Iran wants its Israel retaliation to hurt but not start a wider war

Iran faces a dilemma over how to deliver a meaningful blow to Israel without prompting a war that could engulf the Middle East.

That challenge appears to be delaying an attack that was widely thought to be imminent days ago.

“Iran is stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said Dina Esfandiary, a senior adviser on the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group. “It’s going to want to retaliate in a way that’s significant enough to deter Israel from increasing the escalation spiral. But it’s not going to want to do something to prompt a regional war that will drag the U.S. in.”

Iran has said it wants to punish Israel for last week’s assassination of a leading Hamas figure in Tehran, but not to the point of starting a region-wide war. It’s emphasized the need to reestablish “deterrence” against its arch enemy, which has neither confirmed nor denied being responsible for the death of Ismail Haniyeh.

It could choose to target military sites in Israel — similar to the rocket and drone barrage it carried out in April. That did minimal damage, partly because the move was effectively telegraphed in advance, helping the Israeli air force shoot down the vast majority of the projectiles with help from the U.S., UK, France and Jordan. Under pressure from the U.S., Israel responded with a limited strike on an Iranian airbase that meant tensions soon eased.

Another option is to use Iran’s network of armed proxies including militias in Iraq, Lebanon-based Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen to hit Israel with missiles and drones.

The aim would be “to overwhelm Israel’s air defense capabilities and disrupt military and, potentially, civilian infrastructure,” said Burcu Ozcelik, senior research fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute. “The assault could take place over a series of days.”

It might be hard to do so with real surprise, though. While ballistic missiles would take over 10 minutes to cover the 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) from Iran, cruise missiles and drones could take hours. Israel and its allies would probably have time to detect the threats and mount interception strikes.

Within Iran, there was shock that Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader, was assassinated in the heart of Tehran in a government guest house.

“The Islamic Republic and its Axis of Resistance have no red lines when it comes to punishing” Israel, Kayhan, a conservative newspaper in Iran, said on Tuesday in an editorial, referring to Tehran’s network of non-state allies.

Fears about a reprisal have prompted the U.S. to send more fighter planes, warships and missiles to the region back Israel.

There’s been a surge of coordinated diplomatic activity involving Western and Arab officials. The Group of Seven and Qatar have reached out to Iran in a bid to temper its next move, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

Jordan’s foreign minister made a rare visit to Tehran with a similar aim.

All the diplomacy may result in a “more calculated, limited response” from Iran, according to Ozcelik.

Middle East geopolitics have been upended since Oct. 7 when Hamas, listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and and the European Union, swarmed into Israel from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage.

Israel’s subsequent offensive has killed more than 40,000 people, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave.

As Iran contemplates its next step, the risk remains that a miscalculation, most likely from proxies taking their missile and drone attacks too far, will draw a much stronger counter attack from Israel. That could be hugely costly for a clerical leadership already experiencing high levels of dissent at home.

“They don’t want to sleepwalk into a regional war that they can’t win,” Esfandiary said.

—With assistance from Patrick Sykes and Ethan Bronner.