Israel and Iran are at war. In fact, the 2 sides have been fighting for many years, however the conflict has largely taken place under the duvet of covert and clandestine operations.

Recent actions by either side in what was once a “shadow war” have modified the character of the conflict. It just isn’t clear that de-escalation is in sight.

On October 1, 2024, Iran launched a large, Direct attack against Israel fictionally in retaliation for Israel's double murders of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah chief Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.

It was the second such barrage in six months.

From many accountsThe previous Iranian attack on Israel on April thirteenth – which consisted of over 300 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and attack drones – caused little or no damage in Israel. Maybe because of this and possibly partly because of this USA encourages restraintIsrael's immediate military response then – a airstrike against a single advanced Iranian air defense system in Isfahan province – was reasonably measured.

Many observers viewed April's calibrated exchange as a possible indication that either side would accomplish that Better to de-escalate moderately than engaging in ongoing open war.

But since then, further Israeli military operations have led to escalating Iranian military responses and pushed the conflict back out of the shadows.

With Hamas' capabilities and leadership weakened within the Gaza Strip, Israel's military leaders are deployed announced in June that this was the case “ready to face Hezbollah” – the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group whose sustained rocket attacks against northern Israel have led to sustained attacks Tens of hundreds must be evacuated the realm.

Israel turns north

Israel's pivot from Gaza toward Lebanon coincided with the assassination of Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Haniyeh on July 31, 2024, while he was in Tehran. The alleged Israeli operation was described as An affront to Iran's sovereignty. It was also a humiliation This highlighted the vulnerability and permeability of Iran's internal security apparatus.

Even if Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei promised a “tough reaction” Iran had taken no motion against Israel until September.

Tehran's inaction raised questions amongst many Middle East analysts whether the Iranian response would ever materialize — and what that may mean for Khamenei's engagement together with his proxy forces more broadly.

If Iran's leadership did indeed select restraint after the assassination of Hamas' top political leader, the identical can’t be said of its response to Israel's multi-stage operation against Hezbollah in mid-September.

Israel began a secret operation to sow chaos and confusion in Hezbollah's leadership and control sabotaged explosive communications devices. Israel then carried out air strikes to eliminate it Hezbollah's top leaders including Nasrallah. The Israeli military then launched what the country's leadership called “limited [ground] Operation” into southern Lebanon to remove Hezbollah positions along the northern border.

Tehran's Oct. 1 attack in response to Israel was, in line with many Middle East experts, indeed Iranian military leadersprimarily in retaliation for the 2 high-profile assassinations against Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.

Those were actually key aspects. But as Expert on Iran's defense strategyI argue that the Iranian leadership also felt compelled to attack Israel for 3 equally, if no more, necessary reasons: to slow Israel's advance in Lebanon, to avoid wasting face, and to revive deterrence.

Challenging Israel's advance

Iran hopes to slow and even perhaps reverse Israel's successes against Hezbollah, especially as Israel begins ground operations in southern Lebanon. Of course, Israeli ground forces must now contend with perhaps probably the most capable guerrilla fighting force on the earth – one which carried out quite successfully in the course of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

Nonetheless, Israel's ability to realize tactical surprise and eliminate Hezbollah's top leaders – even within the midst of an ongoing, localized war and even after Israeli leaders announced its intention to attack Hezbollah – reveals a much better Israeli strategy and operational planning and execution capability than that of Hezbollah.

And that represents a serious blow to what’s seen in Iran because the crown jewel of the Islamic Republic inside its “Axis of Resistance.”

In this regard, Iran's retaliatory strike on October 1 could be seen as an try to buy time for Hezbollah appoint a substitute managerregroup and organize against Israel's ground invasion.

The brutal art of saving face?

It also serves to assist Iran save face, particularly in the best way it’s viewed by other parts of its external proxy network.

Orchestrated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – Tehran's major arm for coordinating external operations – Iranian money, training, guidance and ideological support enabled and encouraged the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 – although Iran, it was claimed, had received no prior warning of the attack.

