When Israel carried out its second air raid on Iran last month following an Iranian missile salvo, Tehran played down the airstrikes that targeted the capital as “limited”. It has frequently promised to respond nonetheless, saying this week that retaliation would be “decisive”.
That promise may not be forthcoming as Iran considers its precarious footing. The Israeli airstrikes on October 26 had destroyed all of Iran’s Russian-made S300 aerial defence batteries and many of its radar installations along a corridor that leaves the country at Israel’s mercy, according to a western official familiar with the damage.
“Air defences will take a year to rebuild,” he said. “This will make them think twice about striking Israel.”
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The airstrikes were in response to the launch by Iran of several hundred ballistic missiles at military installations in Israel following the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, alongside a senior Iranian military official. Those assassinations, during an Israeli onslaught that decimated the Iranian-backed militia, had deeply embarrassed Tehran, which was criticised by supporters for not intervening.
Iran realises, however, that the disparity has never been clearer between a power such as Israel and its own poorly-armed military with its ageing air defences, and its allied militias. In one wave of airstrikes, Israel had crippled Iran’s air defences and set back its missile manufacturing programme.
Binyamin Netanyahu has claimed that Israel has already struck one of Iran’s nuclear facilities
ABIR SULTAN/EPA
The next one, Iran fears, could be more ambitious. Israel has signalled it could strike Iranian nuclear facilities. Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, said this week that one of the targets in October’s strikes hit a “component” in Iran’s nuclear programme, in a reference to the Parchin facility that was struck. The International Atomic Energy Agency has disputed that it was a nuclear facility.
Iran’s worries extend beyond its vulnerable nuclear programme. In two videotaped addresses to the Iranian people, Netanyahu has encouraged Iranians to rise up against the unpopular regime led by Ayatollah Khamenei, who is 85 and engrossed in the matter of his succession as supreme leader.
He favours his son Mojataba for the job after another frontrunner, the president Ebrahim Raisi, died in a helicopter crash earlier this year. Inviting further conflict with Israel in the midst of the ongoing preparations has left him nervous.
The Iranian regime has always been mindful that it was fighting on two fronts: an external one, mainly against Israel through its now weakened proxies, and an internal war against the majority of its citizens, who oppose its hardline Islamist rule.
Ayatollah Khamenei is distracted by plans for his succession as supreme leader
IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER’S OFFICE/ZUMA/REX
“The regime change talk really scared them,” said the Western official.
There was a wave of social unrest in the country following the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, who died in police custody after she was arrested by morality police for allegedly not wearing a hijab.
Meanwhile, the reinstatement of US sanctions in 2018 has forced the government to increase taxes on its people and run a ballooning budget deficit, keeping annual inflation close to 40 per cent. Elections for parliament and the presidency this year set a record for low turnouts as the opposition called for a boycott.
