Iran Attacks Israel

Israel's Response Options and the Road Ahead in the Middle East

Image: @Visegrad24 at Twitter / X

Iran this morning directly attacked Israel.

Normally Iran is content employing its many proxies across the Middle East to attack Israel and its interests. Iran employed up to 200 drones and missiles in its assault on Israel. However, it has subsequently issued a statement through its permanent mission in the United Nations that states that:

Conducted on the strength of Article 51 of the UN Charter pertaining to legitimate defense, Iran’s military action was in response to the Zionist regime’s aggression against our diplomatic premises in Damascus. The matter can be deemed concluded.

The problem is that Iran’s attacks directly against Israel are a significant shift in Iranian strategy. And as Iran will probably discover, just because Iran believes its attacks today ‘conclude the matter’, that may not necessarily be so. Israel also ‘gets a vote’ and is probably unwilling to allow this shift in Iranian strategy to go unpunished.

As many Israelis described during my December 2023 visit there, in the wake of the 7 October Hamas massacres, deterrence will need to be re-established.

The Attacks

Israeli military sources have described how Iran targeted multiple military sites across Israel. The Iranians used a mix of drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles. The attacks, according to the Iranians, were launched from four separate locations in Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon.

This four-pronged attack, utilising different types of drones and missiles, mirrors the tactics for the employment of multiple forms of attack against targets employed by Russia in Ukraine (which I described in this article, published this morning). The Iranians will have studied this Russian approach and are probably receiving lessons direct from Russia in return for their assistance in providing Shahed drones to the Russian military.

The U.S. has stated. before the attacks and since they began, that it will defend Israel, and has the military assets in the region to contribute to this mission. As the graphic from Ian Ellis Jones shows below, the U.S. has considerable ability to detect and intercept attacks on Israel.

Image: @IanEllisJones at Twitter / x

According to open-source reporting, the U.S. did manage to shoot down multiple Iranian weapons. Jordan has also apparently participated in destroying Iranian missiles and drones that travelled over its territory. The British Royal Air Force has also contributed to this effort.

But the heaviest lifting in the response to this attack fell to the Israelis. They launched dozens of air force aircraft, and their missile detection arrays and interception systems were all involved in a networked defence against the Iranian assault on their country.

Besides direct attacks from Iran, the Iranians also have the ability to call on its proxies to launch concurrent attacks to overwhelm Israeli sensors, C2 and decision-making. This appears to have been the case today.

Iranian future options include massed missile attacks from Hezbollah out of Lebanon (where they have 100-200K missiles), as well as attacks from Syria. Israel has been targeting Hezbollah missiles for a while but won't be able to destroy them all.

What’s Next?

There is likely to be a flurry of diplomatic activity across the Middle East and in European capitals now in order to seek either a ceasefire and to de-escalate the situation. It might also be expected that the U.S. will undertake a rapid airlift of air defence missiles and other materiel from the U.S. to Israel in the wake of these attacks.

There are also some important questions at this stage, for which we don’t yet have good answers.

First, is this a short 'performance attack' to retaliate for the attack on the Quads force officers, boost Iran's regional reputation and exploit what Iran believe's is Israeli weakness? Or is it something larger? The statement by the Iranian permanent mission at the United Nations indicates that the attacks might be the former. But, it is early days yet.

Second, what is Iran's ultimate goal here and its strategy to achieve it? This is a major shift in the way the Iranians have attacked Israel for years. Proxy forces are normally Iran’s preference in order to keep it at arm’s length from a potential Israeli response. Why has it decided on such a drastic course change in its strategy to confront Israel?

Third, how significant will Israeli retaliation be? Israel has made clear that there will be some form of retaliation for today’s Iranian attacks. It has previously rehearsed long-range attacks against Iran before. Israel has several strategic options for how it might respond:

• Option 1: Israel may elect to not directly respond to Iran’s attack. This would possibly de-escalate the situation but risks setting a new normal in the Middle East strategic environment where Iran can attack Israel up to a certain threshold without major retaliation. Israel not retaliating would probably please many Middle East governments (at least openly), although they also now have to ponder if Iran – willing to take on Israel directly – might not be willing to attack them directly as well.

• Option 2: Israel responds with a proportionate attack against Iranian military targets in Iran. Israel has rehearsed attacks against Iran in the past, and probably has the capacity to do so at short notice. It is certain to be one of the strategic options that the Israeli cabinet is now considering. This would be accompanied by cyber attacks, information warfare and possibly other Israeli acts of sabotage against the Iranian regime.

• Option 3: A proportionate regional response. This is a variation of Option 2 where Israel conducts a series of attacks against Iranian targets across the region but not within Iran itself. This is probably going to be a feature in any Israeli response.

• Option 4: Israel might decide that a massive hammer blow against Iran is needed to re-establish deterrence (if indeed that is possible any longer). Could Israel use this as a casus belli to attack Iran's nuclear weapon programs directly as well as a range of military and political targets in Iran? This would be a significant escalation of the Iran-Israel conflict.

All of these are possible in the hours and days ahead. All have advantages, as well as considerable disadvantages, for the Israelis. But one thing is certain, the concept of ‘re-establishing deterrence’ against Iran will be an important guiding idea.

And, it is uncertain whether the Iranians are really prepared for what they may have unleashed against their country and the wider region.

Uncertain Days Ahead

There is much uncertainty about how this situation will all play out over the coming hours and days. There is potential for an even larger scale war in the Middle East, depending on Iranian and Israeli decision making. Is de-escalation possible?

As could be expected, a flood of misinformation is now washing across the internet, particularly on social media. Readers should exercise caution and validate sources when doom-scrolling about these latest events. There are many outrageous claims already in the information space, most of which have either no evidence or not basis in fact.

Unfortunately, this situation will probably dominate the attention of the U.S. administration.  It is a long way from the comments of U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan’s comments last October that “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” The U.S. is apparently already lobbying for a ‘toned down’ Israeli response.

These events in the Middle East will certainly please Iran’s partners in the new era Axis of Evil, Russia and China. It creates more chaos in the global security environment and is a further distraction for the U.S. and will draw the attention of the media away from Russia’s brutal aerial assualts against Kharkiv and other Ukrainian cities. China too will be comfortable with U.S. distractions from confronting Chinese aggression across the Indo-Pacific.

And for the Ukrainians desperately seeking more U.S. assistance, the likely step-up in U.S. assistance to Israel may impact the chances of more aid to Ukraine.

Therefore, while it is tempting to look at the situation in the Middle East as a unique issue, it is actually part of a much wider confrontation that is underway. The authoritarian quad of Iran, Russia, China and North Korea are in an ideological battle against the West. What happens between Israel and Iran has an impact in eastern Europe and in the western Pacific. Any strategy for the way forward in the Middle East and beyond must take this into consideration.

For now, the immediate future of the Iran-Israel conflict remains uncertain. We await the next move, probably by Israel, in the coming hours.