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Will Israeli Strikes on Iran Negatively Impact Developments in Lebanon?

A man walks past a mural painting of Iranian flags in a street in Tehran on October 26, 2024. (AFP)
A man walks past a mural painting of Iranian flags in a street in Tehran on October 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Will Israeli Strikes on Iran Negatively Impact Developments in Lebanon?

A man walks past a mural painting of Iranian flags in a street in Tehran on October 26, 2024. (AFP)
A man walks past a mural painting of Iranian flags in a street in Tehran on October 26, 2024. (AFP)

It is too soon to tell how the latest Israeli strikes on Iran will impact the region, especially Lebanon. Officials in Lebanon have not yet determined whether the attacks will positively influence the fight between Israel and Hezbollah.

An official Lebanese source said that the United States’ ability to rein in Israel and prevent it from carrying out a strike against major Iranian facilities must not be tied to the developments in Lebanon.

In remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat, he explained that Israel’s insistence on its land incursion in Lebanon, occupation of Lebanese villages and its destructive air strikes across the country, demonstrate that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not tying the Lebanese front to any other, especially Iran.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the source added that the future of the Israeli war on Lebanon is unpredictable, at least until the American presidential elections are held.

Israel had informed Iran of its intention to attack before it launched the strikes, proving that US President Joe Biden’s administration averted a widescale war in the region days before the elections on November 5.

Former Lebanese Ambassador to Washington Antoine Chedid said the American administration succeeded in persuading Netanyahu to strike Iran within the limits it had drawn up.

He ruled out the possibility that the limited strike would positively impact Lebanon.

Netanyahu is determined to achieve his goals in the war on Lebanon, which are to eliminate Hezbollah and establish security along the Lebanese-Israeli border to allow residents of northern Israeli settlements to return home, he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Moreover, he noted that the US doesn’t really have a specific policy on Lebanon. Rather, it has a regional policy and Lebanon is part of it.

The American elections will establish a new equation in the region. Chedid said that Kamala Harris’ win will represent a continuation of Biden’s policies.

A win for Donald Trump will put the region in a different position, especially given that he is critical of calls for Netanyahu to end the war on Gaza and Lebanon, he went on to say.

Axios had quoted three Israeli sources as saying that Tel Aviv had warned Tehran of the impending strike and of what Israel was going to attack and what it wasn’t.

Director of Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs Dr. Sami Nader said the American limits to the Israeli strikes are aimed at preventing the region from slipping into a major war, which Washington wants to avoid, and at averting any negative effects on Harris’ electoral chances.

He told Asharq Al-Awsat that Israel will continue to pressure Iran and Lebanon is the main arena where it will do so instead of launching attacks deep into Iran given that the US is largely ignoring the developments in Lebanon and has a major interest in seeing Hezbollah weakened.

Gaza, on the other hand, has become a sore point for Washington given the major destruction there and the massacres Israel has committed against the Palestinian people, he remarked.

Ultimately, the strikes against Iran are not the end of the road, continued Nader.

By not attacking Iranian oil, gas and nuclear facilities and thus avoiding a widescale war, Netanyahu gave Biden a positive boost and he probably earned more weapons for Israel in return, he explained.

This will not be the last Israeli strike on Iran, he warned.

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Iran Faces Tough Choices in Deciding How to Respond to Israeli Strikes

This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows damaged buildings at Iran's Khojir military base outside of Tehran, Iran, Oct. 8, 2024. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows damaged buildings at Iran's Khojir military base outside of Tehran, Iran, Oct. 8, 2024. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
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Iran Faces Tough Choices in Deciding How to Respond to Israeli Strikes

This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows damaged buildings at Iran's Khojir military base outside of Tehran, Iran, Oct. 8, 2024. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows damaged buildings at Iran's Khojir military base outside of Tehran, Iran, Oct. 8, 2024. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)

