Israel's deterrence is working against Iran's threats - opinion

Israel used to be seen as militarily untouchable at any real scale: owing to the mysterious capabilities of its intelligence services, the power and reach of the IDF, and Israel’s nearly miraculous ability to live in relative quiet, in a region that is anything but. When Hamas shattered this reality by massacring Israelis last October 7, the question on everyone’s mind became: has the Jewish state lost its power of deterrence? Can anything ever restore it? The answer just might be “yes,” as revealed by a barely reported yet enormously dramatic statement from Iran’s new elected President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Last April, after Iran fired over 300 missiles and drones at Israel, the Israeli air force flew a record-breaking distance to the Iranian city of Isfahan, destroyed a radar system that was protecting a portion of the Islamic regime’s notorious nuclear program, and then returned to base without incident. After a Houthi drone strike on Tel Aviv last month, which killed one Israeli civilian and barely missed the US Embassy Branch Office, Israel responded by hitting Yemen’s Hodeidah port: the main Houthi lifeline to Iranian armaments, and a major hub for Yemen’s oil exports. Israel was quick to point out that Hodeidah is even farther from Israel than Tehran, which was widely seen as a subtle warning to the Islamic regime.

Then last week, Hezbollah (the Iranian-backed terror organization that effectively controls Lebanon) fired a missile that struck a soccer field killing 12 Druze-Israeli children and injuring some 30 more. This is in the context of northern Israel becoming almost entirely uninhabitable through 10 months of constant Hezbollah bombardment. In the following 24 hours, Israel killed Hezbollah’s top military commander, Fu’ad Shukr in Beirut, and in an explosion widely attributed to Israel took out Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps safehouse in Tehran, and Israel finally confirmed that its July 13 strike on the notorious Hamas commander Mohammad Deif in Gaza, did successfully kill him.

The message was becoming clear: Israel can strike Iran, Lebanon, and anywhere else. Distance is not a factor, air defenses are apparently irrelevant, even fears of escalation and international pressure seem to have limited effect on Israel’s decision-making. Israel’s intelligence services appear to know exactly what to hit, taking out major leadership capabilities, threatening important military sites, and even crippling entire national economies, all while producing stunningly limited civilian casualties.

AFTER THE recent strike in Tehran, Iran vowed to perform its “duty” of “avenging [Haniyeh’s] blood,” including what appears to be a threat to intentionally target Israeli civilians. An international coalition, including the US, UK, Egypt, Jordan, and Gulf states has assembled a defense coordinated by America’s CentCom, to intercept projectile attacks out of Iran and its proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Gaza.

Stunningly, against this backdrop of threats and escalation, Iran’s newly inaugurated president, Masoud Pezeshkian, asked the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to refrain from attacking Israel, according to a report last week by Iran International, the Persian-language news television channel headquartered in London.

Insights from the statement by the new Iranian president

This astonishing statement reveals a number of dramatic insights.

Immediately obvious is that the president of Iran must ask the Ayatollah for permission on matters of policy, a poignant reminder that the Islamic Republic is controlled by an extremist religious cabal, and neither by its president nor parliament, much less the will of its people. Yet even more eye-opening is the reason for Pezeshkian’s call for Iran to stand down: he did not refer to international pressure, nor to US President Joe Biden’s attempts to restore “stability” nor even to Russia’s request to avoid targeting civilians. Instead, the Iranian president cited fears of Israeli retaliation. Specifically, Pezeshkian cautioned that an Israeli retaliatory attack could cripple Iran’s economy, infrastructure, and even lead to the country’s collapse.

This is notable given recent White House objections to Israel’s retaliatory strikes, Biden’s disingenuous claim that Israel is the party that is “escalating,” and his reported threat to potentially abandon America’s key ally if Israel “escalates again.” None of this seems to have given the Iranian president much comfort, and the very Israeli retaliation that the White House recently decried, now appears to be the central force for reducing military escalation. In a word: deterrence.

It is not clear whether Iran’s Ayatollah will listen to the counsel of his President, indeed by the time you read these words I may be running to a bomb shelter. It’s even possible that the world would be better off if Iran barrels foolishly ahead toward war, as Israel might then proceed to destroy the oppressive regime, its nuclear program, and its role as the major state sponsor of terrorism throughout the Middle East.

Yet speaking as someone who lives in Tel Aviv, under the daily threat of imminent Iranian bombardment, I am pleased to see that Israel’s deterrence is playing a role in keeping me safe this week, as well as my friends, colleagues, and neighbors.

The writer is an expert in international law, an adjunct professor at Reichman and Bar-Ilan Universities in Israel, and the CEO of RealityCheck, a nonprofit NGO dedicated to clarifying global conversations with verifiable data. He can be found on Instagram at @realitycheckresearch or at www.RealityCheckResearch.org.