JERUSALEM (AP) — It’s Iran’s move now.
How the Islamic Republic decides to respond to the unusually public Israeli airstrike on its homeland could determine whether the region moves further toward all-out war or remains stable at an already devastating and destabilizing level of violence.
In the coolly calculating realm of Middle Eastern geopolitics, an attack of the magnitude Israel carried out on Saturday would usually be met with a strong response. A likely option would be a new round of ballistic missile attacks that Iran has already launched twice this year.
Military reprisals would allow Iran’s clerical leadership to show strength not only to its own citizens, but also to Hamas in Gaza and the Lebanese Hezbollah, the militant groups fighting Israel and forming the vanguard of the so-called Axis of Resistance in Tehran.
It is too early to say whether Iran’s leadership will follow that path.
Tehran could decide against direct retaliation for the time being, not least because it could expose the country’s weaknesses and invite a stronger Israeli response, analysts say.
“Iran will play down the impact of the strikes, which are actually quite serious,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at London-based think tank Chatham House.
She said Iran is “locked in” by military and economic constraints, and by the uncertainty caused by the US election and its impact on US policy in the region.
Even as wars rage in the Middle East, Iran’s reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has signaled his country wants a new nuclear deal with the US to ease crushing international sanctions.
A carefully worded statement from the Iranian military on Saturday evening appeared to provide some wiggle room for the Islamic Republic to back away from further escalation. It suggested that a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon was more important than any retaliation against Israel.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s ultimate decision-maker, was also measured in his first comments on the strike Sunday. He said the attack “should not be exaggerated or downplayed,” and he did not call for an immediate military response.
The Israeli military said Saturday’s attacks targeted Iranian air defense missile batteries and missile production facilities.
In doing so, Israel has exposed vulnerabilities in Iran’s air defenses and can now more easily increase its attacks, analysts say.
Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press indicate damage from Israel’s attack on the Parchin military base southeast of Tehran, which experts previously linked to Iran’s former nuclear weapons program and another base linked to its ballistic missile program.
However, the current nuclear sites were not affected. Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed this on X, saying: “Iran’s nuclear facilities were not affected.”
Israel has aggressively taken the fight to the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, killing its leader and attacking officers in a daring, exploding pager attack.
“Any Iranian attempt to retaliate will have to deal with the fact that Hezbollah, its main ally against Israel, has been significantly degraded and its conventional weapons systems have been largely divested twice,” said Ali Vaez, the Iranian project director at the International Criminal Court. Crisis Group, which expects Iran to hold back its fire for the time being.
This is true even if Israel showed restraint, as appears to be the case. Some prominent figures in Israel, such as opposition leader Yair Lapid, are already saying the attacks did not go far enough.
Regional experts suggested that Israel’s relatively limited list of targets was deliberately calibrated to make it easier for Iran to avoid escalation.
As Yoel Guzansky, who previously worked for Israel’s National Security Council and is now a researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, put it: Israel’s decision to focus on purely military objectives allows Iran to “save face .”
Israel’s targeting choices may also be, at least in part, a reflection of its capabilities. The country is unlikely to be able to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities on its own and would need help from the United States, Guzansky said.
Furthermore, Israel still has the power to pursue higher value targets should Iran retaliate – especially now that air defense nodes have been destroyed.
“You keep all kinds of contingency plans for yourself,” Guzansky said.
Thomas Juneau, a professor at the University of Ottawa who focuses on Iran and the broader Middle East, wrote on Still, it’s in a tough spot.
“If the country retaliates, it risks an escalation where its weakness means it loses even more,” he wrote. “If the country does not retaliate, it will project a signal of weakness.”
Vakil agreed that Iran’s response would likely be moderate and that the attacks were intended to minimize the chance of escalation.
“Israel has once again shown that its military precision and capabilities are far superior to those of Iran,” she said.
One thing is certain: the Middle East is in uncharted territory.
For decades, leaders and strategists in the region have speculated about whether and how Israel might one day openly attack Iran, just as they were wondering what direct attacks by Iran, rather than by militant allies, would look like.
Today it is a reality. Still, the playbook is not clear on either side and may still be written.
“There seems to be a major discrepancy, both in terms of the sword each side wields and the shield it can deploy,” Vaez said.
“While both sides have calibrated and calculated how quickly they are climbing the escalation ladder, they are now in entirely new territory, where the new red lines are blurred and the old ones have turned pink,” he said.
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