Iran - Israel War?

Iran launched an unprecedented ballistic missile attack on Israel. Iran targeted military facilities, including Dimona, where Israel's nuclear weapons facility is. The Israeli military has acknowledged that some of its airbases were hit in the ballistic missile attacks but underscored that the air force remains functional.

There are now reports coming out that an Israeli school was hit, too. It is regrettable and unacceptable, but at the same time, it raises the notion that the response of the powers that would be paradoxical to the perils of Israeli children compared to the ongoing deaths of Palestinian children.

Even while some of the missiles were still airborne, the Iranian government sent text messages to residents of major cities, urging them to participate in state-organized rallies supporting the attack. This resulted in thousands of Iranians celebrating the event, including many in the West Bank and Gaza. For Palestinians, the celebrations were shortlived as Israel continued, even escalating attacks on them. For the Iranians, it was a strategic domestic victory. Iran needed to conduct some attack against Israel as Hezbollah, a tactical ally of Iran, is barraged with Israeli attacks. If Iran does not do anything, then it will lose faith in its regional allies or proxies, as the West prefers to call them. Moreover, the Iranian regime has acquired further justification and support from its people, underscoring its willingness to act with force, while other Arab countries remain inactive. On the other hand, Hezbollah, after a smarting precision attack of device explosions and subsequent bombardment of the Lebanese people, needed a show of support from Iran to mitigate any resulting wrath of the Lebanese people against them.

A principal reason that regional tensions centered on Israel's genocide in Gaza have not escalated so far is because of Iran's restraint. But, now Iran had to respond to the Israeli attack in Lebanon somehow. Predicting which options it uses is based on its efforts to balance the conflicting considerations weighing them - all-out war forcing the US to engage too or continuing with the strategic tactic of picking its attack options. All one can confidently say is that Iranian responses will be at times and places of Tehran's choosing, as it was now. Given Israel's need to find a new frontier, preferably in the form of a prolonged war, Iran would prefer to maintain this tactic.

The US is also at ease with the situation as it is unwilling to engage in an all-out war, especially before its elections. The US could get dragged into an Israeli-Iranian conflict in either of two ways. One would be through political demands within the United States for Washington to act more directly to defend "our ally Israel" when under attack from Iran. The other way is for Iranian reprisals against Israel to extend as well to U.S. targets. The plausibility of this is low for now.

It is said that President Biden has deployed more than 40,000 US military personnel and assets to that region over the past year to prevent a regional war. However, the motivation is a bit more nuanced. For now, it ensures that Iran does not cross a line that would force the US to engage with it directly. Biden administration is pretending to be working for a ceasefire when it is enabling the continuation of Israel's slaughter in Gaza, which rolls on unabated as it expands its aggression to Lebanon and beyond. A war with Iran would be highly damaging to U.S. interests for many reasons, including the direct human and material costs and the disruption to economic activity.

For Israel, escalation remains the key strategy as an intended way to work its way out of the Gaza dead-end and shift focus on some other pretext of so-called - Israel's right to defend itself, enabling Israel to present itself as defending rather than offending and to push debate away from the destruction it is wreaking on Gaza and toward the need to protect itself against foreign enemies. Thus, Israel will continue attempting to increase the chance of the US getting directly involved in conflict with Iran. If it does, the war in the Middle East would be seen as not just a matter of Israel bashing Palestinians but instead would involve equities of Israel's superpower patron.

Despite frequent, symmetrical references to a "shadow war" between Iran and Israel, a compilation of events in that war shows an asymmetrical pattern of Israel initiating most of the violence and Iran primarily responding. For the powers that be, distancing themselves from this pattern would be in their interest and regional peace and security. Israel and Iran have issued threats of retaliation against one another, pushing longstanding concerns over escalation towards a regional war to new heights. Israel, with backing from the US, has promised to respond to the missile attack, and this is where the situation gets a bit grey.

Israel is intent on countering Iran's attack, and the US is unlikely to be able to fully contain Israel from doing so. Large proponents of the US policymaking machine are pushing for a counterattack. Thus, the US is likely to follow a balanced strategy. President Joe Biden says he won't support an Israeli attack on sites related to Tehran's nuclear program in response to Iran's missile attack on Israel. The question is, will Israel listen? Even if it does, will it attack Iran so drastically that Iran has no option but to engage more vigorously, or will Israel continue with its provocative behavior with Iran for the time to keep the flame burning while continuing with its adverse motives in Lebanon?

In any scenario, the Palestinians and now the Lebanese people will suffer. The region continues to be under stress because of the conflict that Israel is causing and inflicting all around. The world remains alert and on their nerves, earnestly wanting the situation to appease and not escalate further.

Simon Mohsin: Political and International Affairs Analyst.