Over four decades, in an effort to preserve itself, project regional influence, and deter adversaries, the Islamic Republic of Iran has invested in three projects: funding and arming a network of nonstate allies; developing ballistic missiles that can reach its rivals; and launching a nuclear program that can be either dialed down to deliver economic benefits or dialed up to deliver a nuclear weapon. Setbacks to the first, mixed results from the second, and uncertainty over the third have increasingly called this strategy into question.
After Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, groups in the Iranian-backed “axis of resistance” quickly mobilized on multiple fronts. In Yemen, the Houthis’ missiles and drones menaced maritime traffic in the Red Sea. In Iraq and Syria, militias launched drones and rockets at U.S. forces. And in Lebanon, Hezbollah ramped up cross-border fire into Israel. As Israel waged its military campaign in Gaza, Israel also sought to douse Iran’s ring of fire, including by targeting Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel. In April, an Israeli strike on an Iranian consular facility in Damascus—which the leadership in Tehran considered a direct hit on sovereign territory—killed several of the IRGC’s senior commanders. In response to the mounting losses of IRGC officers in Lebanon and Syria, Tehran, for the first time, mounted a direct military attack against Israel. Iran indirectly telegraphed its strike in advance to the United States, rendering the barrage of drones and missiles largely ineffective. But Iran’s leaders nonetheless declared their attack a success.
The April strike, dubbed Operation True Promise, may have set a precedent in Israel and Iran’s long-standing rivalry, yet it did little to strengthen deterrence for Tehran. Israel quickly responded with a surgical strike against an air-defense facility near Isfahan, exposing the IRGC’s vulnerabilities not far from multiple nuclear facilities and deterring Tehran, at least temporarily, from another direct strike on Israel. Iran’s government played down the incident. But in late July, Iran’s vulnerability was further exposed by an Israeli operation it could not so easily dismiss: the killing of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was in Tehran for the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.