How will Iran respond?

New Statesman​

6 hours ago

An aerial view shows the destroyed houses and vehicles after the attacks of Iranian army following the launch of large-scale Israeli strikes against Iran in Rishon LeZion, Israel. Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images
The war between Israel and Iran is limited only because of the distance between the two countries. They share no border and so, unlike most wars, this one is not about territory and does not involve armies. Instead it is being fought with long-range aircraft, drones and missiles. For this reason, so long as it remains confined to these two countries, it cannot go on indefinitely. Their capabilities will become depleted, Iran's before Israel's, but exactly when is hard to say.
The possibility that Israel would one day hit Iran's nuclear infrastructure and wider military capabilities has been discussed for years. The conflict has been much more contained than expected, however. Iran's regional proxies, once expected to punish Israel with barrages of their own rockets and missiles, have largely been spectators. The Gulf states, who would once have been urging Israel on (and may still do so privately) have publicly condemned the strikes and provided no grounds for Iran to bomb their oil facilities, as it has done before. Tehran may still decide to disrupt the movement of oil by closing the Gulf of Hormuz, hoping to create a sufficient international crisis to pressure Israel. But the big difference with the old scenarios concerns the Americans. They assumed that unilateral Israeli action would be risky because it was doubtful the country could eliminate Iran's nuclear capabilities without US support. Yet Israel has gone it alone, leaving Iran with a quandary: if it hits American assets to punish them for supporting Israel, an unbearable US response would be triggered. This would suit Benjamin Netanyahu.
Part of Netanyahu's electoral appeal is that he knows how to play the US political system better than any of his political rivals. He has been around long enough to have exasperated every American president since Bill Clinton. This has largely been because of his refusal to allow any serious progress towards a Palestinian state. But his inflexibility, which has varied according to the nature of his coalition, has been combined with the consistent denunciation of Iran as the deadliest threat not only to Israel but to the rest of the Middle East. His demand for US action became more urgent once it emerged early in the century that Iran had embarked on a covert nuclear programme.
Netanyahu actively opposed the Obama administration when it negotiated, along with European states and Russia, capping Iran's uranium enrichment. He even appealed directly to Congress but his efforts were thwarted when a deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was agreed in 2015. He resumed his opposition, with Saudi support, in Trump's first term from 2017. Trump was sympathetic to the complaints about the limits of the JCPOA, largely because it was negotiated by Obama, so in 2018 the US abandoned it. This was followed by tougher sanctions on Iran but not, as Netanyahu might have hoped, direct military action against the nuclear sites (though attacks on US personnel in Iraq led to the assassination of the Revolutionary Guards leader Qasem Soleimani). Trump always said that his aim was to get a better deal.
The Israelis have previously explored a variety of means to disrupt and delay Iran's nuclear programme, including cyberattacks and occasional assassinations of scientists and engineers.
Two factors always held the Israelis back from mounting the sort of attack now underway. The first was the difficulty of being sure that any military action would be successful, a problem that only got more difficult as the Iranians increased protection of facilities they knew would be targeted. The second was the threat of retaliation from nearby Iranian proxies – Hamas in Gaza to the south and Hezbollah in Lebanon to the north. Hezbollah, in particular, was kept well supplied by Iran, including with rockets and missiles. The group showed itself to be a tough opponent for Israel in 2006. In Hezbollah, Iran had a valuable deterrent, ready to be unleashed if either the US or Israel, or both, took military action against it.
The events set in motion by Hamas's attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 changed all these calculations. A variety of reasons have been adduced for the assault – stopping an imminent Israel-Saudi deal to normalise relations; revenge for right-wing settlers' push to take more of East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Palestinians; exposing the ineffectuality of the rival Palestinian Authority; and acquiring Israeli hostages to use in exchange for getting militants released from Israeli prisons.
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The horror of the attack and the unrelenting ferocity of the Israeli response transformed all the power dynamics in the region. Netanyahu set the elimination of Hamas as a political objective. This has still not been achieved, despite all the carnage and the humanitarian calamity inflicted on the people of Gaza. Hamas, however, is no longer able to take the fight into Israel. More problematic for Iran: nor can Hezbollah. In October 2023 Hezbollah's leadership, undoubtedly in consultation with Tehran, decided they had to do something. With Hamas, they were part of the Iranian-led anti-Zionist 'axis of resistance'. But they did not commit all their capabilities, for these still needed to be kept in sufficient reserve as a deterrent. They were also well aware that provoking a full-scale war with Israel would be deeply unpopular in Lebanon. So instead of throwing the full weight of its military strength at Israel in concert with Hamas, which would have put Israel under severe pressure during the early stages of the war, Hezbollah opted for a limited operation, opening another front with regular exchanges of fire – but remained relatively restrained.
This turned out to be a poor strategy. Once Israel had done enough in Gaza to release troops, it turned on Hezbollah. Israel began its campaign in September 2024 in spectacular fashion, using exploding pagers to take out much of the organisation's command structure, followed by strikes against key figures in its leadership, including the secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, and much of its military capacity. With its losses growing, Hezbollah had to abandon its solidarity with Hamas and accept a ceasefire.
Then came a further blow for Tehran: the Syrian government suddenly collapsed in December. Bashar al-Assad had only survived a long civil war with the help of Iran, Hezbollah and Russia. By late 2024, none were able to do much for him. Of Iran's regional allies, only the Houthis in Yemen kept up a fight by continuing to threaten shipping in the Red Sea and occasionally lob missiles in Israel's direction.
