Iran's Strikes on Israel

The prospects of regional war and actors' calculations

I am sure many of my readers were up late last night live-tracking the strikes by Iran and its ‘axis of resistance’ against Israel in retaliation for the Israeli bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus. The strikes themselves were bigger in scale than might have been expected but were nonetheless calibrated, with Iran considering its response to be sufficient if the response deters future Israeli strikes on Iranian targets.

In light of the unprecedented nature of the strikes on Israel, it is tempting to carry headlines about how the fate of the entire Middle East supposedly hangs on the edge. Yet this sort of talk is very sensationalist. The prospect of an all-out regional war is still far-fetched, simply because neither Israel nor Iran wants it. Ultimately, as Jonathan Spyer has pointed out, the Iranian and ‘resistance axis’ long-term strategy regarding Israel is not that a major regional war needs to be launched or that nuclear weapons need to be acquired for the purpose of striking and wiping out Israel in one massive blow . Rather, the logic is that Israel is seen as internally weak and fragile (hence the common refrain that Israel is supposedly ‘weaker than a spider’s web’) and thus continual pressure without launching an all-out regional war can eventually induce Israel’s collapse. There is no reason to think that this logic has changed. In this context also, Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons manufacturing capability should be seen as motivated by a desire to establish deterrence against disruption of its activities and those of its regional allies.