American weakness made the Iran attack possible
This weekend, the Islamic Republic of Iran launched an unprecedented attack against Israel. For the first time since 1979, Iran’s leadership launched strikes from Iranian territory at Israel proper using more than 300 drones and missiles, with the vast majority shot down.
These strikes took place ahead of Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s 85th birthday on April 19. His regime is deeply unpopular at home and planning for succession. Yet Khamenei has demonstrated a surprising willingness to take risks in his old age.
His strategy towards Israel has certainly come full circle. In a private meeting with Spain’s Prime Minister in 2001, Khamenei said that he wanted to ‘set Israel on fire’. Iran has done this by building up proxies in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and increasingly in Jordan to encircle Israel in a ring of fire. The idea has been to keep Israel busy defending its borders while deterring an Israeli attack on Iranian soil.
Rather than a big bang, Khamenei wanted to achieve ‘Death to Israel’ by a thousand cuts. This has been a gradual, carefully calibrated strategy to make life in Israel unbearable and unlivable. Up until now, Khamenei preferred to shroud his regime’s activities in plausible deniability by operating via proxies to avoid reprisals at home.
But with Hamas’ massacre in southern Israel on October 7, that calculus started to shift. During previous Gaza conflicts before October 7, the military response against Israel was led by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, with mostly symbolic participation from other members of the Axis of Resistance. However, after October 7, Iran has weaponised the full slate of its proxies and partners – from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen – against Israel. Now Iran has pushed the envelope even further by directly attacking Israel itself.
Before April 13, Tehran was content to sit back and watch Israel exhaust and isolate itself over its campaign in Gaza. Khamenei in his public remarks has spoken repeatedly about the need to maintain supremacy in the ‘media war’ with Israel. In March, Khamenei said, ‘In today’s world, challenges and conflicts are fought in the media. While rockets, drones, airplanes, weapons of war, etc. are effective in pushing back the enemy, it is the media that has the most profound impact by influencing hearts and minds. It is a battle of the media. Whoever has a stronger media, will be more successful in achieving their goal.’ With Israel increasingly isolated on the world stage, Iran concluded that now was the time to test red lines. As Khamenei remarked earlier this month after Israel’s targeted killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders in Syria, ‘desperate efforts like the one they committed in Syria will not save them from defeat. Of course, they will also be slapped for that action.’ Khamenei believed he could have his cake and eat it too in the media and on the battlefield.
This is a symptom of America failing to protect its allies and interests in recent years. The US has been inactive and inconsistent when it comes to pushing back the IRGC and its regional proxies militarily across several presidential administrations – both Democrat and Republican. As US Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer noted in January 2024, ‘deterrence is not a light switch. It requires a pattern and practice of activity over time and can’t be accessed based on a snapshot of what’s happening at any given moment.’
American performance against Iran has been uneven and underwhelming since the 1980s. After IRGC-backed Hezbollah bombed the US Embassy in Lebanon and the Marine Barracks in 1983, there was no decisive American retaliation. But only a few years later, President Ronald Reagan launched Operation Praying Mantis which destroyed around half of the Islamic Republic’s Navy in response to maritime provocations. Then in 1996 after Iran’s complicity in the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia which killed 19 US airmen and wounded more, America again hesitated and failed to respond.
This pattern repeated itself when hundreds of Americans were killed with impunity in Iraq by Iran-backed militias after the US invasion in 2003. Iran also downed American drones and launched daring strikes against energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia in 2019, and in the process gutted the Carter Doctrine which stated the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its interests, namely energy, in the Persian Gulf. Again, the US government never delivered a direct riposte to Iran.
That changed after the Trump administration killed the IRGC Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020. But a year later, the Biden administration reverted to the familiar pattern of US restraint. In the handful of instances where President Biden has responded militarily to Iranian aggression, it has been mostly aimed at Iran’s proxies and dispensable facilities in the region. Khamenei has now placed a bet on America’s lack of resolve. Reports that President Biden told his Israeli counterpart that the United States will not participate in an Israeli counterattack against Iran shows that the supreme leader has so far gambled correctly.
This unsteady American record has contributed to the Iranian decision to launch a direct strike on Israel – risking the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans who live in Israel – with a view that it could get away with it. Khamenei is wagering that President Biden will attempt to restrain Israel in an election year, especially with his waning support in the Democratic party. After all, Khamenei had a ringside seat as supreme leader when President George H.W. Bush pressured Israel not to respond after Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein launched scud missiles at the Jewish state in 1991.
If he is allowed to get away with this strike without Israel and the United States exacting a significant price, Khamenei will have successfully blown through what were previously seen as red lines once again. Already, the IRGC’s commander-in-chief crowed on Sunday that ‘we have adopted a new equation with the Zionist entity, which is to respond to any aggression from its side directly from Iranian territory.’ Left alone, this will contribute to a more dangerous world and make future Iranian attacks on Israel far more likely in the future.
