In 1988, when Ayatollah Khomeini announced that he had agreed to a ceasefire with Iraq, he likened his decision to "drinking a cup of poison" in a speech broadcast to the Iranian people. Today, Iran finds itself faced with a decision that can only be described as "drinking a cup of poison" once again.
Tehran now has to make a strategic decision. It is the most dangerous decision the regime had to make since the Khomeinist Revolution. Iran must retaliate to the Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus that killed seven IRGC leaders, including the deputy commander of its Quds Force.
At the time of writing, Iran has taken to social media. It has pushed propaganda through the X account of the Supreme Leader himself, as well as through the speech of Hassan Nasrallah, whose party continues to lose men in Lebanon at the hands of Israel.
However, their propaganda is meaningless. Although Tehran has tried to focus the attention on the fact that Israel attacked a diplomatic mission, rather than the liquidation of the IRGC leaders, Iran must address several difficult choices.
There are several hard truths that Iran cannot avoid facing. First, the seven IRGC leaders were killed as a result of precise intelligence, suggesting that the Israelis have infiltrated its ranks in Syria. Here, one cannot overlook the Reuters report that cited a Syrian military intelligence official.
The intelligence official told Reuters that “the area near the embassy included buildings previously used by Israel to monitor and plant devices, and that Israel had intensified efforts to develop human intelligence in recent months.”
This statement is astonishing and leaves observers, as well as Tehran, with several questions. The latter now has to make an important decision: whether or not to respond to the unprecedented Israeli strike against the IRGC in Damascus.
Will the regime retaliate directly from Iran itself, thereby instigating an open-ended conflict with Israel, a clash that Netanyahu seeks for political reasons? Indeed, he dreams of such a war, as it would allow him to transform his image from that of a man who has divided Israel into the "hero" who has restored deterrence.
Will Iran take direct action, forcing the United States to radically change its policy towards Tehran and the region, and sparking a costly confrontation that the Iranian regime has sought to avoid, since the Khomeini era, through proxy wars? Or will Tehran respond through its proxies, specifically Hezbollah? Netanyahu wants that to happen. He is impatiently awaiting such an attack, in order to push the party behind the Litani River, and perhaps further, allowing the prime minister to achieve a political victory that would save his political life.
Iran certainly has no easy options. Would, for instance, retaliation through its militias in Iraq suffice? Or would it attack Israeli facilities in areas of no strategic importance, merely to save face?
It is clear that any Iranian retaliation aimed at saving face would effectively affirm that Iran is a paper tiger. It would demonstrate that Israel has indeed restored deterrence and that nothing will deter it from continuing to target Tehran. Accordingly, all of Iran's options are limited, and all of them lead to "drinking the cup of poison" for a second time.
