Iran’s missile attack sends a message – but can it deter the Israeli offensive in Lebanon?

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s long-held policy of “strategic patience” seems to be wearing thin.

At the end of July, Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in what is widely believed to have been an Israeli bombing in Tehran, hours after attending the swearing-in of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian. The same day, the body of senior Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr was dug out of the rubble of a building in southern Beirut levelled by an Israeli air strike.

Both men had been senior figures within the Iran-backed “Axis of Resistance” – a network of armed groups stretching from the Gulf of Aden to the Gaza Strip that includes Hamas, the Houthis of Yemen, Shiite militias across Iraq and Syria and, crucially, Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The weeks crawled by, and the anonymous words of Iranian officials worked their way through the news wires. Iran and its allies, they said, were foregoing the hasty vengeance promised by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the hours following Haniyeh’s assassination – in the hopes, they claimed, of finally reaching a ceasefire in the ruins of Gaza.

Those hopes came crashing to earth along with half a dozen apartment buildings that collapsed on Hezbollah’s headquarters in southern Beirut last Friday, cut down by Israeli air strikes. The attack killed Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, who had led the militant Shiite group for more than three decades. Abbas Nilforushan, a prominent commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, was also killed in the attack. A few days later, Iran’s ballistic missiles were burning across the skies of Israel. 

Losing faith

Although Israel and its allies say they shot down most of the 180 or so missiles launched at Israeli airbases and other military targets, Iranian state media has said that the attack was the first to employ a number of hypersonic missiles – which, if true, would mark a worrying escalation from the Islamic Republic’s largely symbolic drone and missile barrage in April.

Joseph Daher, author of "Hezbollah: The Political Economy of Lebanon’s Party of God", said that Iran’s decision to once again launch a direct attack on Israeli soil – one that he said had had little impact on the country’s military capabilities – likely served more than one purpose.

“We have to understand this 'retaliation' from Iran in two aspects,” he said. “Firstly, as a way to reaffirm a form of deterrence against Israel and in response to the numerous attacks of Israel against Iran directly or against Iranian-related targets. And secondly, to maintain this connection in the so-called Axis of Resistance by acting in favour of Tehran's network of influence in the region – especially Hezbollah. Because there were rising criticisms among Hezbollah’s popular base, basically asking, ‘What is Iran doing against the rising attacks, against this escalation of violence against Lebanon?’. That said, this ‘retaliation’ will not stop Israeli war on Lebanon.”

Read moreHow will Israel respond?

Although Iran has so far steered clear of direct confrontations with Israel since the October 7 Hamas attacks and the Netanyahu administration’s brutal response in Gaza, Israel’s abrupt escalation against Tehran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon has put a high price on the Islamic Republic’s continued inaction.

Suleiman Mourad, professor of religion and Middle East studies at Smith College, said that Iran’s policy of “strategic patience” potentially put the Islamic Republic at risk of finding itself no longer able to rely on the Shiite militias it had spent so many years supporting.

“Delaying tactics can backfire, especially if circumstances were to emerge and those who you are dependent on to provide you with this kind of depth, the Axis of Resistance, so to speak, start to collapse,” he said. “I think Iran is wary of that, and part of the retaliation that happened is to underline essentially that, ‘We are still committed to our allies in the region, we are not going to leave them to just be [punished] while we sit in Tehran and Qom and sip tea and just hold … ceremonies to commemorate their deaths'.”

Sending a message

Hamid Talebian, a doctoral researcher at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) studying transnational Shiite networks and Iranian foreign policy, said that Tuesday’s missile attack was more than a token response to Israel’s escalation.

“On the military level, the Iranians wanted to send the signal to Israelis that they are willing to utilise their more advanced missiles – ballistic Fattah-1 for example – which can bypass Israeli air defences,” he said.

Daher said that Israel’s increasingly violent attacks against Hezbollah and other members of the Iran-backed Axis of Resistance echoed US interests in curbing Tehran’s regional influence.

“This is happening with the direct collaboration and support of the US, and not only consent – the US has a direct interest as well to see a weakened Hezbollah, a weakened network linked to Iran and a weakened Iran as well,” he said.

“They’ve had the green light from the US for example for all their actions in Lebanon that have violated all possible red lines,” he added. “And most probably for Iran as well … You cannot say on one side you’re putting all your force behind a ceasefire while continuing to support Israel militarily, economically and politically in its various wars.”

By raising the stakes of US support for Israel, Mourad said, Tehran was likely hoping to put pressure on the White House to rein in its closest ally in the Middle East.

“If Iran is hoping to achieve anything it is to force Europe – to a lesser extent, because Europe doesn’t have muscles anymore – but also the United States foreign policymakers to recalculate,” he said. “Because if Israel were to retaliate on a larger scale, then that puts Iran in a corner. Again, I say that Iran doesn’t want a war, but it doesn’t mean that Iran cannot wage a war.”

Going nuclear

More dangerous even than the risk of all-out conventional war across the Middle East, though, is the spectre of nuclear escalation. Talebian said that months of Israeli escalation may already have convinced the Iranian government to push ahead in its pursuit of nuclear weapons – weapons that could give the regime a means of deterrence that would be impossible to ignore.

“The decision of going nuclear might have already been made,” he said. “The Israeli Defence Forces have practically bypassed all the red lines and the deterrence capabilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran have been jeopardised quite significantly. This has empowered the elites who have been in favour of further nuclear advancement in setting their agenda.”

Daher said that Tehran was not likely to risk further weakening its bargaining position with the US, which alongside the EU and UK continues to impose debilitating sanctions on Iran’s economy.

“They will pursue nuclear capacities regardless of Israel’s attacks, but this will definitely make them more determined to continue to reach nuclear capacity, because it is an asset in future negotiations with the US especially,” he said.

“We have to understand that the main objective of Iran since October 7 has not been to liberate Palestine, or help Hamas directly, but to have a better geopolitical position in the region through its networks of influence in the future prospective negotiations with the US – especially in terms of a nuclear agreement or sanctions. And this strategy has been significantly challenged by Israel’s escalation of violence against Lebanon and weakening of Hezbollah and Hamas, and Iran needing to act against Tel Aviv.”

Read moreHow Israel could respond to Iran’s drone and missile assault

Each Israeli assault on Iran’s allies seems to force Tehran into an impossible choice: to respond in kind, and see its retaliation used to justify increasingly damaging economic and military reprisals from Israel – to say nothing of the threat of direct US intervention – or to stand by and watch as its networks across the region are broken beyond repair. But Talebian said that Iran had more than a loose grouping of militias to fall back on.  

“We should not forget about Russia,” he said. “They will not sit and watch the Iranian regime being toppled down, or even badly paralysed, especially in the event of a US-led retaliation. They have made a strategic partnership with the Islamic Republic since the beginning of the war in Ukraine and, because of that, they won’t tolerate larger escalation if it diminishes Iranian support in their full-scale war against Ukraine.”

Ultimately, Talebian said, the price of this escalation would be paid by the men, women and children still being killed in the fighting in Gaza and, now, Lebanon.

“The most significant consequence of this escalation for civilians is yet another obstacle to any ceasefire on the Gaza and Lebanese fronts,” he said. “The Iranian regime ultimately had to react, and this will serve as further justification for the right-wing Israeli government to bolster the IDF's aggression even more.”