Iran and Israel are locked in tit-for-tat offensives since Israeli missile attacks hit Iran’s military and nuclear sites resulting in the demise of several senior military leaders and prominent nuclear scientists of the country including the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami, and the chief of staff of the armed forces, Mohammad Bagheri. Israel has named its military campaign ‘Operation Rising Lion’ and Iranian retaliation has been framed as ‘Operation True Promise 3’.
While Iran launched missiles and drone attacks in retaliation and maintained that its missiles struck Israeli military-industrial centers that produce missiles and other war equipment, Israel claimed it successfully intercepted missiles launched by Israel except casualties suffered by dozens of injured civilians. Iran claims that it has neutralized three F-35 fighter jets since Israel began attacking Iranian military and nuclear facilities and it has signaled heavy retaliation ahead if Israel continues with its attacks. Meanwhile, civilian death tolls keep rising in both sides notwithstanding accuracy in reports. There are also reports which point to Israeli plan of regime change in Iran that did not receive backing of the US.
Israel could prove its superior, devastating and precise airstrike capabilities in all the attacks launched by it against Iran and the latter’s weakness was palpable in its feeble and ineffective retaliation twice last year in April and October. Israel with unstinted American support has been emboldened enough to carry out destructive military campaigns in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran ever since it began its campaign in response to October 7, 2023 massacre caused by Hamas.
Israel considers a nuclear Iran a nightmare. It has long been enjoying the advantage of being surrounded by non-nuclear states. This time, it has launched preemptive missile attacks against Iran in a bid to roll back and destroy the latter’s capabilities to develop nuclear weapons whereas the details about the locations of Iran’s nuclear reactors and uranium storehouses are still shrouded in mystery. However, these are likely to invite Iranian retaliation in different forms.
Commentators on International Laws argue that Israel has violated the long-standing norm by attacking a country not in self-defense as the Iranian nuclear threat was not imminent and such preemptive strikes demonstrate Israeli impunity to act in defiance of international laws that it has done in Gaza.
The attacks launched amid the diplomatic drive of the Trump administration backed by threats of sanctions to cut an effective deal with Iran to put its nuclear programme in cold storage probably targeted at putting additional pressure on Iran to forswear its nuclear weaponization programme.
It is apparent that fall of Assad regime in Syria which was long propped up by Iran and serious structural damages done to the Iranian proxies such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon by Israel has sufficiently weakened Iran in the region. Nonetheless, the possibilities that Iran could bounce back and stage calculated clandestine attacks on Israel cannot be discounted.
The Conflict Can Take Different Paths
Any possibility of ground operations by Iran against Israel is ruled out by the fact of sheer distance between the two and lack of Iranian allies to host its forces close to Israel’s borders. Iran and Israel are separated by three intervening states – Iraq, Syria and Jordan.
Iran has been trying to improve its drone and missiles delivery capabilities reportedly with the assistance of Russia after its successive failure against Israel. It may take time but could still be able to launch lethal attacks defying Israel’s air defense systems and iron dome.
The attacks may prompt Iranian attacks on the transport of oil in the Gulf and efforts to close Straits of Hormuz. However, this would dampen Iranian economy which is driven by oil exports and it would lead to uncontrollable spike in oil prices leading to international pressures on Iran. Iran would rather follow the clandestine path of cyberattacks that it successfully used to cut off supply of electricity to Israeli hospitals in the Summer of 2023. Israel, however, retaliated with its own attacks on Iranian gas stations.
It is likely that any Iranian response to such massive and devastating Israeli missile attacks would be in the form of clandestine operations such as cyber-warfare or terrorist attacks. Iran can impose asymmetric challenges on Israel through masterminding terrorist attacks even while the strength of its regional proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas has been greatly compromised. It is through long-term planning, reconnaissance, stealth operations, maneuver, manipulation strategies, Iran could launch cyberattacks and/or reorganize its proxies to strike targeted Israeli assets.
The real dangers attached with the attacks could be more disastrous. It could provoke Iran to forgo all its commitment to international treaties and agreements designed to contain the militarization of its nuclear programme such as the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, 1968 (NPT) to which it is a signatory and Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, 2015 (JCPOA) from which the Trump administration withdrew in 2018 but European countries, China and Russia still uphold this. Iran has enough of enriched uranium stored in different places to develop multiple nuclear weapons and it is also believed that it has enough of uranium feedstock that could be enriched to weapon grade. Israeli attacks are unlikely to destroy all these Iranian facilities developed secretively hidden from international observers. The latest Israeli attacks would rather compel Iran to go nuclear in the absence of parity in conventional military, drone and missiles capacity to threaten Israel. Israeli attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 intended to roll back Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme resulted in exactly the opposite which subsequent researches confirmed later. The Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear sites have raised the possibilities of nuclear contamination. An effective nuclear deal with Iran was the need but Israel’s missiles attacks have opened up many harsh and acerbic possibilities.