility – a post-October 7 Israel is more likely to reply ferociously, probably overshadowing and nullifying the symbolic impression of Iran’s missile strike. It’s not more likely to appear an interesting final result to Iran, on condition that the central plank of its technique has been to keep away from a direct warfare.
Retaliating at scale by way of Lebanon is another choice. Iran has spent many years boosting Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenal, equipping the group with subtle 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 resolution to escalate.
Main assaults from Lebanon would, nonetheless, imply enjoying certainly one of Hezbollah’s greatest playing cards early, and it could 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 concept has been to maintain border violence at a managed simmer since October 2023, as a manner of drawing Israeli assets 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 sort of high-stakes balancing.
The ‘diplomatic choice’
Iran might attempt to hit Israeli diplomatic services, to challenge 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 could be unlikely to kill a Zahedi-type safety chief and thus would not likely be similar to Israel’s assault.
However even a minor assault on an Israeli embassy or consulate may 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 might be overt, utilizing missiles or drones launched from Iranian territory. It will harm Iran’s relations with the host nation concerned, however relying on which nation that’s, Tehran could also be prepared 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 an odd, sudden manner 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 supposed impact.
Repeating that strike now could be a low-risk plan of action. Kurdistan Regional Authorities (KRG) authorities are unable to reply in any significant style and whereas the central authorities in Baghdad may 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 may not be sufficient by itself.
Covert motion – like unclaimed drone strikes, assassinations, or bombings, maybe by way of Hezbollah or another proxy – is another choice. Iran has accomplished 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’ll assist Iran’s deterrence. Whereas killing an Israeli diplomat is likely to be counted as successful for Iranian leaders, the issue they should remedy is how one can make Israel and others assume twice about bombing Iranian belongings.
Discuss 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 make it possible for its response isn’t perceived as too forceful.
Furthermore, it has some ways of attacking Israel, whether or not via its personal army capabilities or semi-covertly via the Axis of Resistance community of pro-Iran factions.
And but, the sum of all these components doesn’t add as much as a lot. None of Iran’s retaliatory choices appears well-adapted to the present state of affairs, during which the stakes are already uncomfortably excessive as a result of Gaza battle.
The accessible 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 may, however at the price of uncontrollable and doubtless unacceptable dangers to Iran’s longer-term safety.
It’s seemingly then that Iran should 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 indignant statements can hurt Israel or dissuade it from attacking once more, however they’ll at the very least present some short-term consolation to the Axis of Resistance hardliners.