Waiting for war with Iran has global stability in peril

While the Olympics and the race for the White House dominated news in the United States, the prospects of repeated Western antagonism culminating in war appears to be increasing.

Ever since disgraced former president Donald Trump ordered the murder of Iran’s Islamic Republic Quds force commander General Qasim Soleimani three days before the failed coup d’etat that landed more than a thousand Republican Party terrorists in jail, Iran has been expected to retaliate.

More recent violence has increased the expectation that a response is coming.

Iran made threats to inflict “harsh punishment” on Israel for the deaths of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah commander Fuad Shuk in the weeks since the political leaders were assassinated.

Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency is believed to have assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, with a remotely-detonated bomb smuggled into an Iranian guesthouse months in advance. 

Israeli airstrikes killed more than three dozen senior Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon—as well as almost 400 fighters—in the 10 months after the Gaza war erupted on Oct. 7, 2023.

These attacks appeared to be largely tit-for-tat operations—calibrated to avoid sparking a full-scale war—that stopped short of killing the upper echelons of Hezbollah’s military leadership.

The dynamics shifted in July 2024, when an Israeli airstrike killed Fuad Shukr, who served on Hezbollah’s Jihad Council and was a close advisor to leader Hassan Nasrallah, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Lebanese capital. 

Almost every day, a new threat emerges from one of Iran’s senior political or military officials vowing to punish Israel for the killing of Haniyeh, who was on an official visit to Tehran.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard announced new military exercises, airlines rescheduled flights and those likely to be involved with the decision making have offered very few clues as to how or when Iran might respond.

This is exactly how Iran’s leadership wants it, according to a regime insider.

“There may be no attack at all, or there could be one tonight,” the Iranian source said. “Waiting for death is more difficult than death itself.”

“Iran has launched a psychological warfare campaign to keep Israel’s military, security, and logistical capabilities on edge, denying residents of the occupied territories any sense of calm,” the Iranian source said.

That psychological campaign is working, as US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a guided-missile submarine to the Middle East and accelerated the arrival of a carrier strike group to the region.

The movement of nuclear-powered submarines is rarely revealed publicly, but disclosing that the vessels which usually operate in near-complete secrecy are in the area is a clear message of deterrence to Iran and its proxies, who the US and Israel believe are preparing for a potential large-scale attack on Israel.

The challenge for Tehran is how to respond robustly to appease its hardline constituency and the regional militants it backs while avoiding the direct conflict with Israel and its ally the US that it has long sought to evade.

The regime’s primary objective is the survival of the Islamic republic, along with addressing the economic hardships that have fuelled public dissent.

Amid a sense that retaliation may be close, many Iranians are troubled by the looming possibility of war with Israel, a conflict they see as both unnecessary and potentially devastating to an economy on the brink.

At the same time, life continues as normal. Some say dealing with various kinds of crises is integrated into their daily lives, while others wonder whether the country’s military and intelligence capabilities are strong enough to fend off greater threats in the future.

Moeen, 28, a travel agent, questioned the idea of “a Shia nation gambling on war by avenging a Sunni politician [Haniyeh]”, in reference to the main two denominations in Islam, while expressing unhappiness that the killing on Iranian territory damaged the country’s military and intelligence credibility.

“Iran will have to decide on whether to respond directly or through its allied militias,” he said of Tehran’s “axis of resistance”, which includes Hizbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. “Otherwise . . . passive behaviour will embolden Israel to target very senior Iranian military commanders next time,” Moeen added.