Since then, Hamas fighters have received almost no real-time support from Tehran. This lack of support undoubtedly contributed to Israel's successful downgrading of Hamas as a threat, with a lot of its members either dead or in hiding and unable to mount a coherent offensive campaign, leading Israeli military leaders to say , it was the group effectively defeated.

Not surprisingly, Iran is blissful to present the Palestinians the chance to fight Tehran's enemies and bear the human costs of the war, since this agreement primarily advantages the Islamic Republic.

When the fighting began in Gaza, the IRGC was nowhere to be found.

Now that Israel has turned its attention to Lebanon and achieved several initial tactical successes against Hezbollah, Iran cannot afford to face back and watch, for 2 major reasons. First, a 12 months of fighting in Gaza has shown that Israel is willing to do whatever is needed to eliminate threats along its borders – including a willingness to face up to international political pressure or operate inside Iran's borders.

And second, Iranian proxy groups elsewhere are watching to see whether Tehran will proceed to support them—or abandon them, as appears to have happened with Hamas.

Regain deterrence

Perhaps foremost in Tehran's calculations about how one can respond is the necessity to restore deterrence.

The two defining features of Iran's interconnected foreign relations or “Forward defense“and deterrence strategies is its regional network of militant proxies and its Arsenal of long-range weaponswhich incorporates a lot of advanced ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and attack-capable drones.

These Iranian defense strategies aim to discourage enemies from attacking Iran proper in two ways: first, by threatening Israel and other regional U.S. allies with punishment through proxy militias or attacks with long-range weapons; and second, by offering scapegoats against whom Iran's enemies can express their anger. In effect, Iran's proxy forces act as proxy targets that bear the prices of Iran's hostile policies.

Israel's denigration of Hamas and ongoing operations against Hezbollah threaten to undermine Iran's ability to discourage attacks on its homeland. This is an unacceptable risk for the leadership of the Islamic Republic.

Who will make the subsequent move?

These intertwined needs likely led the Iranian leadership to launch a second massive, direct missile strike against Israel on October 1. It is unknown how effective the attack might be in achieving Tehran's goals.

The Islamic Republic claimed that so many 90% of ballistic missiles reached their intended targetswhile Israel and the United States described the attack as “defeated and ineffective,” despite Unverified cellular phone videos It shows several ballistic missiles exploding after reaching land in Israel.

What is nearly certain, nevertheless, is that this can not be the ultimate step within the conflict. It is unlikely that Israel will end its Lebanon operation until it achieves its border security objectives. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did promised retribution against Iran for its recent retaliatory attack.

IRGC leaders responded to this warning with one own counter threat that if Israel responds militarily to the October 1 attack, Iran will respond again with unspecified “devastating and destructive attacks.”

Neither side gives in rhetorically; This may additionally apply militarily. The nature and extent of Israel's next move will determine how the war with Iran unfolds – but make no mistake, it’s a war.

A hacker group linked to the Iranian government attempted to interrupt into the e-mail accounts of presidential campaign staff as a part of a large-scale intelligence gathering operation ahead of the U.S. election, Microsoft Corp. said on Friday.

Attackers with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps used the compromised email address of a former political adviser to phish one other senior presidential campaign official in June, in line with findings from Microsoft's Threat Analysis Center. That group, which Microsoft calls Mint Sandstorm, also tried unsuccessfully to log into the account of a former presidential candidate. The report didn’t discover the person targets by name.

Other Iranian groups are using artificial intelligence to post offensive content against former President Donald Trump online and to create inflammatory posts about controversial issues corresponding to gender reassignment surgery, the report said.

Microsoft researchers also said that Iranian groups which have tried to undermine confidence within the electoral system up to now have been preparing influence operations since March. Using web sites with fabricated and plagiarized content, alleged media operations run by Iranian groups have also sought to amplify polarizing political messages on issues corresponding to presidential candidates and Israel's war against Hamas, the researchers found.

