Iranian military chief says overnight attack ‘achieved all its goals’, adding that US bases are under threat if it backs Israeli retaliation.
Iran has warned Israel of a larger attack on its territory should it retaliate against Tehran’s overnight drone and missile attacks, adding that the United States should not back an Israeli military action.
“If the Zionist regime [Israel] or its supporters demonstrate reckless behaviour, they will receive a decisive and much stronger response,” Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said in a statement on Sunday. ⠀
However, in a signal that Iran’s response was calculated in an attempt to avoid any major escalation, the Iranian foreign minister Amir Abdollahian said that Tehran had informed the US of the planned attack 72 hours in advance, and said that the strikes would be “limited” and for self-defence.
That did not stop more aggressive language from other officials, with the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami, warning that Tehran would retaliate against any Israeli attacks on its interests, officials or citizens.
“From now on, whenever Israel attacks Iranian interests… we will attack from Iran.” ⠀
“The matter can be deemed concluded. However, should the Israeli regime make another mistake, Iran’s response will be considerably more severe,” said a statement.
It added that the US should “stay away” from the conflict, as it is an issue between Iran and Israel.
Isn’t it Iran’s MO, when attacked by superior enemies, to make some kind of response that’s not very damaging, make a threat and hope it all goes away?
Yes, and Netanyahu’s MO is to manipulate the US into a war.
In terms of direct responses, Iran tends to behave extremely rationally in like game theory terms. Most countries do, though obviously some misjudgements of each others capabilities can happen. With that said, Iran does very transparently fund terrorists to do their dirty work for them (not that this is unique to Iran).
This is a mischaracterization of how force works. Guerilla war is far superior to “<country> doing the dirty work themselves”. You can train a guerilla force as part of your main military, but by its very nature it needs to be decentralized or it’s not effective, it needs to be distributed or it’s easy to decapitate, and it needs to be constantly shifting in response to conditions. In essence, using guerilla forces IS doing the dirty work yourself, it’s not delegating it to another group so you don’t have to get your hands dirty.
The terrorist label is a useless term anyway. Terrorism is strategy for using civilian terror to effect change. The USA military uses the strategy of terrorism, they call it “shock and awe doctrine”. But calling rank and file soldiers “terrorists” doesn’t make any sense. Similarly, guerilla fighters don’t actually use terrorism, IEDs target military caravans. Shooting rockets at air defense systems to understand their limits is a military intelligence campaign. Enforcing a blockade/embargo is a core military function. Hit and run tactics works. Urban warfare is as necessary as mountain warfare and jungle warfare. In essence, the USA invented the label of terrorist to vilify people instead of tactics, and then drifted its usage away from “using civilian terror” towards “guerilla tactics”. This became enshrined in law in the USA as “enemy combatant”, a third label never before seen in law. Previously there was civilian and military. There’s a thousand years of law and jurisprudence using those two categories, from international treaties to domestic military courts to penal codes. This new third status, invented by the USA, discards all of that and allows the USA to do anything they want to anyone they deem fits this new legal category, which maps directly to whoever they call a “terrorist” which, as I think I’ve established, is far more about fighting guerillas than it is about fighting terrorism.
Yes. This was classic “we need to do something to save face domestically, but are going to be as ineffective as possible to avoid actually getting caught up in the conflict.”
They straight up said afterwards “we consider this matter concluded” (i.e. even stevens).
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there was even backchannel communication with ‘Western’ intelligence as it was occurring to ensure it didn’t get out of control.
I really can’t think of a response from Iran that was more tepid.
People need to remember that a lot of the Middle Eastern governments are much more afraid of radicalized domestic threats than foreign nations and need to do a song and dance to not appear too weak or ineffective against the West to those interests.
Iran didn’t realistically have the option of doing nothing, and it’s amazing they did as little as they ended up doing (which I think reflects just how fucking nuts they think Bibi is right now, something that should scare the shit out of his allies).
Yeah, loathe as I am to say anything kind about the Iranian regime, this is still a remarkably constrained response given the circumstances. Isreal blew up their embassy, killing two of their top generals. Obviously, in an ideal world you’d work out a purely diplomatic solution, but then in an ideal world Isreal wouldn’t have blown up that embassy in the first place. The Iranian government know they have to show strength or else the backlash among their people would be insane. They were put between a rock and a hard place and picked a pretty smart way out.
And they know damn well that this whole thing kicked off in the first place because Netanyahu is trying to engineer a war. He knows he’s losing international support with his genocide in Gaza, and a war with Iran would effectively reset the field. As soon as its “ally vs enemy” all the other questions go out the window. Isreal gets a clean slate, and probably wipes out or at least seriously damages several enemies in the process. The only question is how he can make it happen in a way that will draw the US in.