All this left the clerical regime in Tehran looking increasingly beleaguered. The economy was in a mess, there were increasing signs of popular disaffection and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was ailing without there being an obvious successor. When given the chance, Iranians voted for the most moderate candidate allowed – Masoud Pezeshkian was elected president in July 2024. The return of Trump to the White House, with his threat of additional sanctions, didn't ease anxieties in Tehran.
Netanyahu celebrated Trump's victory. He was always happier with Republicans, even though the Democrats had paid a heavy political price for the cover Joe Biden had given him over Gaza. Now Netanyahu had a president who would not expect Israel to make concessions to Palestinians and would also use his own good relations with the Saudis to press for normalisation. This was despite Saudi Arabia continuing to stress that this was dependent upon Israel recognising the need for a Palestinian state.
Yet Trump had his own agenda. Even before his inauguration, the US president told Netanyahu he wanted a ceasefire in Gaza. This was arranged by officials from the Biden administration, working with Steve Witkoff, who has since become Trump's all-purpose negotiator. The agreement with Hamas, which led to the release of hostages, lasted until mid-March. By that point, extremists in Netanyahu's coalition were getting edgy. The questions he was desperate to avoid about the future governance and reconstruction of Gaza were coming to the fore. So Netanyahu broke the ceasefire, which clearly made Witkoff unhappy. But Trump did nothing, his mind now on other matters. No attempt was made to restrain Israel.
With Iran, Trump took the possibility of a deal seriously and Witkoff was once again his negotiator. (It is a measure of the lack of capacity at the top of the administration that Witkoff serves as Trump's main negotiator, including with Vladimir Putin, while Marco Rubio is secretary of state, national security adviser and head of the US Agency for International Development, or USAID.) Trump also made it clear to Netanyahu, both privately and publicly, that so long as there was the chance of a diplomatic breakthrough, he should not even think about unilateral military action.
With Oman providing the venues and some mediation, both the US and Iran made positive noises about how the talks were progressing. Iran, however, could only agree a deal that allowed them a substantial amount of nuclear enrichment. Congressional hawks, as well as Israel, objected to this, insisting that the only acceptable outcome was no enrichment at all. After the last round of talks on 23 May, Witkoff passed on a proposal that offered much less than the Iranians had hoped – the regime rejected it. More talks were scheduled, so the process had not quite run its course, but the mood had turned pessimistic.
Netanyahu had the opening he wanted. He spoke to Trump on 9 June, outlining his plan. Trump offered neither a red nor a green light. Without a clear veto, Netanyahu seized the moment. That evening he agreed for the operation to start on 13 June.
The Israeli prime minister's confidence that any threat from Hezbollah had been neutralised proved justified. His assessment that Trump would not condemn the attacks was also correct, while he acknowledged that the decision to launch the strikes against Iran was his, and undertaken without expectation of any American contribution. Yet his task would be much easier if the US did join in.
Trump campaigned last year against getting involved in more wars. Other than permitting his military to provide additional defence against Iranian missiles, Trump first confined himself to praising Israel's military effort, suggesting it is doing fine on its own. He has warned Iran of dire consequences should it attack American targets. Posting on Truth Social, Trump said 'we now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran', and claimed the US knows Khamenei's location but isn't going to kill him – 'at least not f0r now'. The administration also revealed it told Netanyahu not to kill Khamenei, and Trump has even spoken about how that well-known peacemaker Vladimir Putin might be able to mediate. The US President believes that deals are the way to solve all international problems. By contrast, Netanyahu distrusts deals about two big issues – the Palestinians and Iran.
At first, and perhaps too hastily, Iran insisted that there was no point in negotiations. They called off talks with the US scheduled for 15 June. They have complained that the Americans not only knew Israel was about to attack – self-evident as the US told its non-essential personnel to leave the country two days before it took place – but also that they actively supported the strikes, which is less clear. They have, however, refrained at the time of writing from acting on this suspicion, and have concentrated on the 'Zionist' enemy. We can assume that every country Iran is talking to is urging them to keep it that way.
Israel has attacked many sites connected with the nuclear programme. It does not yet appear to have hit the stockpile of enriched material (which would create a substantial radiation risk). It has struck Iran's two key enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow and both have been damaged, but by how much remains uncertain. Pre-war assessments suggested that many strikes would be needed to destroy these underground facilities and, at Fordow, built deep into a mountain; only the US has the capacity to do this. So the war may end with Iran's programme degraded but not eliminated. Netanyahu has increasingly suggested regime change is also an objective. The concern about Iranian nuclear weaponry is genuine (and it is always worth noting Israel already has its own), but the actual Iranian threat since its 1979 revolution, before which the two countries were friends, has been to organise and arm its regional armies and make Israel's destruction the centrepiece of its foreign policy. Ending that regime would be a triumph for Netanyahu.
Even before the war, Iran's regime was fragile. Israeli strikes have weakened it further, and it is now fighting for its survival. It has shown defiance and enough of its missiles have got through to hurt Israel. But the regime has also lost control of its air space and can do little to protect its people and its economy. What happens next, however, is up to the Iranian people. Israel can engineer neither an insurrection nor a coup.
Against this backdrop, might Trump's offer of talks appear attractive? Iran needs them more than Israel. Hints from the administration that it might be prepared to enter the war may be designed to encourage Iran to move quickly, though if it doesn't Trump could be tempted to finish what Israel has started, when Tehran is unable to resist. Iran might prefer a simple ceasefire, but Trump has pressed for 'unconditional surrender' – which means Tehran must negotiate on the verge of defeat, with the old agenda now dated, ending up with something far worse than the proposal it recently rejected. The prospect of becoming a 'threshold' nuclear state will then be remote, however much the Israeli attacks have left the regime wishing it had its own nuclear deterrent. Yet Iran has few options left. It may no longer even be able to widen the war, as the Americans are gearing up to finish it off if Iran doesn't raise a white flag.
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