Iran and Israel need each other - here's why | Defence in Depth - 雙語字幕
For the first three weeks of this month, Israel and Iran appeared to be on the brink of an all-out war.
The world held its breath as the Middle East's military superpowers headed towards a that would have ignited the entire region,
and quite possibly triggered World War III.
Don't touch it!
Then, justice suddenly, it was all over.
Piedemas atelama halo!
Israel bombed an Iranian consulate.
Iran retaliated with hundreds of missiles and drones against Israel but didn't kill anyone.
Then Israel struck back with a bombing raid just small enough for the Iranians to pretend it basically happened.
World War III, it turned out, was more like a duel between 18th century gentlemen.
Both had fired their pistols, honour was defended and everyone could go home.
So what on earth was Tehran thinking?
In Iran,
there is really one man who calls the shots that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
who turned 85 last Friday, the same day Israel bombed an Iranian air base in Isfahan.
He's been the Supreme Leader of Iran since 1989, and while he may be old, his grip on power is as strong as ever.
Now, in theory, the role of Supreme Leader could have been a bit like a British
monarch, an authority above the grubby realities of day-to-day politics who would consult,
encourage and advise the elected governments,
giving a gentle nudge to the tiller to ensure that the religious and moral purity of the United the Republic,
sure it really was an Islamic Republic.
In practice, Mr Hamane is the real power broker in the country.
He the last say on both foreign and domestic policy and all parts of the Islamic Republic's sometimes fractious,
frankly, political and military machine is subservient to him.
He has a reputation for sticking to a decision once he's made it, he's not afraid to act ruthlessly in defense of the Islamic Republic.
At home,
for example,
he has no problem unleashing deadly crackdowns on peaceful protesters,
on sending the morality, police to intimidate and arrest women who dare to question the obligatory hijab, even though most Iranians are at best ambivalent.
learnt about that rule.
But all his fiery rhetoric overseas, Ali Khamenei is actually very cautious and risk averse.
The years he's prided himself on something called strategic patience,
building up Iran's capabilities while avoiding a premature confrontation with the great and small satan of America,
Israel, let's throw in the United Kingdom as well.
Mr Hamaleh has predicted that Israel will be destroyed by 2040, a date that he conveniently will probably not live to see.
So idea is to gradually build up Iran's influence and military power across the region,
and beefing up groups like Hezbollah and Lebanon, the Houthis in Israel.
groups in Iraq ready for the big showdown.
Now, from Tel Aviv, that looks very much like you're being surrounded and you can understand why the Israelis would take that threat very seriously.
From Mr Hamane's point of view, he just has to preserve that system and hand it on intact to his successors.
When he dies, he can say here is the axis of resistance, you're the guys who are actually going to have to use it.
Interestingly enough, Western officials who've had to deal with Iran will sometimes tell you that in some ways this makes Tehran reassuringly predictable.
Hamineh knows what he wants, they know what he wants, and he sticks to his decisions.
But the problem with that.
policy is that at some point patients begins to look like an excuse for inaction or to put it less kindly cowardice.
Just look at the history of the shadow wall.
Of the past two or three decades,
Israel has run assassination programs against the rain scientists,
launched a massive malware attack on its nuclear program, its bomb supply routes in Syria and Frankly has killed IRGC commanders across the Middle East.
Throughout it all, Mr.
Hamineh has answered demands for a direct response with a called for, you guessed it, strategic patience.
Now that became a much more difficult line to walk after October 7th and the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.
As the death toll mounted in Gaza,
hardline anti-Zionist voices and Tehran began to question when Iran was going to do something, why aren't we activating Hezbollah?
And after the April 1 Israeli strike on Iran's consulate in Damascus,
nationalist regime supporters who might not really have been that bothered about Israel, got in on the act as well.
student group even published an open letter demanding to know exactly where Mr.
Hamane's red lines were.
If bombing an Iranian consulate wouldn't make him do something, what would?
So there was a domestic political reason for ordering a dramatic show of strength against Israel.
And there was also a strategic one.
Israel's April first strike on Damascus killed the entire team responsible for operations in Syria and Lebanon.
These are guys who are crucial for the running of Hezbollah, are for a large part of Iran's operations.
Now for Israel,
somebody obviously decided that that was a chance that justified taking the risk of bombing a diplomatic compound and breaking a rule that hadn't been broken
before.
So hitting back directly at Israel,
which is what Hamaneh and his decided to do,
and doing so in considerable force, was meant to change the ground worlds of the shadow war.
If it was a postcard it would have said,
please can you stop killing our top military commanders, and by the way, we will do some something about it, if you don't.
We've yet to see whether the Israelis accept that polite proposal.
But Mr Hamane's instinctive caution clearly had not evaporated.
The result was the April 14th missile drone strike.