“Iran's cyber capabilities are defensive and proportionate to the threats it faces,” Ali Karimi Magham, a spokesman for Iran's mission to the United Nations in New York, said in an emailed statement. “Iran has no intention or plans to launch cyber attacks. The U.S. presidential election is an internal matter in which Iran does not interfere.”

The findings are the newest evidence that foreign governments are conducting secret operations ahead of the U.S. election in November. U.S. intelligence officials warned in July that Russia, China and Iran were recruiting people within the U.S. to spread propaganda. An Iranian government official denied that accusation.

In 2020, in line with the FBI, Iranian agents posed as members of the right-wing group Proud Boys to intimidate voters, resulting in charges against two men. That same yr, Iranian hackers broke into an internet site that a city government within the US used to publish election results. But the attackers were caught before they may perform any nefarious activities, US cybersecurity officials said.

State hackers have long attempted to penetrate American election campaigns through email attacks. One example is the 2016 Russian hack, during which a state-sponsored group ultimately released internal emails from Hillary Clinton's staff.

The US State Department on Wednesday identified six suspected Iranian hackers accused of penetrating the commercial control systems of American utility corporations.

(Updated to incorporate response from Iranian government official in fifth paragraph.)

___

©2024 Bloomberg LP Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Originally published: August 9, 2024 at 11:31 am

The presidential elections in Iran on June 2 could offer Tehran the chance to force a fresh start in foreign policy after years of accelerating warmongering. Indeed, a central campaign issue was the extent to which the candidates would – or wouldn’t – commit to more Engagement with the West.

While the supreme leader – the very best religious and political authority within the country – is the final word arbiter in coping with international powers, the Iranian president has influence in a political system during which several centers of power.

The presidential election, which was Death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in May 2024, comes at a time when Iran is grappling with major, interconnected national, regional and global problems. The country's economy continues to suffer from international sanctions, the most recent round of which collected by the US and UK in April 2024 after Iran launched a direct attack on Israel.

Sanctions should not the one way the West can put pressure on Tehran: Cyber ​​War, light power And Military power are also available to the countries. But Iran’s activities – comparable to the financing of militant proxy groups, Circumventing sanctions over China and Russia and the further development of national nuclear and missile programs – have continued unabated in recent times.

As experts for US foreign policy and IranWe consider this raises a very important query: are the efforts of the US and its allies to discourage Iran having any effect? ​​And could a change of president provide a possibility for the West to rethink its approach to Iran?

The limits of diplomacy

Since Iran's Islamic Revolution 1979The United States and Iran shouldn’t have official diplomatic relations. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any diplomatic efforts. In fact, there are unofficial channels, comparable to the US's cooperation with the Swiss government.

But US diplomatic efforts with Iran are complicated at one of the best of times. They are vulnerable to disruption if the US or Iran changes leadership, and have only turn out to be tougher as Iran has grown closer with China and Russia.

The result was a inconsistent diplomatic policy on the subject of how the US and the West usually take care of Tehran.

This is partly a consequence of the increasing more influence within the Middle East and deepening their economic and strategic Relations with Tehran. Russia has also Military, politically And economically Connections to Iran.

This has weakened the impact of Western diplomacy; Iran simply doesn’t feel compelled to achieve an agreement with the United States and its allies on its security interests.

The Joint Comprehensive Action Planthe Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signed in 2015, but abandoned by the Trump administration in 2018 is a first-rate example. Western leaders tried to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons but were unable to steer Iran to cooperate after President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement.

Despite this lack of progress, channels of communication between the United States and Iran remain open. Following Israel's attack on the Iranian embassy complex in Syria The USA signalled clearly According to Tehran, the country was not involved within the operation, apparently to stop a retaliatory strike against US interests within the region.

Nevertheless, Iran has little Incentive to barter Given the inconsistent, unpredictable policies of the US leadership.

