At the United Nations last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu displayed a map of the region labelled “The Curse.” It showed a swath of the Middle East in black that encompassed Iran, Syria, and Iraq, with outposts in Lebanon and Yemen.
“It’s a map of an arc of terror that Iran has created and imposed from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean,” Netanyahu declared. “Iran’s aggression, if it’s not checked, will endanger every single country in the Middle East, and many, many countries in the rest of the world, because Iran seeks to impose its radicalism well beyond the Middle East.”
Israel has not been content to launch attacks against Iranian proxies. Back in April, Israel struck Iran’s diplomatic compound in Damascus, killing three senior Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) officials. Over the summer, in a brazen violation of Iranian sovereignty, it detonated a bomb inside a guest house in Tehran to assassinate a top Hamas leader. And in the most recent aerial attack on Beirut that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Israel also killed a top Iranian military official, Gen. Abbas Nilforushan of the IRGC.
These last two attacks have come after elections in July elevated a reformer to the presidency in Iran. They have come after Iran has given a number of indications that it is reevaluating its unremittingly hostile policy toward Israel. They have come after the Iranian government has showed signs of willingness to restart nuclear negotiations with the United States.
If Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November, Israel will once again have an ally that is equally committed to confronting Iran, militarily if necessary.
But if Kamala Harris wins, the stage will be set for a potential return to a détente in U.S.-Iranian relations.
Certainly, the Israeli government is interested in weakening both Hamas and Hezbollah. Certainly, it wants to push back against Iran on various fronts.
But perhaps the real motivation for Netanyahu right now in attacking Hezbollah and refusing a ceasefire in the conflict in Gaza is to goad Iran into retaliating and burying all hopes of a reconciliation between Washington and Tehran. This week, with Iran lobbing missiles at Israel, everything is so far going according to plan. What’s not yet clear is whether Netanyahu will reap a side benefit of making the Biden administration look foolish, thus elevating Trump’s electoral chances in November.
Iran’s Restraint
Imagine if Russia had somehow smuggled a bomb into Volodymyr Zelensky’s hotel room in Washington, DC and managed to assassinate him on his recent visit. The United States might very well use such an attack as a casus belli to declare war on Russia. The only thing that could stay Washington’s hand would be Russia’s nuclear arsenal and the potential for planetary annihilation.
Israel’s assassination of a Hamas official inside Iran at the end of July might have triggered an all-out war—if not for Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Of course, Tehran threatened revenge. Its retaliation for the attack on the Iranian compound in Syria, which took place two weeks later in mid-April, might have looked impressive: 300 missiles and drones aimed at Israel. But only a few evaded Israeli defenses, and there were no Israeli casualties.
Israel has an advantage over Iran in terms of intelligence and technology. How on earth did it smuggle a bomb into one of the most secure buildings in Iran and then trigger it at just the right moment to kill its target? And how did it manage to turn hundreds of pagers and walky-talkies into hand-held bombs that killed and injured Hezbollah operatives along with many Lebanese civilians? These were intelligence failures on the part of Iran and its proxies, to be sure, but they also reveal the patience, planning, and technological sophistication of the Israelis.
In other words, it’s not just Israel’s nukes that serve as deterrent.
In effect, Iran is practicing a policy of “strategic patience.” It knows that it’s outmatched in any conventional (or nuclear) conflict. In response to successful Israeli operations, its feckless missile attacks on Israel have been more theater than actual military campaign. In some cases, it has been even more restrained, for instance, after the death of three U.S. soldiers in Jordan in January when it instructed its allies not to escalate their attacks against U.S. targets.
In general, the successes that Iran and its allies have had against Israel have been in guerrilla warfare. “Hezbollah and Iran are conserving military resources and waiting for Israeli ground forces to enter a trap inside Lebanon territory,” former Iranian journalist Mohammad Mazhari concludes.
In its eagerness to “teach Hezbollah a lesson” and draw Iran into a wider war, Israeli forces may just be walking into that trap once again.
Change in Iran?
