Preliminary Analysis of Iran’s October 1 Strike On Israel
WARNING: I am writing this less than an hour after Iran’s ballistic missile strike against Israel on October 1. Facts may change as new information has come to light. These are my initial thoughts:
The Middle East is at war like we haven’t seen it in a very long time.
A short time ago Iran launched a significant ballistic missile strike against Israel. This is noteworthy for a few reasons:
It’s rare. Iran has only launched a handful of strikes like this. The one launched a few months ago, the most dramatic before today, was only the second major strike that I am aware of. As I wrote at the time and as I’ll describe below, that strike was mostly for show — another act in the dramatic, but dangerous, political theater that has characterized this conflict for years.
This time was different. In the past, Iran’s strikes against Israel were announced ahead of time with lots of pompous bloviating, and were largely shot down. In the last strike, the only missiles or drones that made it through Israel’s air defenses did relatively minor damage to an Israeli air base. They were designed for show. This time, many Iranian missiles broke through the IDF defenses and impacted near Tel Aviv. This may have been more political theater, but this time the guns the Iranian actors are waving at the audience were loaded.
Timing — with the recent IDF airstrikes that left Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and dead and most of the head of the Hezbollah snake cut off, any action by Iran will be viewed as part of the wider regional war.
But is the region really at war? If you peel back the layers a little, this action from Iran does not look dramatically different than previous actions, though as we saw with Hezbollah that may not matter to Netanyahu.
A Decade of Political Theater
Here’s the reality that all the major players — Netanyahu, the Iranian regime, the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas — have had to negotiate over the years: they are all in power because they militantly oppose the other side. Each represents a faction of radical individuals who want to militarily oppose or even eliminate their enemy.
But the problem they all face is that actual hot war could have two equally problematic results: either they could lose, angering their constituents and potentially dying in the process, or the conflict could end in a negotiated settlement, maybe even a lasting peace, which would make the existence of a pro-war party unnecessary. To retain power they have sought a dangerous kind of balance where each on of them periodically attacks their nemesis, often in response to world events, without triggering an escalation. The challenge is to always be looking like they’re outdoing their opponent when in reality they are never seeking to do more than “cut the grass.”
The last 12 months have destroyed this balance. Hamas, on its own, launched the October 7 attack on Israel, causing Hezbollah to launch rockets in solidarity with the Palestinians. But Israel’s response has been much more extreme, and in the last few weeks most of Hezbollah’s leadership has been destroyed. Netanyahu has flipped the table rather than continue to play the game.
Netanyahu is now redefining this game. He has stalled or disrupted negotiations on the Gaza issue. For months he has been trying to provoke Iran and Hezbollah and has failed. Now he has their undivided attention.
What about tonight’s strike?
On the surface it looks like Iran also came to play the new game tonight. Iran’s last strike was designed to be intercepted, a show of force without much risk of escalation (or so they thought). Tonight, the strike was clearly designed to penetrate Israel’s air defenses and make an impact.
Yet with all that said, initial reports are that almost all the airstrikes hit Tel Aviv, Israel’s second biggest city that is none-the-less further from the front lines and has less symbolic significance than other possible targets. Furthermore, initial reports are that only a handful of people were injured in this attack, despite the fact that many Iranian missiles did indeed penetrate air defenses and strike target. The center of the city was not targeted. It doesn’t look like many Israeli military facilities were targeted either. In fact, the only one that was (that I know of at time of writing) was the one that was hit last time:
The real news is that Iran hasn’t necessarily launched a scarring attack against Israel, but it overwhelmed Israel’s vaunted air defense system. Iran has proven that if it wants to kill Israelis it is more than capable. But tonight was not their attempt to do so.
Will it matter? Israel has already vowed retaliation, and Iran has already said that they are preparing more strikes. Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon has not yet materialized, at least not in large scale. Deescalation remains a possibility. But we do not know Israel’s full intention against Hezbollah, nor do we know how effectively Hezbollah will respond. We also don’t know whether Israel will treat today’s strike as more of the same, business as usual, or whether they will overturn the game board with Iran as they did with Hezbollah.
What is more clear after tonight’s strikes, however, is that once again Iran has put the ball in Netanyahu’s court. It’s up to him what happens next.
