How will Iran retaliate against Israel?

Israel recently conducted its most daring operation against Iran. More than three years ago, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency Mossad used a remote-controlled machine gun to kill Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the godfather of Iran’s nuclear program. On Monday, April 1, an Israeli military aircraft dropped a payload on Mohammad Reza Zahedi, one of the most notorious members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), who was meeting with Palestinian militants in Damascus, Syria. . Such airstrikes are not new to Israel, which has carried out hundreds of airstrikes over years in Syrian government-held areas. However, this case was different. Not only because of the individual targeted, but also because the building targeted was an Iranian diplomatic facility.

As you might imagine, Iranians are furious, calling the Israeli attack a grave breach of diplomatic protocol that amounts to an attack on Iran itself. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei warned Israel in his speech this week of an Iranian response. Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz was quick to hit back at Khamenei on X, saying, “If Iran attacks from its territory, Israel will respond by attacking inside Iran.”

It is difficult to overstate Zahedi’s importance to Iran’s regional strategy, and it is not surprising that Israel has been waiting for the right time to remove him from its board. Zahedi is a Revolutionary Guards veteran who joined just two years after the Islamic revolution ousted US-backed Shah Reza Pahlavi from power. He once commanded the ground and air forces of the Revolutionary Guards and served as the head of the Revolutionary Guards for years in Syria and Lebanon. In other words, it played a key role in preventing Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from following the path of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. He was dragged out of the storage drain and killed by the hostiles. Zahedi was also pivotal in cementing Tehran’s strategic relationship with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, making him the only non-Lebanese to serve on the group’s decision-making council.

There is no doubt that Iran will retaliate. The moment Israel wiped out such a prominent Iranian military officer in a building with diplomatic status, it put itself at risk. Iran has already decided to strike back, but without it the Ayatollahs will look like weak old men frightened by Israel’s military might. The White House is “very concerned” about a worst-case scenario in which Israel and Iran find themselves in direct conflict, putting tens of thousands of U.S. troops in the Middle East at risk.

The question is not whether Iran will retaliate, but rather how.

Iran has options, and the Biden administration is likely considering them strategically. One US intelligence assessment said Iranian retaliation could include “swarms of unmanned aircraft or land-attack cruise missiles,” possibly targeting Israel directly. This would be the most consequential and provocative option, similar to the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s firing of Scud missiles at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War. However, the devastation of an Iranian missile or drone attack would be greater than what Hussein accomplished more than 30 years ago, as the quality of Tehran’s missiles exceeds Iraq’s missiles in the early 1990s.

This type of attack against Israel would be unprecedented for Iran. Although Iran has unashamedly expressed its disdain for Israel, and does so on a daily basis, it has never used military force to attack Israel directly. Doing so would be a risky strategy that would force the Israelis, and perhaps even the Americans, to respond even more harshly to Iran. Traditionally, Tehran’s proxies in the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, have carried out most of the movement’s activities. This would allow Iran to inflict damage without crossing a red line that would incite Israel to launch a bombing campaign on Iranian territory.

The Iranian proxy most prepared for such an operation is Hezbollah, which has already been at war with Israel for the past six months in an undeclared war along the Israel-Lebanon border area. Hezbollah is the most powerful non-state military force in the Middle East, stronger than the Lebanese army itself. Estimates vary, but analysts estimate that Hezbollah has at least 150,000 rockets and missiles, some of which are precision-guided. There is no territory in Israel that Hezbollah could not attack during an all-out war, a reality that has so far deterred Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from authorizing large-scale military operations against the group. do not have. If Hezbollah unleashes its weapons on Israel, it will shatter any restraint left by Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Another contingency that Israel must be wary of is assassination plots against foreign diplomats. Israel is not immune to such intrigues. In 2012, when Mossad was killing Iranian nuclear scientists, the Iranian government attempted to fight back aggressively by going after Israeli officials in Azerbaijan, Thailand, Georgia, and India. In the Azerbaijan incident, Iranian intelligence commissioned three Azerbaijanis to kill the country’s Israeli ambassador, but the plan was thwarted by police. In India, a sticky bomb was planted on an Israeli diplomatic vehicle, injuring four people, including the wife of a diplomat.

Ideally, Iran would not retaliate. In this case, perhaps that’s too much to expect.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist. chicago tribune.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.