“Lethal, precise, and especially surprising.”
That’s how Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant framed Israel’s impending military response to the Islamic Republic’s overt and direct missile barrage from Iranian territory against the Jewish state earlier this October. While Gallant’s comments appeared intentionally vague, the Islamic Republic’s remarks are becoming increasingly specific. And with good reason.
Iranian politicians, military officials, and media outlets are currently advancing a series of threats, half-truths, and outright lies in the service of softening the political blow that any Israeli strike could land while also raising military costs. In so doing, they seek to stem the ability of any strike to generate a crisis of legitimacy that could then cascade to threaten regime survival for Tehran’s theocrats.
The imperative of this campaign for pro-regime elites is set to grow, given the inability of the Islamic Republic to successfully co-opt Iranian nationalism into the fight against Israel and bolster its tattered standing on the home front. Perhaps nowhere was this failure more apparent in Iran than in an allegedly recent piece of anti-regime graffiti reading, “Israel, the first strike is yours, the last strike is ours.”
Since 2017, Iranians have increasingly been protesting against the regime in its entirety, and since 2009, have protested against the Islamic Republic’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah by chanting, “No to Gaza, no to Lebanon, my life only for Iran.”
A corollary or second reason for ‘flooding the zone’ with rhetoric is to shape the discussion in both Israel and America over the scale and scope of any potential Israeli military response. By re-upping statements about war-weariness, claiming to have newer military capabilities than previously assumed, playing on fears of a greater Iranian retaliation and thus a wider regional war, or even manipulating worries that a successful conventional strike can spur Tehran to weaponize its atomic infrastructure, the aim remains the same: To play on fears of political fallout from a strike and hinder or complicate America and Israel’s most significant advantage against the Islamic Republic, which is conventional military force.
Below are several instances within the past week of how the Islamic Republic has done precisely this along four different vectors. These are identified and unpacked below:
1. Rattling the nuclear saber
It’s predictable that after the Islamic Republic made history and has now twice directly attacked Israel—a reportedly nuclear-weapons state—it would be scrambling to find a way to deter or limit an Israeli kinetic reprisal. That’s where rattling the nuclear saber kicks in. 2024 has been no stranger to Iranian officials relying on this tactic to maximize the regime’s near-threshold nuclear status to stave off attacks against its interests.
In February, Iran’s former atomic energy organization (AEOI) chief likened building a nuclear weapon to building a car, alleging that Tehran had all the components made but not assembled in one place. Twice in April, an Iranian military official and an Iranian lawmaker claimed that Iran could consider revising its nuclear doctrine and, respectively, move to test a weapon rapidly. And in May, a former foreign minister and current advisor to Iran’s supreme leader claimed that the Islamic Republic would change its military doctrine if it perceived to be under existential threat.
Even in isolation from assessments about the regime’s breakout timelines, these statements are troubling. But when factoring those in—including recent comments by Representative Mike Turner, the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman on the ability of the Islamic Republic to become a nuclear power by year’s end—they are akin to a flashing red light that any prudent state would be forced to take seriously and therefore tread cautiously.
Following Iran’s October missile attack against Israel, the regime appears to have doubled down on making nuclear threats, hoping to force the West to connect the dots between the erasure of its conventional deterrent options (neutered terrorist proxies and intercepted long-range strike capabilities) and the greater likelihood that when faced with a conventional defeat, the Islamic Republic’s asymmetric offset would be to cross the weaponization Rubicon. In post-strike statements and commentary, Tehran appears to be laying the political groundwork for that argument,
Entering into this debate was Javan, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-linked newspaper whose editorial board is believed to reflect the zeitgeist of that organization. On October 3, the paper ran two important editorials: one by the editor-in-chief of the paper, Gholam-Reza Sadeghian, and the other by an international affairs editor named Ali Ghanadi. Both editors took advantage of the regime’s near-nuclear latency to make threats about weaponizing the regime’s atomic infrastructure, given the changes to the geostrategic environment that the Islamic Republic faces.
In Ghanadi’s piece, which was rather candidly entitled, “Changing the atomic doctrine to contest Israel the ‘super-destroyer,’” Ghanadi posits that when faced with a string of defeats, “An immediate solution available is a change in Iran’s nuclear doctrine.”
Eerily, Ghanadi moved on to quote from internationalist relations theorist Kenneth Waltz, to whom he attributed the line, “People who love peace should like nuclear weapons.” Ghanadi ended the piece with a reference to the changing technological environment that he claimed would force the Islamic Republic to change more than just its nuclear doctrine to bridge the gap between it and Israel.
Echoing a similar line of thinking in his editorial was Sadeghian, Javan’s editor-in-chief, who commented on how the West saw Iran’s nuclear thinking, noting the mixed assessments that exist in the West about the so-called “nuclear Fatwa” of Iran’s supreme leader that forces these powers to remain in a state of “guessing.” But where Sadeghian differs from Ghanadi was his embrace of an Iran “that can have” nuclear weapons but opted against it. This technological feat, coupled with political restraint, would produce, in a word, deterrence.
Yet deterrence was not an end state for Sadeghian. Rather, it was a byproduct of the near-threshold status Tehran had that could protect the regime to “carry forward scientific future projects.” In so doing, attaining a threshold status and maximizing the deterrent dividends therein was framed as a pitstop toward what is implicitly assumed to be developing a nuclear weapon.
Though one might be tempted to dismiss these statements as hyperbole and projection from pro-regime papers, they capture a mood on the rise in hardline Iranian circles as it relates to exploiting Iran’s atomic infrastructure, when the regime is faced with a downturn in its regional proxy fortunes.
