Israel’s Momentous Decision | The New Yorker

Mired in a brutal war in Gaza and beset by international condemnation, Israel had a single day of undisputed victory this weekend. After Iran launched more than three hundred missiles and drones at Israeli territory on Saturday night, the Israel Defense Forces shot down nearly every one. The country’s myriad political and security dilemmas, arguably greater than any others it has faced in its seventy-six-year history, could be briefly set aside. “Take the win,’’ President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging him not to ignite a regional war by striking back. It is unclear the extent to which Netanyahu will heed the advice.

Tehran had ordered the attack in response to Israel’s dramatic assassination of Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, earlier this month, in Damascus. The barrage may have caused little damage, but it was unprecedented: after years of clandestine struggle, it was Iran’s first direct attack on Israeli territory, and any projectiles that evaded air defenses could have caused tremendous casualties. The Iranians evidently hoped to strike military facilities, including an air base in Nevatim, but missiles were also intercepted over Jerusalem and other civilian areas. Yet Israel’s air-defense systems—known as Iron Dome and Arrow 3—limited the serious casualties to only one, a young Bedouin girl.

The Israelis had help—from the United States, the U.K, and, remarkably, Jordan, its Arab neighbor, with which relations have sharply deteriorated since the war in Gaza began. Early on Sunday morning, Jordan’s military shot down several drones and cruise missiles that had crossed into its airspace on the way to Israel. Less conspicuously, American radar and tracking systems arrayed across the Middle East, some of them in Arab countries that don’t often advertise their partnership with Israel, helped intercept Iran’s drones and missiles. “It’s an integrated system, built across the region,’’ Andrew Tabler, who served on President Donald Trump’s National Security Council and is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me. “Everybody played their part.”

Once it was evident that the attack had failed, some observers asserted that it had been mostly for show—that the mullahs had intended to stage a sensational assault without provoking a wider war. Michael Singh, a former National Security Council official under George W. Bush, tweeted that the attacks were “performative.” There was some evidence to support this idea: Iran’s leaders telegraphed the attack days in advance, giving the I.D.F. ample time to prepare; they launched their drones and missiles not all at once but in waves, making them easier to shoot down; and they refrained from firing larger, more accurate ballistic missiles, which might have had a greater chance of penetrating Israel’s defenses.

Iran’s allies had a role in the attack, too. Some of the missiles were launched from Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, where Tehran has nurtured proxy armies. Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia that sits on Israel’s northern border, also fired several volleys of Katyusha rockets into the Golan Heights, but this was effectively a continuation of other recent attacks. Since October 7th, Hezbollah and the I.D.F. have exchanged missile fire almost daily, forcing huge dislocations of civilians on both sides of the border; Israeli pilots have struck deep inside Lebanon to kill leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas. Those skirmishes, though bloody, have remained contained.

It was hard not to conclude that the failed attack was deeply embarrassing to Iran’s leaders. “If the strikes had killed a hundred Israelis, I’m sure Iran’s leaders would have been thrilled,’’ Reuel Gerecht, a former C.I.A. officer and a resident scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told me. But what occurred seems to have provided at least some symbolic value. As the strikes unfolded, members of Iran’s parliament shouted from the floor of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, “Death to Israel!” Afterward, Iran’s leaders announced that they intended to do no more, unless Israel retaliated.

The biggest question is whether and how Israel will respond. Since 1948, it has been a cardinal rule of Israeli defense policy to avenge every attack, often with greater force. But now such a counterattack poses the imminent threat of sparking a regional war. In the past thirty years, the Iranian regime has nurtured allies across the region, both governments and irregular armies, mostly anchored in the Shiite confession; along with Hezbollah and Hamas, there are the Houthis in Yemen, Bashar al-Assad’s outcast regime in Syria, and the Shiite militias of Iraq. Those forces, which Iran’s leaders use to extend their influence and protect against attempts to overthrow them, have been attacking Israel and Americans in the region for years. In 2006, after Hezbollah fighters crossed the border, Israel and Hezbollah fought a vicious thirty-four-day war that left large parts of Lebanon in ruins. An open war between Israel and Iran could spread similar devastation across the Middle East; Hezbollah alone is believed to possess at least a hundred thousand rockets and missiles, in launch sites across the country.

Iran’s role in the October 7th attacks is not entirely clear. Although it certainly armed and trained members of Hamas, the evidence that it helped plan the attack is scant. In any event, Yahya Sinwar, the battle-hardened Hamas military commander, has made it clear that he was hoping the October 7th assault would spark a wider war against Israel. He has mostly failed, but not entirely. In the past six months, the Houthi militia has repeatedly attacked Western ships transiting the Red Sea, disrupting the global economy, and Hezbollah has launched limited missile strikes into northern Israel. Zahedi, the Iranian general killed by the Israelis earlier this month, was in Syria to coördinate Hezbollah’s activities. Israel, in turn, has been attacking Iran and its proxies for years; since 2022, its Air Force has killed more than two dozen Revolutionary Guard officers in Syria. Israel’s objective has been to sever Iran’s supply routes to Hezbollah, and possibly also to disrupt its ongoing nuclear program, which appears to be inching closer toward a workable bomb.

The spectre of an Iranian nuclear weapon is the preëminent national-security threat facing Israel. Such a bomb—capable of destroying vast portions of the country—would dramatically alter Israel’s sense of security and instill a new sense of danger in the Middle East, already the world’s most volatile region.

In recent years, most of the restraints on Iran’s nuclear program have fallen away. Since President Trump terminated the Iran deal struck during the Obama Administration, an Iranian nuclear plant at Fordow, in the Great Salt Desert, has drastically ramped up the pace of enriching uranium, to purities that far exceed those necessary to run a power plant. Iran is widely believed to have enriched enough uranium 235 to build at least three weapons; it is possible that it could complete the remaining steps required to detonate such a weapon in as little as six months. Earlier this year, Ali Akbar Salehi, the former head of Iran’s nuclear agency, proclaimed that his country had crossed “all the thresholds of nuclear science and technology.’’

If Israel decides to strike Iran directly, it could prompt Iranian leadership to drop whatever restraints the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, may still feel in pursuing a nuclear device. “It’s possible Khamenei has chosen not to go nuclear, and that he has concluded that he has what he needs from his conventional capacity,’’ Gerecht said. “If that is true, then the Israelis may not want to provoke him.”