Analysis: Iran faces tough choices in deciding how to respond to Israeli strikes

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Analysis: Iran faces tough choices in deciding how to respond to Israeli strikes

2024-10-28 00:32 Last Updated At：00:40

JERUSALEM (AP) — It's Iran's move now.

How the Islamic Republic chooses to respond to the unusually public Israeli aerial assault on its homeland could determine whether the region spirals further toward all-out war or holds steady at an already devastating and destabilizing level of violence.

In the coldly calculating realm of Middle East geopolitics, a strike of the magnitude that Israel delivered Saturday would typically be met with a forceful response. A likely option would be another round of the ballistic missile barrages that Iran has already launched twice this year.

Retaliating militarily would allow Iran's clerical leadership to show strength not only to its own citizens but also to Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon's Hezbollah, the militant groups battling Israel that are the vanguard of Tehran's so-called Axis of Resistance.

It is too soon to say whether Iran's leadership will follow that path.

Tehran may decide against forcefully retaliating directly for now, not least because doing so might reveal its weaknesses and invite a more potent Israeli response, analysts say.

“Iran will play down the impact of the strikes, which are in fact quite serious,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based think tank Chatham House.

She said Iran is “boxed in" by military and economic constraints, and the uncertainty caused by the U.S. election and its impact on American policy in the region.

Even while the Mideast wars rage, Iran's reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has been signaling his nation wants a new nuclear deal with the U.S. to ease crushing international sanctions.

A carefully worded statement from Iran’s military Saturday night appeared to offer some wiggle room for the Islamic Republic to back away from further escalation. It suggested that a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon was more important than any retaliation against Israel.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's ultimate decision-maker, was also measured in his first comments on the strike Sunday. He said the attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed,” and he stopped short of calling for an immediate military response.

Saturday's strikes targeted Iranian air defense missile batteries and missile production facilities, according to the Israeli military.

With that, Israel has exposed vulnerabilities in Iran’s air defenses and can now more easily step up its attacks, analysts say.

Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press indicate Israel's raid damaged facilities at the Parchin military base southeast of Tehran that experts previously linked to Iran's onetime nuclear weapons program and another base tied to its ballistic missile program.

Current nuclear sites were not struck, however. Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed that on X, saying “Iran’s nuclear facilities have not been impacted.”

Israel has been aggressively bringing the fight to the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, killing its leader and targeting operatives in an audacious exploding pager attack.

“Any Iranian attempt to retaliate will have to contend with the fact that Hezbollah, its most important ally against Israel, has been significantly degraded and its conventional weapons systems have twice been largely repelled,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, who expects Iran to hold its fire for now.

That's true even if Israel held back, as appears to be the case. Some prominent figures in Israel, such as opposition leader Yair Lapid, are already saying the attacks didn't go far enough.

Regional experts suggested that Israel's relatively limited target list was intentionally calibrated to make it easier for Iran to back away from escalation.

As Yoel Guzansky, who formerly worked for Israel’s National Security Council and is now a researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, put it: Israel's decision to focus on purely military targets allows Iran "to save face.”

Israel's target choices may also be a reflection at least in part of its capabilities. It is unlikely able to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities on its own and would require help from the United States, Guzansky said.

Besides, Israel still has leverage to go after higher-value targets should Iran retaliate — particularly now that nodes in its air defenses have been destroyed.

“You preserve for yourself all kinds of contingency plans,” Guzansky said.

Thomas Juneau, a University of Ottawa professor focused on Iran and the wider Middle East, wrote on X that the fact Iranian media initially downplayed the strikes suggests Tehran may want to avoid further escalation. Yet it's caught in a tough spot.

“If it retaliates, it risks an escalation in which its weakness means it loses more,” he wrote. “If it does not retaliate, it projects a signal of weakness.”

Vakil agreed that Iran's response was likely to be muted and that the strikes were designed to minimize the potential for escalation.

“Israel has yet again shown its military precision and capabilities are far superior to that of Iran,” she said.

One thing is certain: The Mideast is in uncharted territory.

For decades, leaders and strategists in the Middle East leaders have speculated about whether and how Israel might one day openly strike Iran, just as they wondered what direct attacks by Iran, rather than by its proxy militant groups, would look like.

Today, it's a reality. Yet the playbook on either side isn't clear, and may still be being written.

“There appears to be a major mismatch both in terms of the sword each side wields and the shield it can deploy,” Vaez said.

“While both sides have calibrated and calculated how quickly they climb the escalation ladder, they are in an entirely new territory now, where the new red lines are nebulous and the old ones have turned pink,” he said.

EDITOR'S NOTE — Adam Schreck, the Asia-Pacific news director for The Associated Press, spent years covering the Mideast and has reported from countries across the region, including both Iran and Israel.

Egypt's president says it has proposed a 2-day Gaza cease-fire and release of 4 hostages

2024-10-28 00:35 Last Updated At：00:40

RAMAT HASHARON, Israel (AP) — Egypt’s president says his country has proposed a two-day cease-fire between Israel and Hamas during which four hostages held in Gaza would be freed.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, speaking in Cairo, said the proposal also includes the release of some Palestinian prisoners and the delivery of humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip.

