In a message on July 8 to Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group, he said: “The Islamic Republic has always supported the resistance of the people of the region against the illegitimate Zionist regime.”
So far, however, Iran’s losses appear to outweigh greatly the cost it has been able to impose on the country suspected of inflicting them.)
Two months after Israel and Iran appeared to be on the brink of all-out war, a suspected Israeli airstrike near Syria’s northern city of Aleppo in June dealt another blow to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Saeed Abyar, who was in Syria on an “advisory mission,” according to a statement issued by the IRGC, died in an attack on June 3, bringing the total number of key IRGC figures killed in suspected Israeli strikes since Oct. 7 last year to 19.
IRGC Chief-Commander Hossein Salami said Wednesday Israel will pay for killing IRGC advisor Saeid Abyar, who was targeted in a suspected Israeli airstrike on Syria's Aleppo.
It came just days after Israel launched air attacks on Syria’s central region as well as the coastal city of Baniyas on May 29, killing a child and injuring 10 civilians, according to Syrian state media.
“A closer look at the June 3 incident reveals that Israel targeted a copper factory and a weapons warehouse on the outskirts of Aleppo, attacking multiple times,” Francesco Schiavi, an Italy-based geopolitical analyst, told Arab News.
“In these confusing conditions, General Abyar was among several individuals near the impact site, making his death more likely an indirect consequence of an operation against Iranian infrastructure in Syria rather than an intended target of the Israeli attack, generally conducted with high-precision weapons.”
Although Israel is accused of targeting numerous Iranian commanders and cadres on Syrian soil in the past nine months, the June 3 attack was the first to kill an IRGC commander since the April 1 strike on Iran’s embassy annex in Damascus.
That suspected Israeli strike eliminated eight IRGC officers, including Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the highest-ranking commander of the extraterritorial Quds Force to be killed since Qassem Soleimani died in a US drone strike in 2020.
Rescue workers search in the rubble of a building annexed to the Iranian embassy a day after an air strike in Damascus on April 2, 2024. (AFP)
Iran launched a massive retaliatory attack against Israel on April 13 — its first direct assault on Israeli territory, stoking fears of an all-out, region-wide conflict. The following day, IRGC chief Hossein Salami said his country “decided to create a new equation.”
“From now on, if Israel attacks Iranian interests, figures, and citizens anywhere, we will retaliate from Iran,” he said.
Observers, unsure how Iran might respond this time, remain on edge, especially as tensions mount in southern Lebanon, the stronghold of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, which has been trading cross-border fire with Israel since Oct. 8 last year.
“Tehran warned that a ‘new equation’ had been established whereby Iran would retaliate against any Israeli attacks on its interests in the region,” said Schiavi.
Smoke from Israeli bombardment billows in Kfarkila in southern Lebanon on July 12, 2024 amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah. (AFP)
“The lack of precedents makes it challenging to predict what this renewed Iranian approach might entail in practical terms.”
As it has officially accused Israel of killing Abyar, Eva J. Koulouriotis, a political analyst specializing in the Middle East, believes the IRGC will now be “forced to respond” to the June 3 attack in order to bolster its deterrence — potentially setting off a new round of escalation.
“I understand that by this announcement and the threat to respond, Iran does not want the Israel Defense Forces to return to the equation before targeting the Iranian consulate in Syria,” when similar attacks had gone “unpunished,” Koulouriotis told Arab News.
Eldar Mamedov, a Brussels-based expert on the Middle East and Iran, believes the Israeli strike on the Iranian embassy annex in Damascus had “changed the deterrence equation to Tehran’s detriment.”
An Iranian ballistic missile lies on the shores of the Dead Sea after Iran launched drones and missiles toward Israel on April 13, 2024. (Reuters/File)
“Tehran was compelled to retaliate, but even then did so with caution — by forewarning Israel and the US through neighboring countries,” he told Arab News. “The aim was to send a message that Iran would not hesitate to strike Israel directly if it kept killing senior Iranian figures, in order to re-establish the deterrence.”
Mamedov added: “To understand what scenarios could prompt Iran to retaliate against Israel for the elimination of IRGC officers in Syria and Lebanon, we need to take into account the overall context of Iranian presence there.
“It is primarily about the ‘forward defense’ strategy through allies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and proxy groups in Syria, the aim of which is to deter Israel from attacking Iran and its nuclear installations directly.”
Nevertheless, Mamedov believes Iran “is willing to avoid an all-out war with Israel and/or the US.”
