The Israeli attack launched against Iran last Oct. 26 was followed by an initial attempt by the Islamic Republic authorities to minimize its effects and thereby contain the interventionist thrusts of the more radical groups of the conservative political fabric. A position also supported by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, who, although calling for neither exaggerating nor minimizing the scale of the attack, did not initially express any intention of immediate reaction.
Somewhat unusually, moreover, Khamenei also stated that the responsibility in planning Iran’s response strategy lies with the governing authorities, who interpret the feelings of the Iranian population and translate them into practical actions. An apparent de-emphasizing of its role, aimed at bringing back into the purview primarily of the Supreme National Defense Council the decision of the next steps the country intends to take in managing the complex crisis with Israel.
Positions that have visibly irked the ultra-radical factions, which have on the contrary begun to exert increasing pressure for the country to exercise its legitimate right of defense by responding commensurately to the attack it suffered last Oct. 26.
Such positions have been expressed with increasing frequency through interviews released by the national press, suggesting that the absence of a military response against Israel would dangerously alter the criteria of deterrence, exposing Iran’s security before the emergence of an existential threat.
At the same time, some in the security and political apparatus have returned to the issue of nuclear power as a tool potentially susceptible to development in the field of armaments, once again rekindling the fuse of a highly sensitive debate for the political balance in the Islamic Republic. Former reformist Foreign Minister Kharrazi, in particular, asserted that Iran has the knowledge to build nuclear weapons, while the failure to develop such a project today stems solely from the fatwa pronounced in the past by Supreme Leader Khamenei. At the same time, he added, if the country’s security conditions were to change and turn into an existential threat, such impediments could break down and result in the initiation of a military program aimed at developing nuclear weapons, believed by many to be the only real means of ensuring a credible form of deterrence against Israel.
Spurred on by the evolving political debate, therefore, Ali Khamenei changed the tone of his narrative by delivering a speech last Nov. 4 before a group of students on the occasion of the anniversary of 13 Aban – which commemorates the killing of students at Tehran University on Nov. 4, 1978, and the taking hostage of U.S. Embassy personnel in Iran on Nov. 4, 1979. On that occasion, the Supreme Leader said that an “overwhelming response” will be launched against the United States and Israel, drastically changing the tone from the restraint that had characterized the days immediately following the Israeli attack.
Khamenei’s words were then further commented by a number of Iranian political and security figures, claiming that the entire Supreme National Defense Council had agreed on the need to respond militarily against Israel, although reserving the right to determine the timing and manner by which such a response would be handled by Iran.
Further comments reported in the local press cited the possibility of a massive missile attack, to be conducted in cooperation with regional allies and especially pro-Iranian Iraqi militias, while Israel responded indirectly by claiming that it had identified legitimate targets in Iraq that would be hit in the event of an attack conducted by local militias.
In this way, the line expressed – and to some extent imposed – by the ultraconservative factions seems to have prevailed in Iran, forcing the country to make a commitment toward a military response that poses for the Supreme Leader the same narrow margin of choice as on the two previous occasions last April and then in October: to manage an action of limited scope while hoping for an equally moderate Israeli response or, on the contrary, to launch an attack of more extensive scope with the risk of triggering an escalation that would be difficult for Iran to manage. This is a particularly complex set of choices, which much of the reformist and pragmatic factions see as a real trap, serving Israel’s interests alone and capable of exposing Iran to the unbearable burden of a military conflict with Tel Aviv and, potentially, Washington as well.
