October 1, 2024 - 7:15pm
Iran has launched a significant ballistic missile attack on Israel in response to Israel’s recent killing of Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran back in July.
An Iranian attack was always likely. Iran would have perceived a need to restore deterrence amid the devastating losses that Hezbollah has suffered in recent days. The scale and, in terms of the pager-walkie talkie attacks, very publicly embarrassing nature of these attacks would have caused Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to view the credibility of Iran’s theocratic project as jeopardised. The initiative wasn’t simply with Israel; Iran looked impotent and humbled. Khamenei needed to respond in order to show both his regional partners and adversaries that his regime has the resolve and capacity to respond.
Still, the scale of Iran’s attack is significant. Undue attention has been drawn here to Iran’s apparent warning to the United States that a missile onslaught was coming. The intent was to give the US time to tell Israel to prepare its citizens to take shelter. Instead, what matters most here is how Israel will perceive Iran’s attack. Because Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government will likely perceive this strike as highly problematic.
While Israel downed a large number of Iranian ballistic missiles, a large number penetrated the defensive effort. It’s not clear how many Israelis have been killed or injured, but that’s only one consideration that will shape Israel’s response. What matters is that major Israeli population centres have suffered a non-insignificant number of impacts by Iranian ballistic missiles. That reality will be seen as having undermined Israel’s deterrence posture against its arch nemesis.
Israel will want to restore deterrence in order to ensure Iran does not believe it can replicate this action without major cost. This point takes on additional importance in regards to Iran’s future prospective threat to use ballistic missiles loaded with nuclear or chemical/biological warheads. The psychological trauma of the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks still loom large in the Israeli civilian and security apparatus psyche. Israel wants to show it is both powerful and bold.
It’s also important to note that Netanyahu clearly senses the political and strategic wind is at his back. And because Netanyahu’s relationship with President Biden is already on life support, Netanyahu might feel that he has a window before the next US president takes office. While Israel lacks the ability to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme, for example, it could do significant damage to that programme. At a minimum, we will see significant Israeli strikes on IRGC and Iranian conventional forces. This will almost certainly include strikes on Tehran. Israeli strikes against Iranian refining capabilities may also occur.
The challenge for the US is to balance Israel’s response alongside deterrence of Iran against carrying forward the escalation spiral. Khamenei and his commanders are now paranoid about their own regime’s security and may seek to jeopardise regional energy flows, stability in capitals such as Baghdad and Beirut, and exacerbate concerns related to terrorism. This would also risk tying down the US military in an environment where Chinese aggression against the Philippines is growing and the need for a stronger posture in the Pacific is urgent. The US needs Israel’s response to this attack to end the current cycle of violence.
In short, Biden isn’t likely to be returning to the Delaware beach anytime soon.
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SubscribeDon’t underestimate Biden’s resolve to return to the beach.
Jim, I always look forward to your comments!
I am confident that Iran and Hezbollah will be successful in their policy “escalate to deescalate”.
After all, that is what Israel and the US are saying is the right way to approach the situation.
What could possibly go wrong?
The Obama/Biden policy in the Middle East has been an unmitigated disaster.
It’s ironic that Trump probably did more than either to promote real peace in the region.
I am somewhat worried about Israel in the long-term future – the Israelis have so many enemies, and are so reliant on the US for support, that I suspect they’ll struggle to survive once the older generations of Americans age out and are replaced by my own (27M) generation, which is much more pro-Palestine.
That said, I don’t think there’s much reason to worry about an immediate total war in the Middle East, the present crisis notwithstanding. Israel and Iran are just too far apart to deal serious damage to each others’ homelands, and attacks like the current one have to go through weak buffer states where Israel has any easy time shooting down the missiles (likewise, the supply lines to the Houthis and Hezbollah go through weak buffer states). And modern military technology is much more tilted in favor of the defender than it was during the last really big war.
I’ve written on these themes before on my own site:
https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/why-im-still-not-worried-about-world
The gist of it is that changes in geography, demographics, and weapons technology over the last 80 years have made it much less likely for regional conflicts to spiral out into global conflagerations.
highly problematic
Highly problematic? I don’t think that is at all what they will be thinking.
I thought that. Woke terminology gets everywhere.
So the maniac Israeli regime have got their response. We can now look forward to a few days of narrative framing about how the Iranian attacks were ineffectual whilst the Israelis shut down all reporting from various significant sites around their country.
Yes antisemite.
Proper response is to nuke Iran.
Like USA did with Japan.
You can not reason with Muslim savages.
So this is the Promised Land? 80 years of living in an open-air bunker? If I were a Jew I would cry false advertising. I’d rather live in Pico-Robertson.
Do you prefer the Garden of Eden? Man’s journey on this world, in the Holy Land or outside of it, is not designed for peace until Messiah comes.
‘If I were a Jew …’: as you’re not you won’t understand. Jews who visit Israel for the first time often describe amazement knowing that even the policemen are Jewish.
Only utter fanatics call Israel “she” and “her” in English. It is a very good way of spotting them. Keir Starmer is one such. He has as good as confirmed that Britain is involved in the bombing and invasion of Lebanon, and will be involved in the bombing of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, as it has been involved in everything else that Israel has done over the last year, and indeed for a lot longer than that.
Even before he came to office, Starmer was far more extreme in his support for Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir than anyone in the then British Government was in public, even including any of the present candidates for Leader of the Conservative Party. If France did not defend Lebanon, then Emmanuel Macron would have turned it, too, into just another American colony.
Elsewhere among centrist caricatures, Mark Rutte has today become Secretary General of NATO because that is the will of Viktor Orbán; centrism and right-wing populism are con tricks to sell exactly the same economic and foreign policies to different audiences by pretending to wage a culture war. But Rutte also owes his elevation to the backing of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has promised to support Lebanon “with all our means”, and who has told Netanyahu that, “Like Hitler, you will be stopped sooner or later.”
Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon have their faults, but if anywhere in the region is to be described as “moderate”, then it is certainly not Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, or the United Arab Emirates. That last was recently deemed so unfit to own two small-circulation newspapers and a tiny-circulation magazine that, with cross-party support, the Statute Law of this land was amended to prevent the acquisition. And I had updated by CV and everything.
Russia wrongly invaded div > p:nth-of-type(9) > a”>Ukraine to protect populations that had historically been in Russia and wanted to be so again, and to eliminate elements that were overtly Nazi and therefore, as a first principle, an existential threat to Russia. Even so, that invasion was wrong, as is Britain’s arming of those Nazis, under a puppet President whose term of elected office has expired, and now even Britain’s permission of them to use those weapons inside Russia, which is a direct act of war.
Likewise, Hezbollah does want to destroy Israel, as a first principle. But no one in Lebanon wants to live in Israel, nor do the Israelis want them to. It wants to clear them, or, to use the BBC’s word, “cleanse” at least the land south of the Litani of them, before settling its own people in their place. If the Russian invasion of Ukraine was wrong, then the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, to which the Iranian bombing of Israel is a direct response, is even more so. And if the British arming of Ukraine, which we have no treaty obligation to defend, is wrong, then the British arming of Israel, which we have no treaty obligation to defend, is even more so, and even more so again after the use of those weapons to murder British military veterans who were serving as aid workers.
If any of this has anything remotely approaching a silver lining, then it is that, from the Ukrainian occupation of a small corner of Kursk, to the Iranian bombing of Israel, it is the theory of nuclear deterrence that has been blown to Kingdom Come. Even Mossad’s headquarters has been hit. It is in a densely populated, civilian area of Tel Aviv, the inhabitants of which must therefore be “human shields”.
Nice succinct explanation of where we are David. Starmer really is an awful PoS. Re Erdogan though – his statements are never backed up with action. He has the ability to cut off most of Israel’s oil supplies right now. Until he does it’s all rhetoric, it’s all BS.
Agreed. I did appreciate Scott Ritter’s point in this though: if you want to be seen as a reliable energy supplier, you must deliver to everyone and anyone, under any circumstances. As soon as Erdogan weaponises the spigots, he loses all credibility as a supplier.
Only utter fanatics call Israel “she” and “her” in English
Actually: Many people use she and her to refer to nation states.
For instance the UK may regard it as being in her interest to put an end to a murderous barbarian regime.
Utter rubbish.
There was Ukrainian independence referendum in 1991.
Both Donbass and Luhansk voted over 83% to be part of independent Ukraine.
Even Crimea voted 54% for it.
So I am sorry Ivan but your stories are just Russian propaganda lies.
I accept that sovietskaya scatina like you wants genocide of Ukrainians like in 1930s but that should not be allowed.
Act of war may result in war. News at eleven.
When Trump was president, the world was at peace while America was in turmoil.
When Biden is president, the world is in tormented turmoil and America is at peace.
Which do YOU prefer?
You think America is at peace? You literally have no borders & millions of foreign criminals at large.
“While Israel downed a large number of Iranian ballistic missiles, a large number penetrated the defensive effort. It’s not clear how many Israelis have been killed or injured”
From what I have been reading:
1) 181 of 200 missiles reached their (military) targets.
2) There are no reports of civilian casualties
Sure, the second more or less symbolic missile attack by Iran since the start of the year may trigger full-scale conflict, because what else on earth could be the reason ?
You are completely brainwashed, buddy.
No Israelis were killed. Damage to property only, and minimal at that. The only known victim is a Palestinian from Gaza who had managed to get to Jericho, in the West Bank, only to be killed by falling missile debris. Footage from Iran indicate that at least 4 missiles failed upon launching and exploded in Ispahan. Hardly the way for Iran to reestablish its deterrence against Israel. This attack is probably meant more for the proxies, who are getting tired of getting hammered while Iran sits back and does nothing.
This time the Iranians put some more than symbolically relevant massive craters in the Negev close to the Israeli Dimona nuclear facility. The warning is clear.
Since no civilians were killed the Israelis class the attack as a total failure
Only a religious maniac, outright fascist or out-of-other-options criminal desperate not to spend the rest of his life in prison would escalate this towards attacking Iranian nuclear facilities given that the Iranians have just made some rather large craters in the Negev not too far away from the Israeli Dimona nuclear facility. I wonder what Benjamin Netanyahu will do following this clear warning.
https://x.com/runews/status/1841182179490938992
Let’s nuke Iran.
Is this definite enough for you?
I wouldn’t be so sure that Israel doesn’t have the capability to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. The end result depends if Iran has the stomach and capability to cripple Israel, and at what cost. If they don’t they lose face, if they think they do, it will be an all-out war. If Israel wins, it still won’t be over, and if they lose, it is the end of their country. Israel has everything and yet nothing to lose. That is an extremely dangerous situation.
Resulting in a carefully telegraphed attack involving a demonstration that Iran has the ability to strike more serious blows than it is choosing to inflict. But “undue attention” has been given to the precaution of warning the US and Israel in advance and therefore…
Which apparently justifies the following.
“At a minimum, we will see significant Israeli strikes on IRGC and Iranian conventional forces. This will almost certainly include strikes on Tehran. Israeli strikes against Iranian refining capabilities may also occur.”
So, when Iran wishes to restore deterrence, they do so carefully in order to avoid escalation. But when Israel does so they show no such concern.
Remind me which oif these parties is recklessly provoking a regional conflagration. And, while we’re at it, remind me which one has the illegally acquired nukes?