In the meantime upcoming US-Saudi security pact could push Iran even further away from the West and closer to the sphere of influence of China and Russia.

Ultimately, the US and Europe have two goals: to stop Iran from constructing a nuclear weapon and to contain the conflicts it sponsors within the Middle East.

But each goals seem unattainable up to now, because Iran continuation, Unabated uranium enrichment and be attacks happen often throughout the Middle East.

In the past, Iran has given diplomacy a likelihood, fearing that a scarcity of willingness could play into the hands of Western hawks who push for military strikes against Iran.

A brand new reform-minded president in Iran could mobilize support for engaging in diplomatic negotiations, but he would likely need the blessing of the supreme leader to accomplish that.

In any case next president is looking more of a hardliner On the side of the supreme leader. And while they face pressure at home and abroad to adopt a more conciliatory tone, they may as well double down on their current policies.

Peddling gentle power

As confidence in a diplomatic solution wanes, the United States and its allies are resorting to other means to place pressure on Iran.

Western intelligence services conducted various Information campaigns And Cyber ​​operations The aim is to undermine trust within the Iranian leadership and its strategies for the region.

For example, in 2010 there was a joint American-Israeli cyber operation called Stuxnet compromised the nuclear material enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran, by interfering with and disrupting the conventional operation of the centrifuge while concurrently signaling to operators that they were operating normally.

Such operations exist to this present day in response to Iran's failure to deal with US security concerns about nuclear proliferation and its anti-Western activities within the region.

Tehran can also be conducting cyber warfare. In 2023, a US report warned that Iran is prone to increase its use of aggressive cyber operations to attain its political goals. This includes the usage of government-sponsored proxies to spread destructive malware and ransomware.

The Iranian presidential elections are happening against a backdrop of domestic discontent – ​​and offer the West a possibility to make use of one other tactic to place pressure on Tehran: propaganda against the regime.

In order to cut back support for the prevailing government and sow discontent among the many Iranian public, independent radio and news channels supported by the US and its European allies have deliberately the Iranian public with anti-Iranian government messages And increased local protests.

Recourse to sanctions

The Iranian presidential candidates have by and huge promised Easing sanctionspossibly to counter the messages being sent by the West. Such efforts suggest that the candidates are sensitive to the sanctions. disproportionate impact on strange Iranians, especially the center class.

In recent years, the US and Europe have tightened sanctions against Iran for various reasons. Iran's repressive response to the 2022 protests following the death of a young woman, Mahsa Jina Amini, in police custody triggered quite a few sanctions from the European Union. Most recently in April, the USA and Great Britain Sanctions to discourage Iran of the escalation of the conflict within the Middle East and Sale of drones to Russia.

Sanctions comparable to those imposed through the US Maximum Pressure Campaign During Trump's presidency, they’ve undoubtedly exerted pressure on Iran's economic system and trade, and their influence will be seen within the country's high inflation rates and economic downturn.

However, some analysts consider that the campaign has Iran hardens and undermine diplomatic efforts.

Others consider that the sanctions have had no effect, considering Russia And China have provided relief by granting Iran access to their markets.

While the sanctions have demonstrably weakened the Iranian economy, their success in implementing the broader strategy of bringing Iran back to the negotiating table – particularly with regard to its Nuclear program And Regional activities – is less clear.

The use of military means?

Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel, the United States has shown a growing willingness to take military motion against the Iran-backed groups.

The most notable Air strikes by the USA and Great Britain occurred in February in retaliation for an earlier drone strike by an Iran-backed group that killed three U.S. soldiers in Jordan.

To date, Western air strikes were more of a symbolic effect and geared toward curbing the provocations supported by Iran. But they display the military power of the USA and its allies.

In recent years, neither diplomacy, sanctions nor soft power have succeeded in bringing the Iranian leadership back to the negotiating table. The recent Iranian president could proceed down the trail of disengagement, but this runs the chance of the West having to tighten its deterrent measures.