Provoked and attacked, will Iran take the bait?

One of the deadliest conflicts in the West Asian region broke out when Hamas launched a surprise terror attack across Gaza into Israel in the early hours of 7 October 2023. As would have been expected, Israel regrouped and launched a ferocious counter-attack vowing to eliminate Hamas from the face of the Earth. Three months down the line, there is no signs of fighting coming to a close or a ceasefire despite best efforts of the international community including the UN. Estimates suggest that already more than 22,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza including 9,000 children. Two issues have been of primary concern ever since the war broke out. Firstly, how soon will the war come to an end and with that hopefully, end of the crippling humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The second concern was if the conflict would spread across the region and more countries would join in. On the first, Israel has dismissed all calls for an early end to the war stating that it is ready to fight a prolonged war in order to achieve its military objective of eliminating the Hamas threat forever. Although Israel had expected that with its military superiority and technical prowess, it would be able to hunt down and eliminate Hamas soon, it is, however, nowhere close to it. On 29 December 2023, The Israeli Chief of Staff of the Army was quoted stating that Israel does not have a magic solution to eliminate Hamas. Thus, despite enjoying limited military success and incurring significant losses, Israel is expected to continue its military operations for some time, at least. The second concern is even trickier and dangerous. Till now, the conflict has been largely confined to the Gaza Strip. There have been exchanges of rocket attacks and even drone strikes in Syria and Lebanon where Hezbollah is active. There has also been an increase in violence in the West Bank too, mostly instigated by attacks perpetrated by Israeli settlers on Palestinians. The latest entrant into the conflict was the Houthis who have blocked the passage of Israel flagged ships or ships carrying cargo bound from/to Israeli ports. Despite the best efforts of the US, including deploying an Aircraft carrier led fleet, the Houthis are determined to attack Israel through attacks on its ships. In fact, on 26 December, while briefing Knesset lawmakers, the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, “We are in a multi-front war. We are being attacked from seven fronts; Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Iraq, Yemen and Iran. We have already responded and acted on six of those fronts.” As the war prolongs, it is Israel which is enduring increasing casualties and economic costs. The rest of the Muslim countries around it wait and watch, without getting directly involved in the military conflict while the three ‘H’ of Iran i.e. Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis are taking the fight to the Israeli defence forces. It is perhaps because of this realisation that Israel and its primary benefactor, the US have decided to increase the costs on the region, especially Iran, as it is considered the shadow and influence behind repeated attacks on Israel and the US in the region. Provocations and attacks on Iran As a result, in the past week or so, there has been a spate of attacks on Iran and its assets in the region. A terror attack on 03rd January involving twin explosions at an event near the tomb of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) General Qassem Soleimani in the Iranian city of Kerman, killed almost 100 people, marking it as the worst terror attack since Iran’s Revolution in 1979. It may be recalled that Qaseem Suleimani was killed through a US drone strike in Iraq on 3 January 2020. On 2nd January, Hamas’s deputy leader abroad Saleh al-Arouri was killed in an Israeli strike in the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, he was considered the de facto leader of Hamas’s military wing in the West Bank. The assassination of Arouri came barely a week after the killing of Iran’s most influential military commander in Levant, Seyed Radhi Mousavi, in a suspected Israeli airstrike in Syria’s capital Damascus on 25th December. Mousavi, a Quds Force general, is the most senior IRGC commander killed since Soleimani. On 4 January, another blow was dealt when a suspected US drone attack killed Mushtaq Talib Al-Saidi, deputy commander of operations in the Iraqi capital for Harakat Al-Nujaba, a pro-Iran Militia group. Earlier, on 18th December 2023, around 70 percent of Iran’s petrol stations had their services disrupted after a massive cyber-attack by the hacker group Gonjeshke Darande, which translates to “Predatory Sparrow”, linked to Israel’s Mossad. The terror strike on 3rd January is the latest attempt to provoke Iran to join the war directly. Iran has already dispatched its warship, the Alborz, on 1 January to the Red Sea, one day after the US Navy destroyed and sank three Houthi small boats. Iran’s President, in a public statement, has taken a pledge to avenge the death of its IRGC commander Mousavi. However, this is not the first time that Iran is under attack. There is a consistent history of attack on Iran’s assets in the recent past. Shortly after the assassination of Qaseem Suleimani, a cyberattack hit computers in Iran on 19 May 2020 that regulated maritime traffic at Shahid Rajaee port on Iran’s southern coast in the Persian Gulf, causing mass disruption and a huge traffic jam of ships that waited days to dock. On 27 November 2020, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent nuclear scientist and often called the father of Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program, was assassinated in a roadside attack about 40 miles east of Tehran. In a series of attacks in the year 2021, an explosion at Natanz Nuclear plant on 11 April 2021 hit the power supply for centrifuges and caused major damage. Shortly thereafter, on 23 June 2021, a suspected Israeli drone struck a facility in Karaj for manufacturing centrifuges for the nuclear program. All this while the nuclear deal talks had just restarted, after President Biden assumed office in January 2021. Later, on 26 October 2021, a cyberattack disabled out the system at over 4,300 petrol pumps that allows Iranians to use government-issued cards to purchase fuel at a subsidised rate. Last year, on 28 January 2023, drones equipped with explosives struck a weapons factory in central Isfahan just before midnight. Will Iran take the bait? The attacks against Iran and its assets in the past week are a clear provocation that expect Iran to react. Islamic State (IS), which has often operated against Iranian groups in Syria, has owned up for the terror attack of 3 January. IS has been known to collaborate discreetly with the US in the past few years to specifically target Iranian interests and therefore this angle being responsible for the terror attack can’t be ruled out too. Iran has however, not been known to join battle directly, as has been seen through past instances despite serious provocations quoted above. Even at the height of the Persian Gulf crisis in June 2019 which brought the US and Iran closest to a direct conflict ever, Iran did not initiate any conflict. To further assess this, there are four important factors to consider. First, Iran has proxies and militias all over Levant which are ideologically and financially supported by it. These militia groups conduct operations to further Iran’s political and military agenda and so far, they have been very effective. Second, Iran has been under continuous Western sanctions for many decades. Severe restrictions have been placed on sale of its crude oil and gas too. It would be unwise on Iran’s part to incur a huge military expenditure on a war during this sanction regime when the low cost option of fighting through proxies is working effectively. Third, Iran has often been pitched against the entire Sunni Muslim world. Any conflict initiation on the part of Iran, if it does not include other countries of the region as well, may undo all the efforts at reconciliation in the past few years with the Arab world, especially the Saudi-Iran peace deal brokered by China in March 2023. Last, Israel, the US and some countries in the Western world have been looking at opportunities for a military conflict with Iran so that Iran’s nuclear apparatus can be specifically targeted. Iran’s nuclear program is considered very close to the regime and has been a major rallying point for the country in the past decade or so. Iran would not want this to be jeopardised in any manner. Iran has been known to be resilient and patient. It has chosen its own methods at extracting revenge, which do not necessarily involve direct military conflict. The last military conflict that Iran fought was the Iran-Iraq war 1980-88. It is thus very unlikely that Iran would take the bait this time and launch a full scale military conflict. It is likely to continue targeting the US and Israel through its proxies in the region. However, will others stop provoking Iran any further? What are the red-lines beyond which Iran will not restrain itself? As this conflict prolongs, how is Iran going to posture itself further? As the Israel-Hamas conflict progresses into the year, some of the questions will get progressively answered, hopefully with answers which do not escalate the ongoing conflict any further. The author is Assistant Director, MP-IDSA. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost_’s views._ Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.