Opinion | Israel strikes back against Iran. The Mideast is at maximum danger.
Once content to wage war through proxies, Israel and Iran now strike each other directly. The risk of regional war is extreme.
Iranians gather during a funeral ceremony for Abbas Nilforoushan in Tehran on Oct. 15. (Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Opinion by Max Boot
October 26, 2024 at 10:12 a.m. MST
A year ago, it was unthinkable for Israel and Iran to be directly attacking each other’s territory. The two countries have carried on a shadow war for years, with Israel targeting Iranian nuclear scientists, Iranian supply convoys in Syria and the like, while Iran sponsored proxy attacks on Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah, among other militant groups. But the two countries refrained from directly bombing each other. Now, what was unthinkable has, alas, become routine.
Iran crossed a red line on April 13 when it launched some 300 drones and missiles at Israel in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike in Damascus that targeted the Iranian embassy compound and killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers. The Iranian barrage was intercepted not only by Israeli air defense systems but also those of the United States, Jordan and other states in the region. That allowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to satisfy himself with a pinprick airstrike on Iran on April 19.
Then the pattern repeated itself: On Oct. 1, Iran launched another missile strike against Israel, this time in retaliation for Israeli attacks on Hezbollah and Hamas, including the embarrassing assassination in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. This time, Iran employed ballistic missiles, which are faster and provide less warning than the cruise missiles and drones that constituted the bulk of the April attack. But once again, Israeli air defenses, supplemented by those of the United States, largely worked; some of the Iranian missiles struck Israeli military bases, but the damage was minimal.
The world has been holding its breath to see how Israel would respond. Once again, President Joe Biden lobbied Netanyahu to limit the response, and he even sent Israel a THAAD missile defense battery, operated by 100 U.S. service personnel, as a sweetener. The implicit message: The United States will protect Israel, but Israel, in turn, has an obligation not to widen the regional conflict.
On Friday night in the United States (early morning on Saturday in the Middle East), Israel finally launched its long-awaited counterstrike. In a scenario that could have come straight from the Apple TV series “Tehran,” Israeli fighter aircraft successfully penetrated Iranian airspace, evidently targeting Iranian air defenses and missile production sites. Bowing to Biden administration pressure, Netanyahu did not target Iranian oil facilities or nuclear sites — a decision that is already being criticized by hard-liners in Israel. Behind the scenes, both Israel and the United States urged Iran to stand down and end the current round of tit-for-tat hostilities.
The entire region seems poised on a volcano. We might have avoided a massive eruption once again — but the reprieve could only be temporary. The wider Middle East war, feared by so many, is already here. The only thing that remains to be determined is its intensity and scope. By targeting Iranian air defense sites, Israel has made Iran more vulnerable to future Israeli airstrikes should Iran attack Israel once again — or should the Netanyahu government bow to right-wing pressure to strike a more decisive blow.
“We may have dodged a proverbial bullet this time around, but we’ve also entered a different zone,” veteran U.S. diplomat Aaron David Miller wrote on X. “Both Israel and Iran’s risk tolerance have expanded. Both now see it’s possible to avoid all-out war even after direct strikes on one another’s territory. And that is a danger zone.”
The main pressure to avoid further escalation has come from the Biden administration, which is acutely conscious that Iran can close the Strait of Hormuz, at least temporarily, and target U.S. troops in the region along with oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other moderate Arab states. If Iran were to do so, it would deal a major blow to the global economy. That is the last thing Biden wants to see, especially with a U.S. presidential election looming.
But after the election, whatever happens, Biden will be a lame duck. His ability to pressure Israel will be reduced.
Should Vice President Kamala Harris win on Nov. 5, she could be expected to keep pressing for a reduction of tensions. But what happens if the victor is former president Donald Trump? The Post has reported that during one of his recent conversations with Netanyahu, Trump told the Israeli prime minister, in reference to Israel’s wars against Hamas and Hezbollah: “Do what you have to do.”
During his presidency, Trump was eager to avoid a direct conflict with Iran. In the fall of 2019, he abruptly canceled a planned U.S. airstrike on Iran in retaliation for shooting down a U.S. drone, and he didn’t retaliate for an Iranian-orchestrated attack on Saudi oil facilities that temporarily disrupted half of the kingdom’s oil production. But Trump might feel differently now amid reports of potential Iranian threats to assassinate him. If he returns to office once again, Trump could easily give Netanyahu the green light to expand the war with Iran — and thereby drag the United States into the conflict.
Another potential flash point is Yemen. Since last year, the Iranian-backed Houthis have been targeting shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait that separates the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean, thereby disrupting global trade and drawing U.S. forces into the fray to protect shipping. The United States just dispatched B-2 stealth bombers to strike Houthi weapons-storage sites. Yet the Houthi attacks continue, and the Wall Street Journal reports that Russia has been supporting them with targeting data.
We are, in sum, at an exceedingly dangerous moment in the Middle East. Hamas hoped that by attacking Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, it would trigger a wider war that would lead to the destruction of the Jewish state. Israel is far from destroyed — in fact, it looks stronger than ever from a military perspective. But the wider war is here, and it will take herculean efforts by all parties to prevent it from spinning out of control. The best way to begin the process of de-escalation would be for Israel and Hamas finally to agree on a cease-fire in Gaza — but, despite the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, that prospect seems as remote as ever.
Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in biography, he is the author, most recently, of the New York Times bestseller “Reagan: His Life and Legend.”
