Jon Allen is a former Canadian ambassador to Israel and a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
Iran’s drone and missile barrage attack on Israel this weekend was significant, as it was the first attack on Israeli soil by Iran directly. Tehran’s proxies – Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Syria, and, of course, Hamas in Gaza – have been attacking Israel, in some cases, for years. There is no question that both morally and under international law, Israel has the responsibility and the right to defend its citizens from all such attacks. Israel’s allies have condemned the attacks and the country has regained some sympathy internationally.
Israelis and the rest of the world have to be thankful that a combination of the country’s three-level anti-missile defence systems and its allies, including the U.S., Britain, France and even Jordan, joined together to neutralize virtually every incoming Iranian weapon. Only one Israeli was seriously injured, and no major urban centres appear to have been hit. Israelis, who are already suffering a collective nervous breakdown following the massacre on Oct. 7 and the ensuing quagmire that the IDF is experiencing in Gaza, where Hamas continues to hold the remaining hostages and has not been defeated, desperately needed a sign that their intelligence and defence forces could once again protect them. Sunday morning’s response should give them some comfort.
We should also be thankful that Iran appears to have chosen to signal that while it felt compelled to respond to Israel’s attack on its diplomatic compound in Syria two weeks ago, it hoped that its response would not lead to an all-out regional conflict. Iran advised the world that it would retaliate two weeks ago, giving Israel and its allies sufficient time to prepare. For the most part, it launched relatively slow-moving drones, which took hours to reach Israel, giving it and its allies time to respond.
The world now awaits Israel’s response. Its allies – most importantly Joe Biden’s administration, which has its hands full with Ukraine, the war in Gaza, attacks on its facilities throughout the Middle East, and an upcoming election – are telling Israel that a major escalation (i.e., a direct attack on Iran) could risk a regional war that none of them want. Moreover, such an attack could provoke Iran’s proxies, especially Hezbollah, with its approximately 130,000 rockets aimed at Israeli urban areas, into a full-scale attack.
The question on many people’s minds now is what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will decide to do and why. Even before Iran’s attack, some Israeli journalists were asking why Mr. Netanyahu had chosen to attack an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus and kill Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the third highest-ranking IRGC general, at a time of already heightened regional tensions and when the U.S. and others, including Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, were negotiating both a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to Hezbollah rocket fire into northern Israel.
One thing is clear. The Iranian attack has temporarily taken the war in Gaza, pressure to cease offensive arms sales to Israel and calls for an early election there off the table. It also means that Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, who some believed were ready to exit Mr. Netanyahu’s war cabinet, may be unwilling to do so now. At a minimum, they may want to remain in order to ensure that the cabinet’s decisions going forward are in Israel’s best interests and not based on Mr. Netanyahu’s political survival.
The last thing the Middle East and the world needs now is a significant escalation of military activity in the region or anywhere else. We must hope that saner minds will prevail both in Israel and in Iran, and that Mr. Biden can exert more control over Mr. Netanyahu than he has been able to during the first six months of the war in Gaza. Indeed, what the region really needs – and what the Biden administration must be secretly wishing for – is new leadership in the Middle East: in Iran, in Israel, and in the Palestinian territories. More moderate leadership in all three could radically change the face of the region and begin a process toward peace that all of its citizens richly deserve.