The Iranian missile attack was another strategic mistake

In hindsight, Iran made a major strategic mistake in April when it fired some 300 missiles and drones at Israel, only to find that virtually all of them were shot down or failed. Tuesday’s barrage, smaller in number but stronger, appears to be another mistake.

The Iranian leadership had hoped to restore deterrence, which clearly failed in early April when Israel attacked the Iranian consulate in Damascus. Senior officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed. Tehran’s response was aimed at demonstrating power without inflicting casualties that could force a potentially overwhelming Israeli retaliation.

The intended message was clear: We don’t want a real war, but if one comes, see what we can do. And yet the attack instead projected weakness. It showed Israel that Iran lacked either the ability or the will to hit back hard. The Israeli retaliatory strike that followed – a single precision strike that destroyed air defenses near an Iranian nuclear site – left no doubt about Israel’s capabilities or intentions.

Since then, clerics in Tehran have watched as Israel beheaded and degraded Hezbollah, the most powerful activist in its so-called Axis of Resistance. While one Hezbollah commander after another was killed, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard general was seriously injured and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed while we were in Tehran, no less. Iran’s leaders talked big about punishment and then let nothing happen.

But the bunker-busting attack on Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut, which killed the group’s charismatic leader Hassan Nasrallah and another senior IRGC general, was too much to ignore. The alternative was to be dismissed as a paper tiger, not only in the Arab world – as had already happened – but also among its Axis customers and, worst of all, at home. For an unpopular, repressive regime that preaches revolution in the name of God, ridicule and perceived weakness can be fatal.

Early reports indicate that while many rockets were fired again, this time, as expected, more rockets penetrated Israeli air defenses; There were no days of detailed signaling beforehand that allowed Israel and its allies to prepare. The barrage also consisted of an estimated 200 ballistic missiles, which are much faster than the cruise missiles and drones prevalent in April. According to an analysis by Fabian Hinz, a defense scientist at the London Institute for International and Strategic Studies, the ballistic missiles deployed on Tuesday were also more modern and sophisticated models than before.

But the volley on Tuesday evening may prove to be an even bigger mistake.

There were no immediate reports of fatalities, although two men armed with an assault rifle and a knife killed at least six innocent people in what appeared to be an opportunistic terrorist attack in Jaffa, near Tel Aviv. So if this Iranian attempt was again aimed at restoring deterrence without provoking a war between states that it was unlikely to win, then that was clearly a failure and a sign that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei wasn’t paying attention.

The official Twitter feeds of the Israeli government, from the Foreign Ministry to the Israel Defense Forces, were quick to emphasize that the Iranian missiles targeted 10 million civilians. An image of rockets flying high above Jerusalem’s holy sites suggested that they, too, were on Tehran’s hit list, although their trajectory made it clear that they were not. The IDF spokesman promised significant retaliation. What form this takes will be crucial.

“Israel has no choice but to respond,” Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official, told me once the barrage ended. This time he expected it to happen quickly and on a much larger scale than in April. It may be that no one was killed in Tuesday’s ballistic missile attack, he said, “but this is not a video game.” Furthermore, Iran’s second miscalculation represents an opportunity for Israel that it is unlikely to be able to ignore.

The IDF can now impose an even more acute dilemma on the Iranian regime. A major Israeli missile attack will destroy more assets and be much more publicly visible than the one in April. Dismissing Israel’s drones as toys, as regime officials did last time, will not work. Khamenei and his generals will have to decide whether to do nothing and thereby lose even more credibility and deterrent power, or whether to retaliate and risk a potentially catastrophic war that could even affect the United States.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has explained his reasons for taking advantage of this type of opportunity. In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week, he said that Israel should be supported in its attempts to positively transform the Middle East and that the path lies through the defeat of the Iranian clerics and their proxy axes.

He painted a convincing picture. Israel is clearly enjoying great military successes at the moment and the Iranian regime is undoubtedly a malign force for its people and the region alike. The temptation to bring home current benefits could prove overwhelming. Furthermore, Nasrallah’s death has sparked a chorus of support in Israel and among hawks in Washington – if not President Joe Biden – backing him to finally deal with Iran.

And yet, previous attempts to transform the Middle East have not fared so well, including those that initially brought shocking and awe-inspiring military success; Think back to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. That will of course be different, because there would be no troops on site – at least not in Iran itself. But how a policy of escalation to de-escalation actually works would still be difficult to control. “Reckless, just reckless,” Barbara Slavin, a skeptic and Middle East expert at the Stimson Center in Washington, told me.

Ruthless, Churchillian, or both, the decisions that will shape both U.S. actions and the course of the Middle East now lie, as so often of late, squarely in the hands of Israel’s Netanyahu.