“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 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 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 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 fears that a successful conventional strike can spur Tehran to weaponize its atomic infrastructure, the point remains the same. To play on fears of political fallout from a strike to hinder and complicate America and Israel’s greatest advantage against the Islamic Republic: conventional military force.
Below are several instances within the past week of how the Islamic Republic has done precisely this along four different themes. These are identified and unpacked below:
Rattling the nuclear saber
It’s predictable that after the Islamic Republic has now twice directly attacked Israel – a reportedly nuclear weapons state – it would be scrambling for a way to prevent a greater Israeli reprisal against it. And that’s where rattling the nuclear saber kicks in. 2024 has seen no shortages of Iranian officials relying on this tactic, trying to maximize the utility of the Islamic Republic’s near-threshold nuclear status while trying to stave off attacks against its interests.
In February, Iran’s former atomic energy organization chief likened building a nuclear weapon to building a car, alleging that Tehran had all the components assembled but not brought together in one place. Twice in April, an Iranian military official and an Iranian lawmaker claimed that Iran could consider revising its nuclear doctrine, or, move to rapidly test a weapon, respectively. And in May, a former foreign minister and current advisor to Iran’s supreme leader claimed that Iran would change its military doctrine if perceived to be under existential threat.
Even in isolation these nuclear facts on the ground and intelligence on the regime’s breakout options, these statements are troubling. But when factoring those in, to recently include comments by Representative Mike Turner, the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman, on the ability of the Islamic Republic to become a nuclear power by year’s end should it chose to go down that pathway.
Following Iran’s recent missile attack against Israel, the regime appears to have doubled down on the nuclear threat, hoping to make the West connect the dots between the erasure of its conventional deterrent options (neutered terrorist proxies and intercepted long-range strike capabilities like ballistic missiles and drones) and the greater likelihood that when faced with conventional defeat, the Islamic Republic’s asymmetric offset is to finally cross the weaponization Rubicon. In recent statements and commentary, Tehran appears to be doing more than just trying to deter an attack, rather, potentially laying the political groundwork and political argument for a re-embrace the nuclear fait-accompli it had aimed for before being exposed in 2002.
Enter into this line of thinking is 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 changes to the geostrategic environment 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 moves to quote from internationalist relations theorist Kenneth Waltz, to whom he attributes 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 have to change more than just its nuclear doctrine to bridge the technological 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 about the so-called “nuclear Fatwa” which forced these powers to remain in a state of “guessing.” Where he differed from Ghanadi was his embrace of an Iran “that can have” nuclear weapons but opted against it would result in deterrence in the modern day.
Yet deterrence was not an end state for Sadeghian. Rather, it was a byproduct of the near-threshold status Tehran had which 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 a a pitstop towards what is implicitly assumed to be developing a nuclear weapon.
Though one might be tempted to dismiss these statements as hyperbole and projection, they capture a mood on the rise in hardline Iranian circles as it relates to exploiting Iran’s current atomic infrastructure. Socially, this can be seen in the online debate in pro-government fora about the direction Iran must go after its recent missile barrage on Israel because of their cognizance that the April and October direct attacks by Iran were political game-changers for the Israel-Iran rivalry. And as Israel prepares to respond, Tehran is aware that itis both conventionally outgunned and not in possession of escalation dominance.
Interestingly, these sentiments have also found their way into the government, with a recent parliamentary letter with 39 signatories calling on the Supreme National Secuity Council (SNSC) to reportedly “pursue nuclear weapons for self-defense,” and again, drawing on language from earlier in 2024, when faced with changing geo-strategic situation, “reevaluate its defense doctrine.”
Oscillating between minimalization and maximization to quell fears
By seeking to minimalize 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 massive. On the same night as Iran’s second missile barrage against Iran, 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 being that for all the regime’s spending on military matters over the years, Iran is largely believed to still be 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 inductions 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, 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 one-year 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 in 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.
Feigning strength after projecting fear
Cognizant of the steam 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, in this telling 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.”
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 out 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 has reportedly sent one squadron of Su-35 advanced fourth generation fighter-jets to the Islamic Republic, as well as unknown quantities of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air (SAM) missile-defense system.
Tabnak’s blatant attempt at padding Tehran’s arsenal appears aimed at politically raising the cost and even deterring Israel’s likely need to engage, suppress, or even 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 signal to the domestic population the dividends of tightening of political and military ties with Moscow.
No additional data or claims about the transfer were offered by Tabnak. 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.
