Israel Has Called Iran’s Bluff
6 min read
At the center of current conflicts in the Middle East is a long-running staring contest between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. And Netanyahu seems to have calculated that, even if Israel moves ferociously against Khamenei’s so-called Axis of Resistance—the region-wide network of militias arrayed against Israeli and Western interests—Khamenei won’t do much in response.
Yesterday, Israel’s attacks on the southern suburbs of Beirut killed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader since 1992. That was only the latest in a dramatic series of strikes this month, including a sci-fi-esque operation using exploding pagers, that have killed high-ranking commanders of the Lebanese militant group and hundreds of Lebanese civilians. Hezbollah has been widely viewed as the most significant non-state threat to Israel. Nasrallah was easily the most powerful operative in Iran’s Axis.
Hamas is also part of that Axis. And ever since the July 31 assassination of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, many in the Middle East have been bracing for an Iranian attack on Israel that could plunge the region into a broad war. But the response hasn’t come. Ultimately, Tehran decided against risking a major escalation with Israel. Khamenei has maintained his policy of “strategic patience,” slowly building militias surrounding Israel on all sides without getting into a direct confrontation.
Whether Nasrallah’s death will alter Khamenei’s cautious approach seems questionable. A statement yesterday from the Iranian embassy in Beirut claimed that the “rules of the game” had now changed, and threatened Israel with “appropriate punishment and discipline.” Predictably, the hard-liner mouthpiece Kayhan, whose history includes praise for Adolf Hitler and insistent Holocaust denial, declared today, “Israel has dug its own graves; now go ahead and bury its corpse.”
But officials in Tehran have been notably more reticent. Several simply pointed out, after yesterday’s strike but before Nasrallah’s death was confirmed, that whenever Hezbollah’s commanders are killed, they’ll be replaced with others. This was the position taken by Ahmad Vahidi, the founding head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, who helped build Hezbollah into the formidable force it is today. Tehran has deep-seated reasons for showing restraint in recent weeks—reasons that still hold no matter how egregious it views the killing of Nasrallah to be.
First, Iran’s options for retaliation against Israel are very limited, and it can’t bring about much damage there without risking a destruction of Iranian infrastructure that might take decades to rebuild.
Second, Iran has been trying for months to ease tensions and pursue talks with other countries in the region and with the West. This past week in New York, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, a visiting Iranian delegation headed by President Masoud Pezeshkian defended Hezbollah and Hamas but put its main focus on giving out peace vibes. Pezeshkian even told a group of American journalists that Iran would put down its arms if Israel also did so. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later denied that the president had made such a statement, but Iranian hard-liners leaked audio that confirmed it.
Araghchi himself is spreading the message that Iran wants the international community to stop Israel from broadening the conflict. Araghchi said on X that he had warned, in a meeting earlier this week with his British counterpart, David Lammy, that “Israeli attacks must cease immediately to avoid unprecedented risk of all-out catastrophe in region.” In Tehran on Tuesday, Pezeshkian’s spokesperson, Fatemeh Mohajerani, likened the recent attacks against Hezbollah to Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. She called on the UN Security Council to “intervene to prevent catastrophes like Gaza and Rafah in Lebanon.”
Such calls for measured action by the global community sound quite different from the stance taken by Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Qassem, who last week warned that the group’s war with Israel had entered “a new phase of limitless settling of accounts.” Tehran isn’t Hezbollah. Although Pezeshkian had claimed on CNN that Hezbollah was unable to defend itself “on its own,” seemingly promising Iran’s entry into the conflict, his foreign minister essentially corrected that statement. Addressing reporters on Wednesday morning, Araghchi promised that Hezbollah “makes its own decisions and is fully capable of defending itself, Lebanon, and the people of Lebanon on its own.”
This is another way of saying that Iran doesn’t intend to rush to Hezbollah’s defense. Iran’s Lebanese allies are on their own. Javad Zarif, Tehran’s favorite English-speaking messenger who now serves as a vice president, repeated the same talking points on CNN on Thursday.
Iranian hard-liners are incensed at this attitude. Even before Nasrallah’s death, Iran’s political debate was starting to resemble the period from 2013 to 2021, when the centrist President Hassan Rouhani’s negotiations with the United States and other countries in the West led to a backlash in Iran. Earlier this week, one commentator accused Pezeshkian’s government of abandoning Hezbollah and claimed that if Iran didn’t respond to the attacks on Lebanon, Israel would attack Tehran next.
A centrist outlet responded by criticizing “extremists who always want to drum up tensions.” The anti-retaliation case was put forward most explicitly by Mohammad Khajoee, the head of the Lebanon section at a top Tehran think tank and a former Beirut bureau chief for Iran’s main news agency. In an article on Thursday in a reformist-leaning daily, he argued that “Iran must not enter itself into a military conflict with Israel. It must quickly find a way for Hezbollah to save face and leave this recent war, without suffering more damage.” Iran, Khajoee wrote, “must convince Hezbollah to finish its clashes with Israel and go back to pre–October 7 conditions.” Khajoee even criticized Hamas for getting Iran and the Axis into a war they hadn’t prepared for.
What Iran does next is up to Khamenei. The supreme leader has not given up on his decades-long crusade against the West, Israel, and his own people’s insufficient purity. But he has understood that intransigence could prove self-destructive for his regime and is thus putting out feelers for negotiations with the West that could help lift sanctions and stabilize the country. His open support for Pezeshkian limits the gambit of hard-liners, who are also hated by much of the Iranian population and even by many in the establishment.
In Tehran, many are cautiously hoping for a new era of talks with the West. A prominent Iranian diplomatic correspondent expressed the hope this week that negotiations with European countries to revive the Barack Obama–era Iranian nuclear deal and lift sanctions will soon resume, perhaps to be followed by discussions with the United States after the November presidential election.
But what if Tehran’s reticence tempts Israel into continuing its battering of Hezbollah? Netanyahu might feel that he has called Khamenei’s bluff and can now march on further, thereby keeping his fractious right-wing coalition happy and intact. The Axis might then increase its pressures on Tehran to get into the ring. Already, Yemen’s Houthis and Iraqi militias have fired salvos in Hezbollah’s defense.
Still, an uneasy equilibrium has been kept so far, preventing a full-on war between Israel and Iran. Israel would do well to take Nasrallah’s death as a resounding win against the Axis and use the occasion to wind down the wars against Hezbollah and Hamas. If there was ever a time for Israel to pursue peace with its neighbors from a position of strength, this is it.