Iran's first ever direct and overt attack on Israel itself on a dramatic scale that threatened mass aggressive destruction,
but was also signalled well enough in advance that almost all the munitions were blown out of the air and in the end it killed no one.
Importantly, Hezbollah, the Ayatollah's greatest weapon, was not involved.
There are other considerations driving Iranian decision-making.
And probably actually more important than destroying Israel,
this-term goal that is meant to happen sometime in the future is the stability and survival of the regime itself.
Public faith in the Islamic Republic is at an all-time low.
And the way, that is not just Western or Iranian-dissident propaganda.
Economic mismanagement, corruption, international isolation has, frankly, left the regime discredited in the eyes of many Iranians, and the signs are everywhere.
Turn out that the last presidential election in 2021 was at an all-time low,
which was clearly a reflection of disillusion with the idea that change can come from the normal processes.
that the regime can be reformed from within.
In 2022, the killing of a woman by morality police sparked anti-government protests.
On a scale unseen since the 1979 revolution, which brought the Republic to power in the first place.
Those protests didn't bring down the government,
and frankly it'd be naive if you thought that the Islamic Republic was going to collapse the day after tomorrow.
But the more people you talk to about contemporary Iran, the more comparisons with the late Soviet Union come up.
There is a sense that this is a tired project.
And at some point, something could go wrong.
Mr.
Amane hasn't shown much interest in making concessions.
And in fact,
it's probably not a coincidence that on the same day Iran struck Israel,
the morality police launched a fresh crackdown on women wearing the wrong kind of engine.
And that brings to another element informing Iranian decision-making.
Probably the greatest legitimising achievement of the Islamic Republic was a war of national defence.
Saddam unprovoked invasion for Iran in 1980, killed hundreds of thousands.
of people.
It pulled the country together and it left a deep scar on the generation that survived it.
So there's this big question hanging over this confrontation with Israel.
Would a war rally Uranians to the flag?
Or would it be the last straw that would see them finally overthrow a regime that already fed up with?
And that's not an issue.
experiment Mr.
Hamane seems keen to carry out.
But the experience of the Iran Iraq War informs Iranian thinking in other ways.
The obsession with missiles reflects how Iran felt it was abandoned by the international community and it was out rocketed by Iraq in that war.
And the caution that Mr.
Hamane commander's show in the Shadow War is partly informed by a memory of just how horrific a real conventional full-scale war could be.
Many analysts fear that the next generation of hardliners who maybe don't have that memory will be less restrained when it comes to
the risks of conflict.
And funnily enough,
if you speak to the people who really study Israel and Iran,
they'll tell you there's a very strong parallel here between Ayatollah Khamenei and Benjamin Netanyahu.
You can take back with you a message to the tyrants of Tehran.
Do not test Israel's resolve." Mr Netanyahu spent years warning that Iran is an existential threat.
He's spoken about its nuclear program in apocalyptic terms.
He's demanded the success of American presidents go to war to wipe it out.
But he has never done anything so reckless as actually bombing Iran himself.
Like Ayatollah, he's a man who is given to very fiery rhetoric, but in practice tends to be very good.
reverse.
When he launched a response on April 19th against Iran, it was a very limited strike.
It hit an airbase in Isvahan, which was clearly a symmetrical gesture because the Iranians had managed to hit an Israeli airbase.
And it was small enough for the Iranian regime to laugh it off, which it duly did.
The bottom line is, Israel and Iran both understand that there are huge risks involved in their shadow war.
going full-scale and running out of war.
Mr.
Hamane knows that Israel is a regional superpower.
For his talk of wiping it out, an attack would see a massive response from both Israel and its allies, including the United States.
And forget, Israel has nuclear weapons.
It doesn't admit it has, but it has.
Iran doesn't have a nuclear bomb yet,
but it does have Hezbollah, which is believed to have a stockpile of about 150,000 rockets ready to launch from southern Lebanon.
And for the Israelis, that's a nightmare.
It'd be more than enough to overwhelm the Iron Dome missile defense system.
It would cause massive destruction.
And these two countries are on a stand-off that kind of recalls the Cold War doctrine of mutually assured destruction.
Had Mr Netanyahu decided to risk an all-out fight,
had Hamane decided it was time to press the Hezbollah button,
even worse,
had the adults in the room,
senior IDF Generals and veteran Mossad officials in Israel and veteran hardliners and IRGC commanders in Iran,
being a sideline by reckless extremists who actually believed the rhetoric about a full-scale war.
In the end,
the adults prevailed this time,
but the confrontation is still deadly serious This round is over,
the bell is rung and the pugilists are back in their corners, but they will be coming out on the canvas again sometime soon.
The Fence in Depth is a regular video output by The Telegraph of The Big Defense Stories.
You'd like a daily fix of content about the war in Ukraine, I'd suggest you crane the latest, The Telegraph's podcast.
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