What Iran May Be Planning

[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]

The Institute for the Study of War has laid out an analysis of the state of play — if one can use such a phrase for such a disturbing subject — in the Middle East, where Israel faces a possible onslaught by Iran and all of its proxies in the region. Some claim it is already set to be unleashed on the Jewish day of mourning, Tisha b’Av, that falls this year beginning on the night of August 12 and lasts until the next day, August 13. Or it could come as soon as Monday. These proxies include what remains of Hamas as a fighting force in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas terrorists in the West Bank, and by far the most threatening of Iran’s proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is estimated to now possess 200,000 rockets and missiles.

More on this latest report from the Institute for the Study of War can be found here: “Iran attack scenarios (ISW),” Elder of Ziyon, August 2, 2024:

The Institute for the Study of War has the best dispassionate analysis of the current war, which from the start they always identified as Iran (not Hamas) against Israel.

As it appears that Iran is readying a major attack on Israel, it is worth reading their analysis, and subscribing to their daily reports.

Here is their report from yesterday on the threat:

Iran and the Axis of Resistance are messaging that they will conduct a coordinated, large-scale attack on Israel in retaliation for Israel killing several Axis of Resistance leaders, including Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Ismail Haniyeh, in recent days. Senior Iranian security officials, including Armed Forces General Staff Chief Major General Mohammad Bagheri and Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Akbar Ahmadian, suggested that both Iran and the Axis of Resistance will retaliate against Israel.[1] Iranian leaders met with senior Axis of Resistance officials, many of whom were already in Tehran for the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, to coordinate their combined attack.[2] Iranian state media has furthermore suggested that the upcoming Iranian-led attack on Israel would be similar to but greater than the drone and missile attack that Iran launched on Israel in April 2024.[3]

Iran and the Axis of Resistance are almost certainly considering how to cause greater damage to Israel than the April 2024 attack did since that attack failed to impose a serious cost on Israel and thus failed to deter. Iran and its allies fired around 170 one-way attack drones, 30 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles at Israel in the April 2024 attack.[4] Iran designed this strike package of over 300 projectiles to inflict serious damage on Israel. Iran specifically targeted two remote Israeli targets—an airbase in the southern Israeli desert and an intelligence center in the Golan Heights.[5] Lebanese Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets, while the Houthis launched a few drones and missiles in the April 2024 attack.[6] Iran modeled its attack on Russian strike packages used in Ukraine.[7] Iran has observed how Russian forces have combined drones and missiles in attacks on Ukrainian targets and likely concluded that it could similarly use such a strike package to overwhelm Israeli air defenses and get some projectiles to strike their targets as CTP-ISW has previously assessed.[8]

But the United States, Israel, and their allies intercepted the vast majority of the projectiles, so that the Iranian attack did significantly less damage than Tehran intended.[9] The United States and Israel benefitted from the fact that the Iranian attack drones took hours to fly from Iran to Israel across nearly a thousand kilometers. That hours-long period gave the United States, Israel, and their allies time to prepare their defenses and intercept all the drones as well as many of the subsequent ballistic and cruise missiles. Iranian leaders likely calculate that they failed to deter Israel with their April 2024 attack because they did not inflict serious damage.

Iran is likely now planning for its next attack in order to establish deterrence with Israel while still avoiding a large-scale war. One of the most dangerous but increasingly likely scenarios is that Iran and the Axis of Resistance launch a combined, large-scale drone and missile attack that incorporates lessons from the April 2024 attack. Iranian leaders, in this scenario, could increase the volume of projectiles fired at Israel by launching more from Iran, from the surrounding countries, or both. Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria could launch simultaneous attacks to further strain Israeli air defenses as well. Drones and missiles launched from Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria would be much harder to intercept than the ones from Iran given the shorter distances and flight times to Israel. US and Israeli forces would have significantly less time to intercept those projectiles. It would take Hezbollah drones around 15 minutes to reach Haifa and around 40 minutes flying on direct paths to reach Tel Aviv, for instance (although many drones will likely fly indirect and longer routes).[10] Iran could alternatively exploit the short flight times to concentrate a smaller volume of fire against a single target in Israel rather than against two. Shorter flight times for the drones could make it easier to coordinate them with ballistic missiles fired from Iran, whose flight times are generally less than 10 minutes.  If Iran and its partners and proxies can concentrate drones and missiles on Israeli targets simultaneously, they may have reason to expect that the distractions caused by the one can facilitate penetration by the other.