Egypt has been a key mediator along with Qatar and the United States. This is the first time Egypt’s president has publicly proposed such a plan. There has been no immediate response from Israel or Hamas.

El-Sissi said the proposal aims to “move the situation forward.” He said that once the two-day cease-fire goes into effect, negotiations will continue to make it permanent.

There hasn’t been a cease-fire since November’s weeklong pause in fighting and hostage and prisoner exchange.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Mossad chief was traveling to Doha on Sunday for talks with the prime minister of Qatar and the CIA chief.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

RAMAT HASHARON, Israel (AP) — Israeli strikes on northern Gaza have killed at least 33 people, mostly women and children, Palestinian officials said Sunday, as Israel's offensive in the hard-hit and isolated area entered a third week and the U.N. secretary-general called the plight of Palestinians there “unbearable.” Israel said it targeted militants.

In a separate development, a truck rammed into a bus stop near Tel Aviv, killing one person and wounding more than 30. Israeli police said the attacker was an Arab citizen of Israel. The ramming occurred outside a military base and near the headquarters of Israel's Mossad spy agency.

Iran's supreme leader, meanwhile, said Israeli strikes on the country on Saturday in response to Iran's ballistic missile attack earlier this month “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed,” while stopping short of calling for retaliation. It was Israel’s first open attack on its archenemy.

That exchange of fire has raised fears of an all-out regional war pitting Israel and the United States against Iran and its militant proxies, which include Hamas and the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, where Israel launched a ground invasion earlier this month after nearly a year of lower-level conflict.

Two Israeli strikes killed eight people in Sidon city in southern Lebanon, with 25 wounded, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. One strike hit a residential building, according to footage taken by an Associated Press reporter.

The Israeli military said four soldiers, including a military rabbi, were killed in fighting in southern Lebanon, without providing details. It said five other personnel were severely wounded. An explosive drone and a projectile fired from Lebanon wounded five people in Israel, authorities said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his first public comments on the strikes said “we severely harmed Iran’s defense capabilities and its ability to produce missiles that are aimed toward us.”

Satellite images showed damage to two secretive Iranian military bases, one linked to work on nuclear weapons that Western intelligence agencies and nuclear inspectors say was discontinued in 2003, and another linked to Iran's ballistic missile program. Iran on Sunday said a civilian had been killed, with no details. It earlier said four people with the military air defense were killed.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s 85-year-old supreme leader, said “it is up to the authorities to determine how to convey the power and will of the Iranian people to the Israeli regime.” Khamenei would make any final decision on how Iran responds.

Later Sunday, protesters disrupted a speech by Netanyahu at a nationally broadcast ceremony for victims of Hamas’ attack on southern Israel last year that sparked the war in Gaza. People shouted “Shame on you” and forced Netanyahu to stop his speech. Many Israelis blame Netanyahu for the failures that led to the’ attack and hold him responsible for not yet bringing home remaining hostages.

An Israeli official said Mossad chief David Barnea is traveling to Qatar for cease-fire and hostage release talks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose details.

In Ramat Hasharon, northeast of Tel Aviv, the truck slammed into a bus as Israelis were returning to work after a holiday, leaving some people stuck under vehicles.

Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said six of the wounded were in serious condition. The Ichilov Medical Center reported that one person had died.

Asi Aharoni, a police spokesperson, told reporters the attacker had been “neutralized,” without saying if the assailant was dead.

Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group praised the attack but did not claim it.

Palestinians have carried out scores of stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks over the years. Tensions have soared since the war in Gaza began. Israel has carried out regular military raids into the occupied West Bank that have left hundreds dead. Most appear to have been militants killed during shootouts with Israeli forces, but Palestinians taking part in violent protests and civilian bystanders have also been killed.

The Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service said 11 women and two children were among the 22 killed in strikes late Saturday on several homes and buildings in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. It said another 15 were wounded. The Israeli military said it carried out a strike on militants.

A Health Ministry official, Hussein Mohesin, said 11 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in the Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza. The Israeli army did not immediately comment. Israel has struck a number of such shelters, often killing women and children, saying it targets militants hiding among civilians.

Israel has waged a massive air and ground offensive in northern Gaza since early October, saying Hamas militants have regrouped there. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled to Gaza City in the latest wave of displacement.

Aid groups have warned of a catastrophic situation in northern Gaza, which has suffered the heaviest destruction of the war. Israel has severely limited the entry of basic humanitarian aid in recent weeks, and the three remaining hospitals in the north — one raided over the weekend — say they have been overwhelmed by waves of wounded.

The U.N. secretary-general in a statement by his spokesperson noted “harrowing levels of death.” The International Committee of the Red Cross on Saturday described the civilian population in “horrific circumstances.”

The war began when Hamas-led militants blew holes in Israel's border wall and stormed into southern Israel in a surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023. They killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, around a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says more than half of those killed were women and children. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The offensive has devastated much of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of people have crowded into squalid tent camps, and aid groups say hunger is rampant.

Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel, Magdy from Cairo and Krauss from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press reporters Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war