After Hezbollah’s response, all eyes are on Iran

Now all eyes are on Iran, which had said it would also deliver a “painful response” to Israel after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in Tehran hours after the death of the Hezbollah commander.

The Hezbollah attack, which followed what Israel called a preemptive strike on Sunday, drew congratulatory statements from Hamas and Iran-backed Iraqi militants, while Houthi rebels in Yemen called for more attacks. Israel said no major damage was caused. Casualties and damage in Lebanon were also limited, Hezbollah said.

Messages from Iran have been less clear.

On Sunday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did not directly address the operation but said that “war has many forms,” ​​adding: “It doesn’t always mean holding a weapon. It means thinking correctly, speaking correctly, identifying correctly, aiming accurately.”

Iran’s parliament speaker said Israel suffered a defeat at the hands of Hezbollah similar to the 2006 defeat between Lebanon and Israel. “They cannot hide this defeat,” he said. Iran’s foreign minister said there would be a “precise and calculated” response to Israel but that “unlike the Zionist regime, Iran does not seek to escalate tensions, even if it does not fear them.”

The question is whether Iran will use Sunday’s strike by Hezbollah – which has claimed success – as cover to avoid further escalation, as Tehran seeks a response that would deter Israel from further attacks while avoiding triggering a regional war.

“Its calculation is not necessarily in synergy with the rest of the resistance axis,” said Sanam Vakil, a Middle East expert at Chatham House in the United Kingdom, referring to Iran’s network of allied militias in the region. “You shouldn’t always assume that Iran is going to intervene or that it’s going to be involved in what comes next.”

The influence of the Hezbollah attack on Iranian plans will depend on the extent to which Tehran sees itself as a party to the Hezbollah operation. “It is not clear at this point whether Iran sees this attack as part of its own retaliation,” an Israeli security official said.

Some of Iran’s allies, such as the Houthi rebels in Yemen, have pushed for a harder line.

Houthi Defense Minister Maj. Gen. Mohammad Al-Atifi said on Sunday that he wanted to “reassure everyone that the response of the Axis of Jihad and Resistance to the crimes of the Zionist enemy is imminent and inevitable.”

Washington remains concerned that Iran could become more directly involved in the conflict. But a U.S. official said such an attack did not appear imminent. “It could have inflamed the region, but fortunately the Israelis were able to successfully defend themselves against the Hezbollah attack,” the official said.

Officials in Washington say they have no plans to change the increased U.S. military presence in the region.

Last week, a second group of U.S. aircraft carriers arrived in the region. The USS Abraham Lincoln and its accompanying ships traveled from the Pacific as part of the United States’ efforts to increase its military presence.

It joins the USS Theodore Roosevelt strike group, which is operating in the Middle East. The United States has also deployed a squadron of Air Force F-22 Raptors, and the USS Georgia, a cruise missile submarine, is nearby.

The Roosevelt could return home in the coming days, depending on the United States’ assessment of the security situation, U.S. officials said.

Immediately after Haniyeh’s assassination, Khamenei said it was Iran’s “duty to take revenge” and that Israel had “prepared the ground for severe punishment.” The country’s acting foreign minister, Ali Bagheri-Kani, told diplomats this month that Iran’s response would be “final and decisive.” Days later, however, Iran’s top diplomat said the country’s response would come “at the right time and in the right form.”

Since the massacres in late July, the United States and some Arab countries have been working to deescalate tensions. Israel has vowed heavy retaliation against Iran if it directly attacks the country again. In April, Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones into Israeli territory, an attack that was largely thwarted through coordination with the United States, Western and Arab allies in the region.

Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, believes that Iran is considering a different response than in April, based on his own analysis and non-public intelligence assessments. The reasons, he says, are threats from the United States and promises from Israel that its retaliation would be much stronger than in April, as well as internal opposition from Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian, who hopes to improve Iran’s economy and relations with the West.

Yadlin said Iran could seek another type of retaliation, including the possible targeting of a senior Israeli official.

The Hezbollah attack could allow Iran to de-escalate the situation, said Danny Citrinowicz, a former head of the Iranian branch of the Israeli military and now a fellow at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies. The pressure on Hezbollah would be greater to respond to the assassination of Fuad Shukr, since he was a Hezbollah official and was killed in Beirut. But Haniyeh was not Iranian.

“They have the ability to respond in a less severe manner than Hezbollah attempted to do today,” Citrinowicz said.

Haniyeh’s assassination differs in crucial ways from the April attack on a diplomatic building in Damascus, which triggered Iran’s unprecedented direct attack on Israel that month.

“The idea that Iran could launch hundreds of missiles in retaliation for this type of attack runs counter to Israel’s deterrence goal,” said Daniel Sobelman, an Israel-based fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. “The whole reason Israel went to all this trouble,” for the alleged covert action, “was to force the Iranians to retaliate within these parameters, within certain rules of the game.”

Alexander Ward and Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this article.

Write to Dov Lieber at [email protected]