It's Iran's move now.
How Iran chooses to respond to the unusually public Israeli aerial assault on its homeland could determine whether the region spirals further toward all-out war or holds steady at an already devastating and destabilizing level of violence.
In the coldly calculating realm of Middle East geopolitics, a strike of the magnitude that Israel delivered Saturday would typically be met with a forceful response. A likely option would be another round of the ballistic missile barrages that Iran has already launched twice this year, The Associated Press said.
Retaliating militarily would allow Iran's clerical leadership to show strength not only to its own citizens but also to Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon's Hezbollah, the militant groups battling Israel that are the vanguard of Tehran's so-called Axis of Resistance.
It is too soon to say whether Iran's leadership will follow that path.
Tehran may decide against forcefully retaliating directly for now, not least because doing so might reveal its weaknesses and invite a more potent Israeli response, analysts say.
“Iran will play down the impact of the strikes, which are in fact quite serious,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based think tank Chatham House.
She said Iran is “boxed in" by military and economic constraints, and the uncertainty caused by the US election and its impact on American policy in the region.
Even while the Mideast wars rage, Iran's reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has been signaling his nation wants a new nuclear deal with the US to ease crushing international sanctions.
A carefully worded statement from Iran’s military Saturday night appeared to offer some wiggle room for Iran to back away from further escalation. It suggested that a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon was more important than any retaliation against Israel.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Iran's ultimate decision-maker, was also measured in his first comments on the strike Sunday. He said the attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed,” and he stopped short of calling for an immediate military response.
Saturday's strikes targeted Iranian air defense missile batteries and missile production facilities, according to the Israeli military.
With that, Israel has exposed vulnerabilities in Iran’s air defenses and can now more easily step up its attacks, analysts say.
Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press indicate Israel's raid damaged facilities at the Parchin military base southeast of Tehran that experts previously linked to Iran's onetime nuclear weapons program and another base tied to its ballistic missile program.
Current nuclear sites were not struck, however. Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed that on X, saying “Iran’s nuclear facilities have not been impacted.”
Israel has been aggressively bringing the fight to the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, killing its leader and targeting operatives in an audacious exploding pager attack.
“Any Iranian attempt to retaliate will have to contend with the fact that Hezbollah, its most important ally against Israel, has been significantly degraded and its conventional weapons systems have twice been largely repelled,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, who expects Iran to hold its fire for now.
That's true even if Israel held back, as appears to be the case. Some prominent figures in Israel, such as opposition leader Yair Lapid, are already saying the attacks didn't go far enough.
Regional experts suggested that Israel's relatively limited target list was intentionally calibrated 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 Iran "to save face.”
Israel's target choices may also be a reflection at least in part of its capabilities. It is unlikely to be able to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities on its own and would require help from the United States, Guzansky said.
Besides, Israel still has leverage to go after higher-value targets should Iran retaliate — particularly now that nodes in its air defenses have been destroyed.
“You preserve for yourself all kinds of contingency plans,” Guzansky said.
Thomas Juneau, a University of Ottawa professor focused on Iran and the wider Middle East, wrote on X that the fact Iranian media initially downplayed the strikes suggests Tehran may want to avoid further escalation. Yet it's caught in a tough spot.
“If it retaliates, it risks an escalation in which its weakness means it loses more,” he wrote. “If it does not retaliate, it projects a signal of weakness.”
Vakil agreed that Iran's response was likely to be muted and that the strikes were designed to minimize the potential for escalation.
“Israel has yet again shown its military precision and capabilities are far superior to that of Iran,” she said.
One thing is certain: The Mideast is in uncharted territory.
For decades, leaders and strategists in the region have speculated about whether and how Israel might one day openly strike Iran, just as they wondered what direct attacks by Iran, rather than by its proxy militant groups, would look like.
Today, it's a reality. Yet the playbook on either side isn't clear, and may still be being written.
“There appears to be a major mismatch both in terms of the sword each side wields and the shield it can deploy,” Vaez said.
“While both sides have calibrated and calculated how quickly they climb the escalation ladder, they are in an entirely new territory now, where the new red lines are nebulous and the old ones have turned pink,” he said.