Israel and Iran: Destination War?

August 5, 2021

by: Ilse Strauss, News Bureau Chief

Recent headlines have many speculating that the Middle East teeters on the brink of war as Israel and Iran prepare to face each other on the battlefield. The evidence seems to point in that direction. A mysterious explosion tearing through Iran’s Natanz nuclear plant—the second such disaster in a year striking at the heart of Iran’s nuclear program. The “father” of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions assassinated on a Tehran street. Fingers pointed at Israel and vows of revenge. Tit-for-tat acts of sabotage on maritime vessels. Tehran entrenching in war-torn Syria and Israeli warplanes in Syrian skies targeting advanced weapons shipments to Iran’s terror proxies. Are these harbingers of an impending clash?

Not likely, says Seth J. Frantzman, executive director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis and author of Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machines, Artificial Intelligence and the Battle for the Future. What appears to be the opening salvos of war between the region’s most formidable foes are actually strategic “chess moves” in an existing conflict as old as the Islamic Republic itself. Moreover, Iran can’t afford all-out war and doesn’t have the capacity for the fight, Frantzman explains. Israel, on the other hand, has the capacity and resources, yet doesn’t want to be embroiled in a vast conventional clash.

But just because there’s no near-future scenario with Israeli soldiers staring down their Iranian counterparts on a physical battlefield doesn’t mean Jerusalem and Tehran aren’t at war.

Iran considers Israel its greatest Mideast adversary. It’s eager for Israel’s destruction and willing to make every effort to fulfill that objective. And Israel is equally willing to make every effort to thwart that ambition.

This clash of wills partly drives Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile initiative, encroachment in Mideast countries, investment in proxies and funneling advanced weapons to these terror armies. This, in turn, drives acts of sabotage, assassinations and strikes on proxies—allegedly with Israel as the architect. And this, in turn, drives vows of Iranian revenge, exacted in controlled acts causing enough damage to sooth a battered ego without eliciting further retribution.

In short, Jerusalem and Tehran have been at war for years, engaging in battle in the shadows, behind the scenes. Yet in recent years, that war has increasingly come out of the shadows and onto the battlefields of Syria, maritime shipping routes and the halls of the UN, Washington and Vienna. So what’s behind the mounting tensions?

Debunking the Headlines

According to Frantzman, the escalation in the shadow war has little to do with the change in guard at the White House, the Biden administration’s push to resuscitate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or its intention to lift the sanctions crippling Tehran’s economy.

“Most of Iran’s dangerous weapons, like the precision-guided missiles [PGMs] and drones were showcased at the end of the Obama administration and during the Trump years,” Frantzman explains. “The Trump administration was hard on Iran in terms of sanctions, but there’s no real evidence that they slowed down the nuclear program’s technological aspect.”

The sanctions were successful in cutting off the cash flowing to Hezbollah and the Iranian militias in Iraq, Frantzman concedes. But Tehran’s goal is ultimately long-term entrenchment, not short-term proxy victories. “Iran is like a boa constrictor. It doesn’t move quickly. They understand that American presidents come and go. But Iran’s regime doesn’t. And neither does the militias it has recruited.”

So if it’s not the regime change in Washington to a more Iran-friendly administration, the prospect of a return to a flawed nuclear deal or the probability of a cash-flushed Tehran fanning the flames of the conflict, what is?

From Virtually Nowhere to Regional Hegemony

The Iranian menace is often equated to its nuclear ambitions, but according to Frantzman, Tehran pursues its goal of destroying Israel through a number of other avenues, including advanced drone technology, ballistic missiles and terror armies—Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. This makes for a “growing, octopus-like threat,” he holds.

Until a decade ago, Iran faced an “uphill struggle” with its proxies, had no drone program to speak of and produced unstable ballistic missiles with an unimpressive reach. But the civil wars in Syria and Yemen and the battle against ISIS in Iraq proved watershed moments in Iran’s success in the region, providing Tehran with the testing ground to develop and perfect drones and PGMs and whip its terror proxies and militias into shape. In fact, including its stranglehold on Lebanon through Hezbollah, the past decade has seen Iran grasping partial control of four Mideast countries, turning them into platforms for weapons and war.

2015 was a good year for Iran. Emboldened by the newly signed JCPOA and bolstered by the Assad regime—which Tehran had actively been supporting since 2012—gaining the upper hand in the civil war, Iran could shift its focus in Syria from helping the Butcher of Damascus fight for his life to establishing a military presence on Israel’s northern border, Frantzman says.

By 2017, Iranian bases in the war-torn country testified of the growing Iranian footprint in Israel’s backyard. And once the Assad regime conquered southern Syria, the Islamic Republic finally had the ideal highway to funnel state-of-the-art weapons from Tehran to Hezbollah.

Iran’s investment in the Houthis in Yemen bore more deadly fruit, offering the opportunity to test its drone and ballistic missile technology, which now have an accurate reach of up to 2,000 kilometers [1,243 mi.].

Gone are the days of Israelis facing salvos of inaccurate rockets launched at a general target in the hope of hitting something by chance. “Now you’re talking about rockets that can be programmed using a gyroscope to all fall in a specific place. That is a big, strategic game changer.”

Moreover, with established footholds in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, Iran attempts to surround Israel with launching pads for the precision weapons that can strike anywhere in the Jewish state.

The bottom line? The shadow war is escalating because Iran is increasingly getting better at developing the means to destroy Israel—and at roping in terror armies for assistance. And Israel is increasingly getting better at developing the means to sabotage Iran’s destruction attempts.

So who’s emerging from the shadows as the victor? “I don’t think there’s a clear winner,” Frantzman says. Media headlines ascribe daring triumphs to Israel as acts of sabotage set back Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and precision strikes obliterate caches of precision weapons. At the same time, “Iran continues to entrench, continues to build its weapons. And there’s no evidence that these militias are being eroded.”

So the decades-old war between the Middle East’s two most formidable foes continues—often in the shadows, behind the scenes—perhaps until Iran acquires the capacity for the fight or Israel decides enough is enough.

 

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