While Netanyahu beat the drum of the Iran threat at the UN, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian took a different tack in his speech to the General Assembly:
I embarked on my electoral campaign with a platform focused on “reform,” “national empathy,” “constructive engagement with the world,” and “economic development,” and was honored to gain the trust of my fellow citizens at the ballot box. I aim to lay a strong foundation for my country’s entry into a new era, positioning it to play a effective and constructive role in the evolving global order.
Pezeshkian also announced his willingness to work on reviving a nuclear agreement. What he said in private meetings was perhaps even more important. For instance, he promised to accept whatever agreement that Palestinians favored to end the conflict with Israel, which presumably includes the two-state solution that Iran has traditionally opposed because it would mean acknowledging Israel as a state.
Indeed, after replacing Ebrahim Raisi, who died suddenly in a helicopter crash last May, Pezeshkian has quietly charted a different trajectory for Iranian foreign policy. One important indication is the team that he has assembled. Head of the foreign policy team is Abbas Araghchi, who played a key role in orchestrating the 2015 nuclear deal with the United States and other countries. Javad Zarif, the face of Iran’s negotiating team that year, is now vice president for strategic affairs. The cabinet contains plenty of conservatives, but the foreign policy team is both ready and experienced in the politics of détente.
Outside observers ascribe Iran’s “tepid” response to attacks on Iranian territory and against allies like Hezbollah and Hamas to Iran’s relative weakness. “The biggest explanation appears to be simply that Iran is weaker than it wants the world to believe,” writes David Leonhardt in The New York Times. “And its leaders may recognize that they would fare badly in a wider war.”
Another explanation, however, is that the consensus inside Iran is shifting, not simply within the political establishment (which has swung from reformism to conservatism and back again) but within the governing religious bodies as well. This is not a doctrinal transformation so much as a coming to terms with different geopolitical realities, particularly within the Middle East.
Contrary to Netanyahu’s ominous presentation at the UN, Iran is not experiencing a massive expansion of its influence. To be sure, it can count on support from Syria, a significant share of Iraq’s population, and the three Hs: Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. But Syria’s still a mess, Iraq is divided, and the three Hs are reeling.
Meanwhile, Sunni powers in the region like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey are ascendant. The Abrahamic Accords, pushed by Trump and embraced by Biden, rallied Sunni powers like the United Arab Emirates and Morocco to recognize Israel. Saudi Arabia was next in line when Hamas disrupted the looming rapprochement by attacking Israel on October 7. So concerned was Iran about the prospect of the Abrahamic Accords cutting it out of regional geopolitics that it concluded its own détente with Saudi Arabia in 2023 after seven years of severed relations.
World War III?
The risk of regional escalation is large. This week, Iran fired missiles at Israel, though they have done limited damage. Israel wants an excuse to strike back against Iran, particularly against its nuclear complex. The United States has expanded its military footprint in the region as a visible sign of preparedness. Although Israel has declared that its invasion into Lebanon will be limited, the government has generally pursued maximalist goals—the destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah—even in the face of doubts from the Israeli Defense Forces.
The Israeli government aside, nobody wants a regional conflict. The Israeli government aside, everyone after October 7 has practiced a degree of restraint. Iran, in particular, has absorbed the kind of punishment that rarely goes without serious retaliation in today’s world of geopolitics. To a certain degree, it has satisfied demands both internally and externally for retaliation against Israel without inflicting any serious damage—like a short fired into the air in a duel. At some point, however, Iran might feel compelled to abandon its strategic patience and take more lethal aim at Israel.
To prevent a wider war, the Biden administration had best be conducting non-stop quiet discussions with Pezeshkian’s foreign policy team. Even while expressing support for Israel, the United States has to go over Israel’s head to negotiate with Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu is a problem that must be isolated somehow within Israel and somehow within the region.
But how to pry Netanyahu out of his office and put someone in his place with at least an ounce of pragmatism? The prime minister continues to wage war because war keeps him in power. So, too, did Antaeus draw strength from the earth until an opponent lifted him into the air to defeat him. That is the essential question today: figuring out a way to separate Netanyahu from war and thus deprive him of his power.