Iran and the Axis of Resistance will also benefit from the fact that they have probed Israeli air defenses extensively since April 2024 and thus learned how to attack them more effectively. Hezbollah and the Houthis have both conducted attacks that have successfully bypassed Israeli air defenses since April 2024. The most notable example was the Houthi drone attack on Tel Aviv on July 19 that killed an Israeli and injured four others.[11] Israeli air defenses have similarly struggled to intercept Hezbollah drones in recent months because of the short flight time and mountainous terrain.[12] The success that Israel and its allies and partners had in defeating the April 2024 strike should not be cause for complacency in the face of a new attack. But Israel and its supporters have multiple systems to engage various kinds of targets and are aware of the capabilities Hezbollah’s drones have shown, so neither is there cause for pessimism.

Iran could inadvertently trigger an expanded conflict with Israel and even the United States if Iran launches an attack along the lines described here. Launching hundreds of projectiles is inherently risky, particularly given the failure rate that Iranian missiles have shown.[13] Technical errors could cause severe collateral damage, as demonstrated by the recent Hezbollah attack that killed 12 Israeli children in the Golan Heights.[14] This risk is higher given reports that Iran is planning to target locations near Haifa and Tel Aviv.[15] Both cities are far more populated than the two remote locations that Iran targeted in April 2024. The risk of civilian casualties is thus very high even if Iran does not mean to strike civilian targets around Haifa and Tel Aviv. Iran could trigger an expanded war if it kills Israeli civilians or inflicts severe damage—regardless of whether Iran intends to avoid an overt war. It may not be immediately obvious to Israeli leaders that a large strike aimed at one or two targets is not, in fact, aimed at a much wider target set, moreover.  Drones have long ranges and often fly far beyond their targets before turning to hit them from the rear.  The risk of miscalculation in a strike such as the one described is very high.

Some Iranian officials and state media have called for targeting Israeli political and military leaders in response to Haniyeh’s death. Martyrs and Veterans Affairs Foundation President Amir Hossein Ghazi Zadeh Hashemi called on August 1 for killing one of Israel’s “main” leaders.[16] IRGC-affiliated media similarly argued on August 1 that “every [Israeli] political and military official will be a potential target.”[17]…

That is where things now stand. The Bidenites claim that Israel’s assassinations represent an “escalation” in the violence and make the hostage deal more unlikely. Others, including Professor John Spencer of West Point and Arsen Ostrovsky, believe that those killings, carried out in such spectacular fashion, with Shukr killed in the Hezbollah heartland of south Beirut, from an airstrike, and Haniyeh killed in a Tehran guesthouse, from a bomb that had been planted in the room he was going to stay in, some two months before, have done much to restore the deterrent power of the Jewish state. Others believe these assassinations have so enraged the Iranians that they will try, with the help of their proxies in the region, to launch a multi-pronged attack on Israel. The date often mentioned for that attack is August 12, when the Jewish day of mourning on Tisha b’Av takes place. We’ll soon see if Israeli deterrence holds, and Hezbollah contents itself with lobbying a few dozen missiles into northern Israel, or whether a massive, coordinated assault on Israel by Iran, Hezbollah, and others proves that Israeli deterrence has failed. I’m betting that the Supreme Leader will in the end decide that he would, after all, not want to take his chances. and quite sensibly prefers to stay alive.