Iran Has Retaliated Against Israel for Its Killing of Several Quds Force Generals

Spot analysis from Carnegie scholars on events relating to the Middle East and North Africa.

Diwan, a blog from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East Program and the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, draws on Carnegie scholars to provide insight

into and analysis of the region. 

On the night of April 13–14, Iran retaliated for the killing by Israel of senior members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, including Brig. Gen. Mohammed Zahedi, the

commander for Syria and Lebanon, Gen. Hossein Aminullah, the chief of staff for Syria and Lebanon, and Maj. Gen. Mohammed Hadi Haj Rahimi, the commander for Palestine. The Iranians fired

around 200 missiles, cruise missiles, and drones at Israel, but Israeli military officials said most were shot down and the destruction was minor.

The Iranian retaliation had been expected, with U.S. officials even predicting the exact time of the anticipated attack to news outlets. The considerable publicity before the event, Iranian

assurances that the response would seek to avert a regional conflict, and the fact that Iran knew that Israel and the United States would be able to monitor the launches of the missiles and

drones early on and shoot down a large number of them, suggest the Iranians may have been looking to achieve more of a psychological impact than cause major death and destruction.

In this regard, few images were more powerful from the Iranian perspective than that of missiles flying over Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. This symbolized best Iranian ambitions to liberate

one of Islam’s holiest sites from Israeli control, while personifying Israel’s vulnerabilities against the Iran-led Axis of Resistance.

Israel has long assumed that it’s security can only be guaranteed by ensuring that the balance of military power with its enemies leans heavily in its favor. This harks back to the notion of

the “iron wall,” first enunciated by the Revisionist Zionist thinker Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who argued in an essay in 1923 that Jewish colonization of Palestine had to proceed behind an “iron

wall” of Zionist military superiority. The only way that Arabs would agree to the Jewish presence in Palestine, he wrote, “is the iron wall, which is to say a strong power in Palestine that

is not amenable to any Arab pressure. In other words, the only way to reach an agreement in the future is to abandon all idea of seeking an agreement at present.”

Today, that principle has been expanded by Israel to encompass the entire region. Though Jabotinsky was an enemy of the Labor Zionists who ultimately dominated Israeli political life for

decades, his idea of an “iron wall” has been embraced by Israel’s leadership and military for some time. That is why the response to the October 7 Hamas attacks in Gaza has been so

ferocious. It is also the reasoning behind the so-called “Dahiya Doctrine,” which was notably articulated by an Israeli general, Gazi Eisenkot, currently a government minister. The doctrine,

which first emerged during Israel’s 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, holds that Israel will engage in a disproportionate destruction of its foes’ civilian and military infrastructure

in order to dissuade them from ever attacking Israel.

However, when Israel bombed the Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus on April 1, it crossed an Iranian red line. While the Iranians had more or less accepted the systematic Israeli

killing of IRGC figures over the years in Syria, along with members of Hezbollah, this could be justified by the fact that Iran was successfully setting up a military infrastructure in

southern Syria with which to bomb Israel and the occupied Golan. It made no sense to jeopardize that effort by entering into a major conflagration with the Israelis, and perhaps even the

United States.

The embassy compound attack was a different matter. Not only did it affirm Israel’s willingness to ignore diplomatic protection (even though Israel’s supporters argued that the building

where the IRGC figures were killed was not, technically, a diplomatic facility), it took place in a broader context since October 7 in which Israel has sought to alter the rules of

engagement in Syria and Lebanon to their advantage, narrowing Iran’s and Hezbollah’s margin of maneuver. In other words, it went to the heart of the rivalry between Israel and Iran over

regional hegemony, and it was obvious that Iran would not allow this to happen.

More worryingly, the embassy compound bombing could also have been an effort by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to drag the United States into a conflict with Iran. To decisively

weaken the Iranians and their nuclear program are Israeli priorities, but Israel needs U.S. participation in any bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic for this to succeed, with the

added hope that Iran’s leadership can be overthrown. Washington has repeatedly avoided this. According to NBC News, President Joe Biden expressed concern about Netanyahu’s intention to

provoke a wider war, and he quickly moved to limit Israel’s options.

For the immediate future, the main news item on the morning of April 14 was Biden’s conversation with Netanyahu in which he made two things clear: First, that Iran had failed to do much

damage, so that Israel should consider this a success. “You got a win. Take the win,” Biden reportedly said. And second, in light of the Iranian failure, the United States saw no need to

escalate the situation further and provoke a region-wide conflict. Therefore, if Israel decided to hit back against Iran, the Biden administration would not participate in any such

operation.

How Israel will react to this remains unclear. Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said that the tensions with Iran “were not over,” after Netanyahu had stated, on the evening of April

13, that “Whoever harms us, we will harm them. We will defend ourselves against any threat and will do so level-headedly and with determination.” It’s conceivable that Netanyahu will chose

to respond on his own, but if the aim is to reestablish an equitable deterrent, the prime minister cannot afford to allow such a response to come up short. All the signs are that Iran

retains a wide array of means to harm Israel and wear it down through a thousand small cuts. Moreover, Netanyahu’s forces are still fighting in Gaza, so that escalating the conflict

regionally would only further complicate the grinding battle against Hamas.

More generally, for the first time in its history, Israel looks dangerously exposed. The country may not be facing an existential threat, but it is reaping the fruits of a cynical policy

largely built on ignoring Palestinian and Arab rights, while blocking all avenues that might force Israel to surrender occupied land. The Iranians have exploited this well, and even if their

latest attacks did not cause major devastation, subsequent strikes, particularly ones with less prior signaling, may be much bloodier. On its own, this is enough for Iran to say that it has

reimposed a balance of deterrence, even if it remains to be seen whether further attacks against Iranian officials in Syria will invite similar retaliation from Iranian territory.

It is this perception of helplessness that is stuck in the craw of Israeli leaders. Israel has long projected an image of strength. The Iranians have succeeded in scratching that image. It’s

difficult to see how Netanyahu can go along with Biden’s suggestion that he “take a win,” when everything about Iran’s assault suggested less than that.

Diwan, a blog from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East Program and the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, draws on Carnegie scholars to provide insight

into and analysis of the region. 

Editor, Diwan, Senior Editor, Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center

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