Analysis: Iran faces difficult choices in deciding how to respond to Israeli attacks

JERUSALEM (AP) — Now it’s Iran’s turn.

How the Islamic Republic responds to the unusually public Israeli airstrike on its homeland could determine whether the region continues to move toward all-out war or whether it already remains stable devastating and destabilizing levels of violence.

In the cold calculating range of Geopolitics in the Middle Eastan attack of the kind Israel carried out before dawn on Saturday would normally be met with a forceful response.

Military retaliation would allow Iran's clerical leadership to demonstrate strength not only to its own citizens but also to others Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon Hezbollahthe militant groups that fight against Israel and are the vanguard of the so-called Tehran Axis of resistance.

It is still too early to say whether the Iranian leadership will pursue this path.

Tehran may choose to refrain from a violent direct retaliation for now, not least because it could expose its weaknesses and provoke a more forceful Israeli response, analysts say.

“Iran will downplay the impact of the attacks, which are actually quite serious,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based think tank Chatham House.

She said Iran was “constrained” by military and economic constraints, as well as uncertainty caused by the US election and its impact on American policy in the region.

Even as the wars rage in the Middle East, Iran's reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has signaled His country wants a new nuclear agreement with the USA to facilitate the dismantling of international sanctions.

A carefully worded statement from the Iranian military issued on Saturday evening appeared to offer the Islamic Republic some leeway to avoid further escalation. It suggested that a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon was more important than any retaliation against Israel.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's top decision-maker, also appeared measured in his first comments about the strike on Sunday. He said the attack “should neither be exaggerated nor downplayed” and did not call for an immediate military response.

According to the Israeli military, Saturday's attacks targeted Iranian anti-aircraft missile batteries and missile production facilities.

Israel has thus exposed weaknesses in Iran's air defenses and can step up its attacks, analysts say.

Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press indicate that Israel's raid damaged facilities at the Parchin military base, southeast of Tehran, that experts had previously linked to Iran's former nuclear weapons program, and another base that has been linked to its ballistic missile program.

However, current nuclear facilities were not hit. Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed this on X, saying: “Iran's nuclear facilities have not been compromised.”

Israel was aggressive bring the fight to the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, kill his leader and to specifically target agents exploding pager attack.

“Any Iranian retaliatory attempt will have to contend with the fact that Hezbollah, its main ally against Israel, has been significantly weakened and its conventional weapons systems have been largely defeated twice,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, the assumes that Iran is holding back fire for the time being.

This is true even if Israel held back, which appears to be the case. Some prominent figures in Israel, such as opposition leader Yair Lapid, are already saying the attacks did not go far enough.

Regional experts suspected that Israel's relatively limited target list was deliberately tailored to make it easier for Iran to back away from escalation.

As Yoel Guzansky, who formerly worked for Israel's National Security Council and is now a researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, put it, Israel's decision to focus on purely military targets “allows them to save face. “

Israel's choice of targets also reflects, at least in part, its capabilities. It is unlikely to be able to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities on its own and would need help from the United States, Guzansky said.

Furthermore, Israel still has the leverage to attack higher-value targets should Iran retaliate – especially now that hubs of its air defenses have been destroyed.

“You reserve all sorts of contingency plans,” Guzansky said.

Thomas Juneau, a professor at the University of Ottawa with a focus on Iran and the broader Middle East, wrote on X The fact that the Iranian media initially played down the attacks suggests that Tehran may want to avoid further escalation. Still, it faces a dilemma.

“If it retaliates, it risks an escalation in which its weakness causes it to lose even more,” he wrote. “If it doesn’t retaliate, it sends a signal of weakness.”

Vakil agreed that Iran's response would likely be muted and that the attacks were designed to minimize the potential for escalation

“Israel has once again demonstrated that its military precision and capabilities are far superior to those of Iran,” she said.

One thing is certain: the Middle East is in uncharted territory.

For decades, Middle East leaders and strategists have speculated about whether and how Israel might one day openly attack Iran, just as they have wondered what direct attacks by Iran, rather than its militant proxy groups, would look like.

Today it is reality. Still, the playbook on both sides is not clear and may still be being written.

“There seems to be a great disproportion, both in terms of the sword each side wields and the shield they can wield,” Vaez said.

“While both sides have been calibrating and calculating how quickly they will climb the escalation ladder, they are now in entirely new territory, where the new red lines are nebulous and the old ones have turned pink,” he said.

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EDITOR'S NOTE — Adam Schreck, Asia-Pacific news director for The Associated Press, has covered the Middle East for years, reporting from countries across the region, including both Iran and Israel.