For more than four decades, Iran’s rulers have vowed to destroy Israel. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rarely appears in public without wearing a black-and-white checkered Palestinian kaffiyeh.
Iranian military commanders are happy to train and arm groups across the region that are enemies of Israel, including Hezbollah and Hamas. And when Hamas carried out the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel that killed 1,400 people, Iranian officials praised it as a significant achievement that shook the Jewish state’s sense of security.
Now Iran faces a dilemma: It must weigh how it and its proxy militias – known as the Axis of Resistance – should respond to Israel’s invasion of Gaza and the killing of thousands of Palestinians, and whether to bolster its revolutionary credentials, even as the There is a risk of a flare-up of a broader regional war.
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“There is no need for Iran to directly intervene in the war and attack Israel itself because it has Resistance Axis militias that follow Iran’s policies and strategies and act on its behalf,” said Nasser Imani, a pro-government analyst Telephone interview from Tehran, Iran. “Right now, Iran is in control mode – asking everyone, including Hezbollah, to keep things going but exercise restraint.”
Currently, Iranian officials are publicly signaling that they do not want an all-out war.
“I would like to emphasize once again that we do not seek the expansion of this war,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said in a recent interview at the Iranian mission to the United Nations. He was in New York to attend UN meetings on the war. But he added: “The region is at boiling point and can explode at any moment, and that may be inevitable. “If that happens, all sides will lose control.”
He warned that regional militias in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria could open multiple fronts against Israel, with a high potential “that the result will be that things don’t go the way the Israeli regime wants.” He did not elaborate on what would prompt the groups he said were acting independently.
Still, Iran does not want a regional war that poses risks to the country and its religious rulers, according to three Iranians close to the government who are familiar with internal deliberations and insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues. The military capabilities of its allies could be significantly diminished by a protracted battle with Israel, even more so if the US military enters the fight.
The Islamic Republic views the militias as its extensions of influence, capable of striking while providing Iran with a measure of deniability. They give Iran influence in international negotiations and a means to shift the balance of power in the Middle East away from archenemies like Israel and the United States and rivals like Saudi Arabia.
But if Iran does nothing, its firebrand leaders risk losing credibility with its voters and allies. Some hardline Iranian conservatives have questioned why Iran’s actions do not match its rhetoric about liberating “Al-Quds,” or Jerusalem, from Israeli rule. Many supporters of the Iranian government have even symbolically volunteered to send to Gaza and fight against Israel.
“In the first scenario, Iran risks losing an arm; In the second scenario, Iran risks losing face,” said Ali Vaez, Iran director of the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention research and advocacy group. “Iran may seek to square this circle by allowing its allies to escalate their attacks against Israel and the United States in a calibrated manner.”
Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi militia in Yemen have recently launched attacks on Israel, but the scale has been limited. The goal for now is not all-out war but rather to keep the Israeli military under pressure and potentially limit its ability to wage war against Hamas, people familiar with Iran’s strategy said.
Hezbollah, one of Iran’s closest and most powerful allies, and Israel have fired artillery and small arms fire many times since October 7, but their attacks have been limited to border areas. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, is expected to make his first public comments since the start of the war on Friday, which observers expect will set the tone for the group’s next steps.
“We have said from the beginning that we are present in this war,” Hashem Safieddine, chairman of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, told Iranian media on Tuesday. Hezbollah will not discuss its plans, he added, because “we will act when necessary, we don’t talk.”
The Houthis have also signaled their involvement by firing missiles and drones – including a barrage on Tuesday – that shot down U.S. and Israeli forces.
“There is complete coordination at all levels between all leaders of the resistance axis,” Houthi spokesman Mohammed al-Bukhaiti told Iranian media on Tuesday.
Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Gen. Mohammad Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said in a Telegram post that regional militants were being deliberately calculated. “In practice, other fronts have already been opened, but the scale of attacks is being controlled,” Mohammadi said.
Iran-backed militant groups in Iraq and Syria have stepped up attacks on U.S. military bases in both countries after a period of calm. Iran wants to put pressure on the Biden administration to rein in Israel, or at least create the appearance that the United States is paying a price for its unwavering support of Israel.
In retaliation, US forces bombed facilities in Syria last Thursday that the Pentagon said were outposts of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Amirabdollahian called the US attacks “for show.”
Imani, the analyst in Tehran, said there was no doubt that Iran had financed, trained and armed the militants and provided technological know-how to build its own arsenal of drones and missiles – particularly in Gaza and Yemen, where there are blockades It is almost impossible to deliver heavy weapons.
Iranians familiar with the government’s deliberations say Iran and Hezbollah are monitoring whether Hamas faces a serious existential threat from Israel that would prompt it to accelerate its attacks on Israel. Senior commanders in Iran’s Quds Force and Hezbollah believe that if Israel succeeds in wiping out Hamas, it will come back for them, the Iranians said. The Quds Force commander, General Esmail Ghaani, has been in Beirut for most of the past three weeks, the Iranians said.
The deputy commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Brigadier General. According to Iranian media, General Ali Fadavi said in a speech at a ceremony in support of Gaza on October 22 that “Iran will fire missiles at Haifa if necessary.” He said Iran helped shift Palestinian groups’ military capabilities from “stones and arrows” to “drones and missiles.”
The threat of escalating war has alarmed the United States and Israel. The Biden administration publicly warned Iran and its proxies against escalating the conflict. It signaled that it does not seek war with Iran and called on Iran to restrain its allies.
Amirabdollahian confirmed that Iran and the United States exchanged messages. “We have told Americans clearly that America is in no position to advise others to exercise restraint when standing fully alongside the Zionist regime during a war,” he said.
But for all sides, the risk of misjudgments remains high, which could lead to the conflict spiraling out of control.
“Besides what Tehran can control, there is also the dangerous possibility that some of its regional partners with looser ties or a track record of ignoring Iranian advice will take uncoordinated actions that present Tehran with a fait accompli,” Vaez said. “For nearly four decades, Iran’s forward defense policy has protected its own soil from foreign attacks. The conflict in Gaza is testing the limits of this policy in an unprecedented way.”
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