The apparent collapse of a Gaza cease-fire and hostage release deal is spurring fears that a major escalation of conflict in the Middle East is around the corner.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to the Middle East this week to push a deal over the finish line, but he left without any major agreement in place and with Israel and Hamas still at odds on major issues.
The cease-fire negotiations were among the factors apparently holding Iran back from retaliating against Israel for the bombing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month, along with economic troubles at home and the recent election of a more moderate Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who wants to make his country more palatable abroad.
But with a cease-fire agreement now appearing to be in tatters, Iran’s leaders may feel more urgency to strike at Israel, while the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group could also launch an attack from Lebanon after the July assassination of its top military commander.
John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), said Iran has used the cease-fire negotiations as a cover, assessing that Tehran has received the message from the U.S. and Israel that any retaliation that goes too far will be met with a harsh response.
If cease-fire hopes continue to evaporate, Iran will face calls from its allies to respond, though it is likely to calibrate any response, Hannah said.
“There's tremendous pressure on them to have to do something. And yet there's real hesitation and concern and uncertainty about what that something is,” he said. “Israel seems ready if they miscalculate here, if they are not really, really careful in what they do to thread this needle of having to somehow save face, try and restore deterrence and inflict some pain on Israel, but [at the same time] don't go too far.”
Iran has said publicly that it does not want to disrupt high-stakes cease-fire talks, but that it would eventually retaliate against Israel regardless of the outcome.
Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations said in a statement shared by Iranian state media this week that a “response must be carefully calibrated to avoid any possible adverse impact that could potentially influence a prospective cease-fire,” but they still insisted Israel “must be punished.”
“The timing of Iran’s response will be meticulously orchestrated to ensure that it occurs at a moment of maximum surprise,” officials wrote.
The expected attack could be more deadly than in April, when Iran sent some 300 drones and missiles toward Israel in retaliation for the death of a top officer in Syria. That attack was thwarted by defenses from the U.S., Israel and regional allies, though Iran has claimed it warned allies ahead of time and tried to minimize damage.
This time, Iran may seek to send more than just a message and could try to inflict serious damage on Israel.
If so, Iran would likely activate its network of regional proxies in the Middle East, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen and allied groups in Iraq and Syria, to attack and overwhelm Israeli defenses.
The U.S. has an array of defenses in the Middle East, recently sending the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group that joins another contingent deployed in the region. The Pentagon has also deployed an additional guided-missile submarine and F-22 fighter jets.
Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said Thursday that those U.S. military assets send “a very powerful message of deterrence” and suggested it may have worked in preventing an attack so far.
“I think that gets into the headspace of Iran,” she told reporters. “I'm sure that gets to their calculation.”
But Hannah, from JINSA, said if Iran decides to attack along with its network of proxies, that could pose a major problem for Israel, even with those U.S. assets in the region.
“There's not much the coalition that thwarted Iran on April 13 would be able to do if Hezbollah decides to go in a big way at Israel and to overwhelm Iron Dome and some of the other defenses,” he said. “There’s just not enough depth and not enough time.”
Instead of an all-out attack, Iran may decide to respond to Israel with a covert operation, such as an assassination or bombing that would target Israeli officials.
Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied its role in Haniyeh’s death, has shown it can penetrate Iranian intelligence networks and target leaders, but Tehran has not demonstrated the same depth of penetration. Still, Iran could target Israeli officials abroad or at embassies.
Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center, questioned if Iran has the capabilities to succeed with a covert operation.
“By and large, no, Iran doesn't appear to have that same capacity to locate and assassinate Israelis in the same way that Israel has regularly done,” she said, but added “I'm sure they are scouring the world for vulnerabilities on the part of Israelis that they might go after.”
Hezbollah remains another threat in the region. Israel assassinated Fuad Shukr, the Lebanese militant group’s top military official and a right-hand man to their leader, around the same time as Haniyeh, prompting a vow of revenge.
While Hezbollah has carried out its regular cross-border attacks against Israel, it has yet to retaliate for Shukr’s death, which Israel carried out after a rocket from the militant group killed 12 children in the Golan Heights.
Mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the U.S. have tried to reach a deal for a cease-fire in Gaza to not only ease the suffering in the coastal strip where more than 40,000 people have been killed in 10 months of war, but also to defuse tensions in the north at the border with Lebanon.
Israel has warned that it may attack Hezbollah unless an agreement is reached that will enable the return of some 80,000 evacuated citizens to the north. But an agreement is unlikely while the Gaza war rages, since Hezbollah is firing daily across the border in support of Hamas.
The cease-fire deal collapse also threatens those simmering tensions in the north, raising the risk that a wider war is going to break out, said Slavin.
“Everything hinges on a Gaza cease-fire. Without a Gaza cease-fire, you can't do anything else,” she said. “We’re lucky if [the conflicts] don’t expand.”
It is approaching a year since Hamas initiated the Gaza war by invading southern Israel and killing more than 1,100 people and taking about 250 hostages, 109 of whom are still being held. Around 100 were freed in a brief November truce.
The cease-fire and hostage release deal had offered a ray of hope for both sides, with a phased plan outlining the return of vulnerable hostages, a temporary cease-fire in Gaza and negotiations for a permanent end to the fighting and the release of all the abducted.
The U.S. had said in recent weeks that a deal was closer than ever, and only gaps remained on the details of an agreement. But that has failed to materialize multiple times, and Blinken warned this week that a “bridging proposal” offered the last best chance to reach a deal, citing the possibility of the death of more hostages and Middle East conflict to derail further progress.
Now, with the threat of Iranian retaliation looming over the region, and then another potential escalatory response from Israel, the chance of a deal anytime soon has considerably dimmed.
If a cease-fire deal had been reached, Iran could have argued that its threats of retaliation spurred all sides to reach an agreement and defuse tensions, possibly allowing Tehran to walk away with a victory without launching an attack, said Trita Parsi, the executive director of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
“To a certain extent, the Iranians were using the talks as a pretext, because they truly do not seem to want to take action,” he said. “The options in front of them right now are very, very bad and complicated.”