The death of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash on May 19, along with the foreign minister and other senior officials, forced Tehran to bring forward its presidential elections, which had not been due until 2025.
“As Iran is immersed in preparing the ground for an inevitable leadership transition, it is wary of further regional destabilization,” said Mamedov. “I do not think that this fundamental calculus has changed.”
Schiavi concurred, saying that Iran’s current “domestic leadership crisis” means the government is now preoccupied with the leadership transition, making a fresh round of retaliatory action unlikely.
He noted Iran’s “longstanding blend of pragmatism and assertiveness in responding to regional developments,” citing “the carefully measured direct attack on Israel on April 13, which was intended to avoid plunging the two countries into open confrontation.”
Schiavi added: “Despite Tehran’s continued adherence to its strategy of supporting the pro-Iranian axis and maintaining continuity in its regional policy despite sudden political upheaval, the current circumstances make a new wave of attacks on Israel highly unlikely.”
For his part, Mamedov believes Iran will likely “be forced to abandon its caution if tensions between Israel and Hezbollah were to escalate into an open war.”
“Hezbollah is considered by Iran the most capable and effective of its allies in the Levant, with a degree of operational cooperation and ideological alignment that is not met in Tehran’s relations with other allies/proxies,” he said.
“A severely weakened Hezbollah would undermine a vital pillar of Tehran’s ‘forward defense’ strategy, and it is to be expected that it will give its support to the Lebanese group in case of an open war with Israel. However, that depends on how Hezbollah will perform in such a war.”
Here is a recap of their volatile relationship over the past half century.
Israel, following its creation in 1948, had close ties with Iran, which becomes the second Muslim country to recognize the Jewish state after Turkiye.
They become allies under the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. At the time, Iran was home to the biggest Jewish community in the Middle East.
The new Jewish state imported 40 percent of its oil from Iran in exchange for weapons, technology and agricultural produce.
Israel’s Mossad spy agency helped train the shah’s feared Savak secret police.
The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran toppled the shah, dramatically ending the friendship between the two states.
Israel did not recognize the new Islamic Republic.
The ayatollahs considered Israel illegal occupiers of Jerusalem. Informal commercial links remained in place, however.
Islamic Jihad became the first Islamist Palestinian organization to take up arms against Israel in 1980, with Iran as its main backer.
Nonetheless, Israel sent Tehran around 1,500 missiles to help it fight Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war that raged from 1980 to 1988.
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to counter Palestinian groups based there, going all the way to briefly hold the capital Beirut.
Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps subsequently backed the creation of militant group Hezbollah, which waged a campaign against Israeli forces from Shiite strongholds in southern Lebanon.
Israel blamed Hezbollah for attacks abroad, including in Argentina, where the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy killed 29 people and a 1994 attack on a Jewish community center left 85 dead.
Tensions rose after the election in 2005 of ultra conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who talked on several occasions of bringing an end to Israel and described the Holocaust as a “myth.”
Iran resumed uranium enrichment at Isfahan the same year.
When the Iran nuclear deal was brokered by world powers in 2015, Netanyahu slammed it as an “historic mistake.”
He was the first to congratulate then-US president Donald Trump when he withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018.
Iran has since resumed uranium enrichment.
Officially still at war with Syria, Israel claimed to want to stay out of the civil war that broke out in 2011 and still simmers.
But from 2013 on, Israel — wary of Hezbollah and Iran’s presence on the side of Syrian President Bashar Assad — carried out hundreds of air strikes against them in Syria.
Israel began cultivating ties with long-time foe Saudi Arabia, Iran’s main religious and regional rival.
In September 2020 Saudi allies the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed normalization accords with Israel.
The Unites States sought Israel-Saudi rapprochement, but the efforts were derailed by the Gaza War.
Over the following months Israel accused Iran of attacks on vessels. Iran accused Israel of targeted assassinations and the sabotage of the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz.
Israel was blamed for targeted attacks on Iranians in Syria, including top members of the Revolutionary Guard in 2022 and 2023.
An Israeli airstrike on Iran’s consular annex building in Damascus on April 1, 2024 killed more than a dozen people — including two senior members of the Revolutionary Guards.
US President Joe Biden warned that Iran was “threatening to launch a significant attack on Israel,” promising Israel “ironclad” support.
On April 13 — two weeks after the unprecedented attack on its consular facilities — Iran responded by sending waves of drones from its territory toward Israel, which closed its airspace, as did Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s air defense systems were deployed and that it was prepared for a “direct attack from Iran.”
