Israel versus Iran: Round two looming?

The region is braced for a possible rerun of Iran's April attack on Israel, writes Bachar Halabi

The confrontation between the Middle East's two leading military powers — arch-enemies Israel and Iran — has entered a new phase of escalation. Israel is taking the fight to Iranian proxies in Tehran's so-called "Axis of Resistance" as the Gaza campaign dials down, and the risk of a wider conflagration is rising.

The conflict between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas has been regionalised from the start, but remained contained even when Iran and Israel traded direct blows for the first time ever in April. Lebanon's Iran-backed militia group, Hezbollah, joined the war on 8 October — the day after Hamas' attack on Israel — by opening what it called a "support front" for Hamas. Iraqi Shia militias and Yemen's Houthis followed suit by claiming to target Israel through a mix of drone and missile strikes, or by attacking global shipping lanes in the Red Sea.

But, over the past few weeks, Israel has gone on the offensive against proxy group leaders. Hamas' chief political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran on 31 July. Israel neither denied nor confirmed responsibility, but Iran is pointing the finger.The attack in Tehran came only hours after Israel claimed responsibility for a strike in the suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut that targeted Hezbollah's most senior military commander and one of its founding fathers, Fuad Shukr. And Israel's military on 20 July struck Yemen's Houthi-controlled Red Sea port of Hodeidah, in a first-of-its-kind attack by the Israeli side, in retaliation for a drone attack by the Iran-backed militant group on Tel Aviv a day earlier.

"I think when you put them all together, this is really a message to Iran, which has been operating more or less on seven fronts against Israel — Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza," former US assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs David Schenker tells Argus. But he also attributes Israel taking things into its own hands to the reticence of the US administration. "There is a division of labour [among Israel and the US] and the Israelis are responsible for their close enemies, while the US is responsible for the Houthis."

Calculations trump ceasefire

A regional diplomatic source sees a different impetus: "I think [Israel's] bold moves are the result of the withdrawal of President Biden from the presidential race" which frees him from electoral calculations. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu "has no intention of reaching a ceasefire in Gaza before the outcome of the US election is known. He believes that a potential Trump administration would be more understanding of Israel's future plans for Gaza", the source says.

The region is now bracing for a possible rerun of Iran's 13 April attack on Israel, except that the risk of miscalculation is higher, with the axis vowing revenge. "We are looking for a real response, not a performative response," Hezbollah's secretary general Hassan Nasrallah said on 1 August. The US, EU and many Mideast Gulf countries are trying to contain the situation.

"Hezbollah and Iran want to avoid a full-scale war with Israel and their responses to the recent wave of assassinations will be measured to avoid dragging themselves into a situation of total regional war that could also drag in the US," the diplomatic source says. Iran, however, finds itself in a tough situation, with what happened in Tehran being "incredibly embarrassing for Iranian officials", according to Schenker. The questions now are when and how it might respond.

With Israel also targeting Hezbollah in Beirut, the group might yet lead that response. "They're going to do something big… but they're going to try to calibrate [it] with not going for a full-scale war," Schenker predicts. The axis' retaliation could come within days, or it could take weeks. How Netanyahu then reacts to it could shape the regional confrontation for months or years to come.