Iran, Israel and What Comes Next

"If one missile lands in the wrong spot, we’re in a different ballgame"

Screengrab of Netanyahu addressing Israelis after Iran’s attack

Israel has struck back.

Late Thursday night, Israel confirmed a strike in Iran, with media reports indicating a military airbase in Isfahan was targeted by drones. The base is near an Iranian nuclear facility, but there is no indication that the nuclear facility was impacted by this attack, nor was the intended target. The damage seems limited and Iran seems to be playing down the incident in state media.

Still, we are another rung up the ladder of escalation. If Israel and Iran keep climbing, there may be an all out war — and potentially drag the United States deeper into conflict in the Middle East.

A reminder on how we got here. On April 1st, Israel launched airstrikes on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, killing seven Iranian officials, including a very senior general. Iran responded with a massive drone attack on Israel, marking the first time that Iran directly attacked Israeli soil. All this is happening, of course, in the context of the conflict in Gaza.

How can we make sense of where this escalatory cycle may lead?

I have a very well-timed interview today with Dalia Dassa Kaye, Senior Fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and a Fulbright Schuman Visiting Scholar at Lund University. She has done extensive research and writing on the mechanics of armed conflict escalation in the Middle East, which we discuss in the context of this current crisis. The interview was recorded before the Israeli strike in Isfahan. But as you can see from our conversation, this new Israeli strike was very much part of a pattern.

Our podcast episode is freely available for listening across all podcast platforms. The full transcript is available immediately for paying supporters of Global Dispatches.

Transcript edited for clarity

Mark Leon Goldberg: On April 1st, Israel struck an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus, killing a senior Iranian general, and six other people. What do we know about that attack, who Israel targeted, and why?

Dalia Dassa Kaye: That was a pretty important attack and pivotal attack as it turns out. Israel was following a pattern of increasingly targeting IRGC, so Revolutionary Guard Forces of Iran. This attack on April 1 was larger than previous ones. It took out General Zahedi. He was one of the lead IRGC generals in charge of Syria and Lebanon — he had a lot of experience in Lebanon and was kind of an interlocutor with Hezbollah. So a very, very important leader in terms of Iran’s relationships with the so-called Axis of Resistance Network. This is the axis of non-state actors advancing Iranian interests and operating across the region from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and increasingly Yemen with the Houthis. So, this was a big attack. Obviously, Israel had some intelligence that a bunch of these generals would be there at the same time, too.

Seven top leadership officials were killed altogether, other Syrians as well. And what made it different was that it was a diplomatic compound. Israel disputes this to some extent given the nature of these leaders, but from the Iranian perspective, it was their diplomatic consular section. And so, this was viewed as an attack on Iran itself. And generally, the Israelis, and the Iranians for that matter, have tried to avoid direct conflicts or attacks on each other’s countries, although on a non-attribution basis Israel has hit within Iran itself in the past. But this was new territory in that respect.

Mark Leon Goldberg: I want to dig a little deeper on the Iranian perspective on this attack because, as you describe it, I have to imagine it was pretty devastating. Striking in particular a diplomatic facility in Damascus to kill such a senior general was seemingly norm-breaking, at least in the context of Iran and Israel’s ongoing of tit-for tat. It was audacious. What did this attack look like from Iran’s perspective?

Dalia Dassa Kaye: Yeah, it was audacious, although like I said, it didn’t come out of the blue. It did fit a pattern. I don’t think the Iranians were probably particularly shocked given that the Israelis had been picking off IRGC generals on a regular basis — and I should also mention have been killing top commanders of Hezbollah in pretty large numbers since the attacks on October 7th — hundreds actually.

So, I don’t think it came out of the blue, but this strike came from an Israeli aircraft. It flattened the building. It looked pretty destructive. It was hard to kind of brush this under the rug as if it’s something insignificant. It also took out really key instrumental operational leaders in Iran’s network, pretty much destroying their commanders in the Syrian front. From the Iranian perspective, it didn’t come out of the blue, but it certainly would be viewed as a big attack.

From what we understand, within Iran this emboldened those who feel that the Iranians have to respond in a tougher manner to the Israeli attacks, which have been bolder and more frequent in recent months. And they argued this was necessary to restore deterrence. This seems to have been a tipping point that gave that hard-line faction the upper hand. So, I think that is what made this attack a bit different. There was already some debate within the Iranian leadership about how much more they could withstand, both in terms of their reputation and the Axis not really doing that much to be helping Hamas, and also the sense that Israel was pretty much striking with impunity.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Do you suspect that Israel understood this internal debate within Iran, and by attacking the consulate in Damascus essentially sought to goad Iran into responding in ways more perhaps robust than they had in the past?

Dalia Dassa Kaye: I’m not in the camp that believes the Israelis, at least the defense establishment, was trying to goad Iran into an attack, and this whole kind of conspiracy theory that Netanyahu wanted a distraction. That all could be true. I mean, it may be. It certainly was a good distraction from Gaza, or has been. But honestly, I think the overriding assumption, and Israeli security analysts have since acknowledged this, was that Iran would be restrained in its response.

I think they were not attacking on April 1st because they thought it would goad Iran into a war. I think they were attacking because they didn’t think Iran would respond in any significant manner that departed from previous restraint patterns. So, I think there was a bit of complacency in terms of the Israeli assessment of the Iranians; that, in a sense, they were almost a paper tiger.

Also, the assessment in Israel after the Soleimani attack (when the U.S. killed the top Iranian general in 2020, toward the end of the Trump administration) was that the Iranian counterattack in response to that was pretty mild actually. And we shouldn’t be so worried; they have reasons for restraint.

I think that there is an understanding now that Israel miscalculated; that they did not quite understand how much domestic pressure the Iranians were likely under, especially from these harder-line factions that do seem to have the upper hand across the system today.

And so, there was probably a miscalculation, and I think that actually raises some of the most interesting questions in the aftermath of this in terms of what the future Israeli response will be.