Iran Wants to Strike Back at Israel but Can’t Afford a Wider War

Tehran and its allies aren’t ready for a full-scale conflict with Israel and the U.S.

By Sune Engel Rasmussen, WSJ

BEIRUT—Iran and its allies are weighing how to retaliate forcefully for a pair of killings attributed to Israel in Beirut and Tehran without igniting an all-out war none of them want.

Iran can’t afford a war with Israel, which would likely pull in the U.S., just as a new presidential administration takes over in Tehran with problems including a reeling economy.

Iranians still hold painful memories of the country’s latest extended conflict, an eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s that decimated a generation, and Tehran for decades has preferred to harry its rivals in the region through a network of foreign militias.

Hezbollah, the Tehran-backed Lebanese group, also has more to lose from escalating its 10-month cross-border battle with Israel into a fullscale war. While Hezbollah has a missile arsenal that could punish Israel severely, its leaders have watched Israel demolish much of Gaza since the Oct. 7 attacks and pick off its leadership—something Israel has vowed to replicate in Lebanon if provoked.

Both suffered major embarrassments recently to which they feel they must respond, analysts said.

An Israeli airstrike in a suburb of Beirut last week killed one of Hezbollah’s most senior commanders. A day later, Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in his room while visiting Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president—an attack Iran and Hamas blame on Israel, which hasn’t publicly commented on the killing.

Iran and Hezbollah will try to thread the needle between hitting targets of value, without doing so much damage that they set off a war. At the same time, both Iran and Hezbollah are penetrated by Israeli intelligence.

“Neither Hezbollah nor Iran wants a comprehensive war now,” said Ali Fadlallah, a Beirut-based independent political scientist familiar with Hezbollah’s thinking. “But at the same time they do not want the Israelis to conclude that their unwillingness to go to war allows them to crossed lines.” Western officials think Iran and Hezbollah will soon launch attacks against Israel, but hope aweek of frenzied international diplomacy and new military deployments to the region have helped delay and possibly mitigate them.

The U.S. has warned Iran that its recently elected government and its economy could suffer a devastating blow if Tehran were to mount a major attack against Israel, a U.S. official said. Arab diplomats have passed along similar warnings to Iran and have sought to persuade it to climb down.

Israel has signaled its readiness to reply quickly to any strike and even pre-emptone if necessary. The Pentagon ordered additional missile-defense-capable cruisers and destroyers, as well as more land based missile-defense units and a fighter squadron tothe MiddleEast, beefing up assets that included a carrier strike group and additional warships.

Hezbollah and Arab officials said Iran and itsallies are still assessing whether Israel might use any Iranian-orchestrated attacks an excuse to strike back even harder— and how far the U.S. is willing to go in its support of its ally.

The threat of war has sent a wave of concern through Middle-east capitals. In Beirut, residents said they are more worried than in years that current hostilities might spread beyond thecountry’s south, which has been engulfed in cross-border fighting for 10 months.

In a speech this week, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said his group was certain to retaliate, but in its own time. “Their government, their army, their society, their settlements and their occupiers are all waiting, ”he said about Israel. The wait, he said, is “part of the punishment.”

“Two attacks broke the rules of engagement and crossed redlines. No country in the world would accept this attack, ”Fadlallah said.

At the same time, Hezbollah, which is also a powerful political party, has its own domestic constituency to appease, which is wary of war.

The latest time Hezbollah fought a war with Israel, in 2006, many Lebanese rallied around the group. Arabs across the MiddleEast hailed it as the first non state movement to successfully square off with Israel. That won’t happen now, said Sami Nader, director of the Institute of iPolitical Science at Saint Joseph University in Beirut.

“The situation is totally different from the one in 2006. Lebanon has gone through economic collapse, people lost their savings in the banks, the currency lost 98% of its value, unemployment is high, ”Nader said. “Hezbollah’s constituency in the south lost their houses once. They don’t want to do it a second time. The timing is not right for a war with Israel.”

While Iran has previously accused Israel of killing nuclear scientists on its soil, the killing of Haniyeh inTehran was particularly embarrassing, exposing its inability to keep high-value friends secure.

“The location is more important than the target itself. You can’t let your capital be so open to operations, ”said Joseph Bahout, director of the Issam FaresInstituteforPublicPolicy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. “They will have to reply.”

Yet, Iranian leaders face a crisis of legitimacy at home, where pressure builds from citizens fed up with arduous moral strictures and a continuing economic slump.

Newly elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has promised to address both, calling for improving ties with the West and appointing officials with a record of reducing tensions. A war might put engagement with the West at risk.

As president, Pezeshkian presides over Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, though key military decisions are dominated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and made by the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran already faced off directly with Israel once this year. In April, a suspected Israeli air strikes truck an Iranian consulate building in Damascus, Syria, killing 16 people, including eight Revolutionary Guard officers.

Iran responded two weeks later by launching more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel, the first time Tehran targeted Israel directly.

But Iran also telegraphed the attack through diplomatic channels, allowing Israel and a U.S.-led coalition to prepare for the strike and intercept almost all of the incoming missiles and drones. The result headed off significant escalation but was a failure for Iran.

This time, Iran isn’t expected to respond in kind, as it likely doesn't have the intelligence or the means to conduct targeted assassinations in Israel akin to the ones that that took place in Beirut and Tehran.

War could carry a regional diplomatic cost as well for Tehran, which in recent years has improved relations with Arab neighbors.