Will Iran Miscalculate Its Way into a War?

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, October 01, 2024

 

The rapid decimation of Hezbollah, Iran’s best-armed militant group in the ring of terrorist networks that surround Israel, has forced the Islamic Republic’s hand.

 

“The United States has indications that Iran is preparing to imminently launch a ballistic missile attack against Israel,” a senior White House official informed reporters on Tuesday morning. “We are actively supporting defensive preparations to defend Israel against this attack. A direct military attack from Iran against Israel will carry severe consequences for Iran.”

 

Much depends on the shape that a second direct Iranian attack on Israel takes. “The ‘ring of fire’ may also be activated, in an effort to overwhelm Israel’s air defenses,” the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Jonathan Schanzer warned. He refers to the so-called “Axis of Resistance’s” consolidated and coordinated capacity to launch drone, rocket, artillery, and missile attacks on the Jewish state — a volley of fire that has the potential to penetrate Israeli anti-air capabilities.

 

We have every indication that the United States will reprise the role it took in April, supporting Israeli efforts to neutralize the incoming barrage and limit the damage inflicted on Israel. And yet, we have fewer indications that Israel’s Sunni Arab partners in the region — the Jordanians and the Saudis, in particular — will be as active in their support for a defensive contingency as they were in the spring. Regardless of what Iran hopes to communicate with this attack, an assault that yields significant Israeli casualties will beget a significant Israeli response.

 

That is not an outcome Iran would welcome. The Islamic Republic never delivered on its promise to mete out retaliation against Israel for the covert bombing of a diplomatic safe house in Tehran that killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Its hands were stayed by the remarkable penetration of Iranian intelligence and security networks, as well as Jerusalem’s use of an unknown weapon in response to the April attack on Israel that evaded Iran’s sophisticated Russian-provided air-defense systems. Iran may attempt to save some of the face it has lost amid the dismemberment of its terrorist proxies by mounting a calibrated attack on Israel that is, while not designed to fail, unlikely to produce the kind of devastation that would ignite a full-scale regional war.

 

But that kind of signaling is open to interpretation. The Trump administration could have decided that Iran’s first-of-its-kind ballistic missile attack on U.S. positions in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the strike that took Qasem Soleimani off the battlefield was no off-ramp but an escalation. But the Trump White House chose to see that attack and subsequent strikes on U.S. outposts by Iran-backed Shiite militias as a dignified climbdown. The Israelis could have reacted to the 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles fired by Iran on its territory as an act of war. It chose to decline to respond with overwhelming force — certainly in deference to U.S. inducements, but Israel has shown that it is not disinclined to go its own way when its security interests dictate as much. The form Iran’s attack takes is as important as how its targets interpret it and their best courses of action in response.

 

But what if Iran is not interested in merely saving face? What if the regime believes the time is ripe to test its freedom of action? April was a long time ago. In the interim, the Biden administration has sent dozens of public signals that it is frustrated by Israel’s vigorous campaign of self-defense. Moreover, the Biden White House has responded to direct, “complex” attacks on U.S. Navy assets in the Red Sea by the Iran-supported Houthi terrorist militia by declining to retaliate. The regime may be foolish enough to take the Biden administration’s signals at face value. If so, it could embark on a misadventure that induces Israel and its American allies to mount a response they would otherwise forego. Face-saving exercises are a two-way street.

 

The Middle East is set to experience another stress test. Any outcome is possible. We should hope that cooler heads prevail, but wars can be a product of intentionality as well as miscalculation. Even if a conflagration in the region is in no one’s best interest, there may be no way to stop one.