From cyberattacks on nuclear sites to mysterious explosions at military bases, Israel has carried out dozens of covert operations against Iran during its decades-long shadow war against the Islamic republic. In one case blamed on Israel, a prominent nuclear scientist was assassinated near Tehran using a remote-controlled machine gun.
But Israel has never had to respond to an event like the Iranian barrage Saturday night, in which more than 300 armed drones and missiles were fired at the Jewish state – the first time Tehran has directly targeted the country from its own soil.
Israel is still considering the manner, scope and timing of its retaliation. But Israeli officials say a response is almost certain, despite Western calls for restraint, the impact it could have on the conflict in Gaza and the potential that any retaliation could push the Middle East into all-out war.
“The intention is to send a painful message to Iran. This cannot be something cosmetic,” an Israeli official said Tuesday, adding that deterrence must be restored after the unprecedented attack on Tehran.
Attacking “offshore” Iranian targets and proxies
Israel has for years targeted Iranian military assets and allied militias in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and beyond. Indeed, Iran launched the weekend assault after a suspected Israeli strike on its Damascus consulate this month killed several senior Revolutionary Guard commanders – an attack it called violation of its “sovereignty”.
Choosing to again launch airstrikes against Iranian personnel and proxies outside the Islamic republic, analysts say, would constitute a lower-risk form of retaliation. It also has the benefit of re-emphasizing that Israel will not be deterred from acting in the future to protect its security.
“There are retaliations. . . but more importantly, we are continuing what we were doing before the Iranian attack,” said Sima Shine, a former Iran analyst at Israel’s Mossad. “So that could be the message: We will continue to operate in Syria.”
Other potential regional targets, military analysts say, could include a suspected Iranian spy ship still located at the tip of the Red Sea, as well as Iranian personnel embedded with Yemen-based Houthi rebels.
This would increase the risk that Iran, in response, activates its regional proxies to increase its attacks on Israeli and Western interests.
Major General Hossein Salami, commander of the Guards, said this weekend that the attack had posed “a new equation” in hostilities between the two countries. “From now on, any aggression [by Israel] on our interests. . . will result in reciprocal retaliation,” he said.
But the biggest concern among Israeli policymakers may be that their own actions are not seen as an adequate response to the scale and audacity of the attack on Tehran this weekend – an assault that a US military official called the largest ballistic missile barrage and attack ever. drones launched against a country.
“I think even an attack against, for example, Iranian or Revolutionary Guard assets in Syria would not be considered at this time by Israel as appropriate to what happened. [on Saturday]” said Raz Zimmt, a former Israeli intelligence analyst on Iran.
Cyberattacks and assassinations: the secret option
Zimmt said it was “almost impossible” to envisage a scenario in which Israel refrained from direct retaliation against targets in Iran. The main question is how.
Naysan Rafati, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group in Washington, said there were precedents for such a mission, but noted that “these have generally been carried out in secret.”
Iran has blamed Israel for numerous major operations targeting Iranian nuclear facilities and scientists, military bases and personnel, as well as cyberattacks.
In 2010, a cyber weapon called Stuxnet was discovered and is believed to have caused significant damage to Iran’s nuclear program. In recent years, cyberattacks may have disrupted operations at Iran’s Bandar Abbas port, as well as large-scale disruptions at gas stations across the country. For years, intelligence circles have speculated about Israel’s ability to cause widespread power outages across Iran.
A more high-profile but still covert attack would involve targeted assassinations on Iranian soil of regime figures – operations that Iran has long criticized Israel for carrying out.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the “father of Iran’s nuclear program,” was shot dead in November 2020 in his black Nissan sedan, initially by a remote-controlled weapon hidden in a parked van. Years earlier, in 2011, the head of Iran’s missile program, Hassan Moghaddam, and several other officials were killed in an explosion at a military base outside Tehran.
Shine said such a response would make sense, but such operations would depend on whether Israel had the necessary intelligence and capabilities deployed in Iran.
But in this case too, she added that Israel was unlikely to consider an assassination a sufficient response to the Iranian strike, even if it targeted senior IRGC officials.
“Individual” direct strikes against Iran
Grant Rumley, a former senior U.S. defense official now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Israel must weigh two big considerations: whether it should opt for a conventional response and whether or not it should choose a proportionate response.
A conventional and proportionate response from Israel, Rumley said, would likely be a direct attack on Iranian military targets. The Israeli Air Force’s fleets of F-15 and F-35 fighter jets have trained for years for long-range missions, simulating the 1,500 km distance they would have to fly to reach Iran.
There is also the added possibility that Israel could send its own swarm of attack drones, such as the Hermes or Heron, to target Iranian military installations – although they would not necessarily be launched directly from Israel.
In February 2022, Israel attacked an Iranian drone base in the west of the country. Iran later claimed that the Israeli drones had been launched from neighboring northern Iraq.
Israel, for its part, also has the option to deploy – for the first time – its own arsenal of long-range Jericho ballistic missiles and other submarine-launched missiles.
Although such an option would spare the logistical complexities and danger to crews of a massive air raid, it risked revealing too much to the Iranians about Israel’s strategic arsenal.
“There is an advantage to keeping the Iranians in the dark about the capability of your missiles and submarines,” Rumley added. “Israel has just received a series of data on the Iranian threat in terms of missiles and drones. . . There are probably those who advocate not reciprocating Iran. »
Iran has warned that it will respond harshly to any direct Israeli attack, whether via fighter jet, missile or drone, regardless of the scale. Unlike Israel, the Islamic Republic is not equipped with advanced air defense systems, nor does it have the added protection of a U.S.-led regional coalition that has helped the Jewish state shoot down projectiles incoming.
General Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, vowed this week that if Israel retaliates, Tehran’s “next operation will be on a larger scale.”
The ever-present risk, among all these options, is that the powerful Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement in Lebanon – with which Israel has exchanged near-daily cross-border fire since the October 7 Hamas attack – will also intensify.
Rafati argued that ultimately how Israel would respond, if it materialized, was less important than the targets chosen, ranging from “symbolic to devastating.”
Iran has stressed to its allies and Western countries that its retaliation was calibrated: relatively isolated military installations such as the Nevatim air base in southern Israel, which they linked to the consulate attack damask. Rafati said the closest “individual response” for Israel would be a Revolutionary Guard base, or missile and drone facilities.
The most “devastating” option would likely be to target nuclear, energy, or other critical infrastructure sites.
Yet while both sides are determined to restore their regional deterrence, what Israel perceives as a proportionate or conventional “in-kind” response may not be viewed as such by Tehran. This makes the risk of miscalculation – and further escalation – extremely high.
“The old unwritten rules of the game [between Israel and Iran] no longer applies,” Rafati said. “There’s no manual for this.”