Last week, Iran’s leaders found themselves in a familiar position. The Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was the latest in a series of assassinations of senior figures with ties to the regime.
In a short statement eulogising Nasrallah, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, declared that Israel had “not become victorious” by carrying out the strike on Nasrallah, which he described as an “atrocity”. Khamenei insisted that Israel would face “more crushing” blows in retribution. But those blows are to come from the groups of the “resistance front” and not from Iran itself.
The absence of any direct vow of revenge in Khamenei’s statement has led to concerns among many in Tehran that Israel is exposing Iranian weakness. To assuage such concerns, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander has reportedly briefed Iranian parliamentarians that the successful strike on Nasrallah did not degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities.
However, not all politicians and analysts in Iran are convinced. Ali Motahari, an Iranian MP, has suggested that Israel was emboldened to kill Nasrallah because Iran failed to respond decisively after the assassination of the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, despite vowing revenge.
Iran’s lack of decisive response towards Israel reflects two factors. First, Iran lacks good options when it comes to striking back at Israel, a country with a much stronger conventional military, extensive cyber and espionage capabilities and a nuclear deterrent. Even the unprecedented barrage of missiles and drones that Iran launched at Israel in April was calibrated to avoid further escalation. Second, knowing they lack good options, Iranian decision-makers have become increasingly risk averse at a time when Israel keeps upping the ante.
Iran’s caution may come as a surprise, given that it is frequently portrayed as a country where ideology feeds irrationality. In fact, Iranian leaders appear trapped by their rationality as they sit across the table from an adversary that is willing to make increasingly bold gambles. Khamenei knows he holds a bad hand, and that he has repeatedly folded in the face of Israeli pressure. In doing so, he has prevented Iran from getting drawn into what would surely be a devastating war. But Iran’s once formidable pile of chips is diminishing.
Iran’s approach has a clear historical explanation. Unlike Israel, a nation formed through repeated and enduring mobilisations for war, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a political project committed to demobilisation. While the country’s theocratic government and military structures were consolidated through the “sacred defence” of Iranian territory during the Iran-Iraq war, the social contract that emerged after the war centred on the idea that its nightmares would not be repeated.
Iran’s theocratic leadership promised the country’s citizens security and prosperity – a weighty commitment to make in a region beset by war and deprivation. In many respects, Iran’s leaders have failed to uphold this promise. Prosperity has been undermined by the country’s isolation under US sanctions. Security has been undermined by the repression that the state has meted out on its own people, especially Iranian women.
But Khamenei, who was Iran’s president during the eight-year conflict with Iraq, has managed to keep war at bay, even as devastation befell neighbouring Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and even as senior politicians in the US and Israel have continued to threaten a decisive invasion of Iran.
If Iran gets dragged into a war with Israel, it will mark the end of the political project over which Khamenei has presided for 35 years. It would mean that Iran could not, despite the purported righteousness of its religious government, or the plain advantages of its nationhood, overcome the entropic forces of the Middle East. Israel, by contrast, has embraced entropy. The operation to eliminate Nasrallah was named New Order, reflecting Israel’s use of destruction as a creative force.
There is no doubt that Hezbollah presents a threat to Israeli security. Even so, Israel has eliminated a leader who remained reluctant to enter a wider war. This does not bode well for Iran, as its leaders become even more explicit about their aversion to conflict.
During a press conference at the UN general assembly last week, the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, stated that Iran is “willing to put all [its] weapons aside so long as Israel is willing to do the same”. But Israel will not put down its weapons if it believes those weapons can reorder the regional power balance in its favour.
Worryingly, while Iran’s missiles and drones have failed to deter Israel, there is another weapon that some Iranian analysts are calling for Iran to develop. A weapon that may be better suited to reinforcing Iran’s defensive posture because it does not need to be used to be effective. Iran is a threshold nuclear state.
After two decades of nuclear escalation, Iran possesses the facilities and knowhow necessary to build a nuclear bomb. A nuclear weapon could re-establish deterrence with Israel, allowing Iran to avoid getting drawn into a full-scale conflict, and providing new impetus for negotiations to de-escalate the conflict in the region.
But building a bomb would represent a bold gamble, one that Khamenei has long refused to take. If Israeli leaders assess that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, they will conduct a military strike to pre-empt that outcome, likely in the form of a joint operation with the US.
However, there is no guarantee that such a strike would succeed. As the nuclear expert Kelsey Davenport observed earlier this year: “Given that Iran already has the capability to develop nuclear weapons, setbacks from a military strike would be temporary because Iran has the knowledge necessary to reconstitute the programme.”
After the fateful airstrike in Beirut, the case for an Iranian nuclear weapon has never been stronger. But Khamenei may lack the resolve to pursue a nuclear deterrent. Rational actors frequently struggle to take leaps of faith.
Esfandyar Batmanghelidj is the founder of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, a thinktank focused on economic policymaking in the Middle East and Central Asia
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