Socially, this fondness for going all the way on the nuclear file—even hoping for a nuclear test—can be seen in discussions in pro-government fora in the aftermath of Iran’s missile barrage on Israel. As Israel prepares to respond, pro-government voices hoping their regime has a bomb in the basement are borne out of an understanding that the Islamic Republic is conventionally outgunned and not in possession of escalation dominance, as much as they are in revolutionary ideology.
Unsurprisingly, these sentiments have also found their way into the government, with a parliamentary letter on October 9 containing 39 signatories calling on the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) to reportedly “pursue nuclear weapons for self-defense.” The letter also drew upon language from earlier in 2024, when faced with changing and unfavorable geopolitical environment, to “reevaluate its defense doctrine.”
2. Oscillating between minimalization and maximization to quell fears
By seeking to minimize the potential for a crushing Israeli military response and maximize Iran’s threat of retaliation, the Islamic Republic is trying to calm expectations on the domestic front that arise from two fears.
The first, and seemingly a widely shared view, is that Israel’s reprisal against Iran will be significant. On the same night as Iran’s second missile barrage against Israel, a 28-year-old Iranian artist made this point emphatically, having reportedly, “Googled for shelters in Tehran after the missile attack was announced but found none.” “We’re on our own,” he said. “The authorities don’t even bother to inform or reassure the public.”
The other fear is that for all the regime’s spending on military matters over the years, Iran is largely believed to remain defenseless. Both themes, however, have implications for the Islamic Republic’s status and security on the home front.
To that end, Ebrahim Jabbari, an advisor to the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), tried to thread the needle through and push back on these concerns in recent commentary.
“Contrary to the indications of some and the creating of an atmosphere and the instilling of fear by the arrogant media, there is no war at work; be sure of this,” stated Jabbari. “It is plausible [however] that because the Zionist regime wants to slightly maintain its position, it [might] hit one area. If they hit one point of our country, we will hit dozens of security, military, and economic centers of the Zionists and give them a decisive response. Israelis are afraid of war and won’t go to war with us, [and] Americans are more afraid of war than they are.”
Jabbari’s comments follow semi-official reporting out of Iran clearly aimed at altering Israel and America’s risk-reward calculus surrounding a strike—namely, that the regime’s armed forces have prepared at least 10 response scenarios based on the nature of the Israeli attack. These statements were complemented on the first anniversary of the October 7 terrorist attack by a target list of civil and nuclear infrastructure that the regime threatened to launch projectiles against should Israel or America respond to its recent missile barrage.
Fears of a wider war or a protracted conflict are not limited to American administrations or Israeli civilians. Iranian citizens, even those who still identify as reformists, continue to express concern in word and deed about the costs they will have to pay every time their country launches missiles at Israel.
In the words of one “reformist” dissident, “We know, sadly, that for every missile fired from Iranian soil, there will be a response, and it’s the civilians who will suffer the most. As soon as news of the missile attack spread last week, there was widespread panic. People rushed to gas stations and stocked up on essentials like canned tuna, stuff like that. It was like the early days of the COVID pandemic.”
These behaviors indicate that the regime’s tough talk continues to fall on deaf ears.
3. Feigning strength after projecting fear
Cognizant of the stream of embarrassing commentary and analysis—not only among dissidents or Iran watchers but even in mainstream Western media—about how Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei kept looking up at the sky while leading prayers after Israel killed Hamas chief Ismael Haniyeh in Tehran earlier this summer, pro-regime voices have sought to make much of Khamenei’s recent decision to embrace the very exposed Friday prayer pulpit in Tehran.
Parsing Khamenei’s latest Friday prayer sermon—where the supreme leader re-upped the regime’s invective and call for war against Israel—was former Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) chief Ezzatollah Zarghami. Zarghami made much of Khamenei’s decision to double his prayers and linger after the sermon, even reporting that the supreme leader chose to mingle with officials and attendees in the front rows after prayers had concluded.
This blow-by-blow is not because Zarghami thinks Iranians care about the supreme leader’s Friday afternoon schedule. It’s a blatant bid to reverse the impression of fear Khamenei’s previous appearance gave and instead use the opportunity to signal resolve. Accordingly, this telling of Khamenei’s prolonged presence at a public Friday prayer gathering aimed to convey that the regime is not worried about Israel’s impending attack. Zarghami stressed this point in his commentary by alleging that Khamenei’s sense of “calm” that day was “communicated to the whole world.”
4. Feigning great power cover to deter an attack
At least one Iranian outlet, Tabnak—which is closely affiliated with former IRGC Commander Mohsen Rezaie—took the Islamic Republic’s propaganda war to the next level with a claim that no other major Iranian media outlet has, at the time of this writing, chosen to magnify.
Tabnak alleges that Russia has finally made good on its promise to transfer advanced weapons systems to Iran and reportedly sent one squadron of Su-35 fourth-generation fighter jets to the Islamic Republic, as well as unknown quantities of the S-400 surface-to-air (SAM) missile defense system.
To be clear, Tabnak has not offered any additional data or claims about the transfer. Instead, the article delved into specifics about each platform, with those on the Su-35 being a helpful reminder that should Tehran acquire this system, it would first and foremost allow the regime to better contest and complicate the ability of foreign air forces to operate in Iranian airspace in an uncontested fashion.
Tabnak’s blatant attempt at padding Tehran’s arsenal appears aimed at politically raising the cost and even deterring Israel’s likely need to suppress or destroy Tehran’s patchwork of domestic and foreign SAM systems in the case of a strike on the Islamic Republic. A follow-on rationale for this unverified (even by Iranian media standards) allegation is to tout the dividends of tightening political and military ties with Moscow to the domestic population. In this regard, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Turkmenistan, where the Russian president was reported to have said, “We work together internationally, and our global assessments and approaches are the same,” is aimed at feigning more diplomatic depth and breadth behind the Islamic Republic than traditionally meets the eye.
