The News
Israel’s long-anticipated retaliatory attack on Iran came Saturday, as the country launched what the Israel Defense Forces said were “precise strikes on military targets.”
The strikes, a response to Iran’s missile attack on Israel earlier this month, killed four soldiers, according to Tehran, while the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, stressed the strike must “neither be downplayed nor exaggerated.”
Speaking to reporters Saturday, US President Joe Biden said he hoped this is “the end” to escalation, as the White House tries to revert Israel’s conflict with Iran to be “once again a shadow war and not an overt war,” an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said.
SIGNALS
Israel dealt a decisive blow to the Iranian regime — but it could backfire
Israel’s attack on Iranian defense facilities “highlighted the significant gaps between the two sides,” The Wall Street Journal noted: Iran has twice managed to penetrate Israeli air defenses, but only by firing hundreds of missiles at a time, whereas Israel’s weapons have largely evaded detection. Yet “lurking behind [Israeli] satisfaction with the tactical gains lies a longer-term worry” — that Iran will conclude it has only one viable defense left, and accelerate its pursuit of atomic weapons, precisely what US military strategists have long been working to deter.
…But Iran could now be looking for an ‘off ramp’
Iranian officials have downplayed the attack, which could suggest the regime is “looking for an off-ramp,” a Middle East expert wrote for the Atlantic Council. That’s good for Israel, which wants to refocus its military agenda on fighting Hamas and Hezbollah — proxy forces that may now have to “go it alone” as Tehran retreats to avoid risking its own security, another added. But what’s certain after years of speculation over what direct strikes between the two sides would look like is that the region is in entirely new territory, “where the new red lines are nebulous and the old ones have turned pink,” an Iran expert at International Crisis Group told The Associated Press.
Netanyahu is hoping for a Trump presidency, but there’s no guarantee he’ll come to Israel’s aid against Iran
Israel knew it needed to conduct the strike ahead of the US presidential election, before a new president could try to limit its room for maneuver, a Middle East expert told Foreign Policy. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would feel more confident carrying out an ambitious attack with Republican nominee Donald Trump in the White House, another added. But Trump is famously “war averse,” and some of his isolationist allies don’t support continued aid to Israel, The Times of Israel noted: As has often been the case with Trump, the only certainty is his unpredictability.