Since the devastating Israeli attack on Iran on October 25, 2024, when IAF airstrikes destroyed Iran’s air defense systems—including all four of the Russian S-400 anti-missile defense systems that protected Tehran and all of Iran’s ballistic missile plants—the Iranians have been warning Israel to soon expect, as the Supreme Leader put it, “a crushing response.”
This from frontpagemag.com.
And to ensure Israel understood Iran’s nuclear threat, the government erected a huge billboard in Tehran stating: “Teloshima”—a portmanteau word combining “Tel Aviv” and “Hiroshima.”
But now after more than two weeks since the Israeli attack, the Iranian regime has gone quiet. Perhaps it has realized any attack it now launches on Israel will be responded to with terrific force. And the Obiden Regime’s warning to Iran that it will not be able to “hold Israel back” if Iran strikes the Jewish state may have talked sufficient sense into Iran’s leadership.
An examination from What happened to Iran’s bragging about ‘retaliation’ against Israel?—analysis, by Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post, November 7, 2024:
…Iran has been blustering about another round of attacks on Israel since late October. The Tehran regime hasn’t gone completely silent. However, the rumors of an attack on November 5 seemed to vanish. In addition rumors of a ‘drone swarm’ launched from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen also vanished after the rumors were spread on IRGC channels on Telegram on November 4.
Iran media
What are IRGC media channels such as Tasnim talking about these days? Tasnim has articles about Hezbollah’s long-range missiles. Recently, Hezbollah has increased rocket fire targeting long-range targets in Israel. It has also been firing large numbers of rockets at the north.
The IRGC is also focused on a counter-insurgency campaign in Balochistan province in Iran near the Pakistan border.
The Baloch separatists in Iran’s far east are hoping to win independence from Iran and then to join the Balochi separatists in western Pakistan in a new state of Balochistan. Any Iranian state weakness would be the opening the Balochi’s need.
In recent years, Balochi insurgents—they are Sunni, which makes them even more hostile to their Shi’a rulers in Tehran—have been attacking Iranian border guards to enable border crossings and the free flow of weapons from the eight million Balochis in Pakistani to their two million fellow Balochis in Iran.
And that is not all on Iran’s plate. Tehran’s counter-insurgency has indeed taken up much of the IRGC’s attention.
And so have the other restive minorities in Iran—the eight million Arabs in Khuzestan Province, on the Persian Gulf, where most of Iran’s oil is located, the 13 million Kurds in northern Iran who long for a separate Kurdish state that would include the Kurds of Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey, and the 23 million Azeris who live predominantly in northwestern Iran, on the border with Azerbaijan. Of Iran’s 89 million people, about half are non-Iranians, and all four of the ethnic minorities—the Balochis, Azeris, Kurds, and Arabs—have separatist ambitions.
The refusal of these restive ethnic groups to accept Iranian domination is a continuing nightmare for Tehran.
Yes, the Iranian government has its hands full with its non-Persian ethnicities. So, by Tehran suggesting its Lebanese proxy—not Iran itself—should bear the main burden of launching attacks against Israel is surely because the IRGC fears what would happen to Iran if the Iranians themselves launched another attack on Israel. But arming and counting on Hezbollah to continue inflicting damage on the Jewish state will certainly prove to be a fool’s game.
Fateh missiles have been transferred by Iran to Hezbollah, which has been firing them into central Israel. This allows Iran to claim a weak plausible deniability: It did not use those missiles itself, but only supplied them—for “defensive purposes”—to Hezbollah. Soon, however, Israel will cease to go along with the comedy:
[T]he IDF intends to treat any attack from a Shia proxy in Iraq as an attack from Iran itself, and will respond to Iranian targets, including its nuclear and oil installations that were deliberately not targeted on October 25.
To review, Iran’s rationale not to attack Israel:
– First, with a Trump administration likely far more favorable toward Israel, Iran won’t want to do anything to the Jewish state that would give it all the excuse it needs to launch a “crushing” retaliatory attack that would put [an end] to Iran’s nuclear installations and its oil installations as well [not to mention unleashing the poised ethnic masses], and
– Second, Iran must now be fearing an attack not just from Israel, but also from a Trump administration. Trump has been virulently anti-Iran from his first term. He pulled out of the Iran deal and reimposed sanctions on Iran. He does not want to be involved in any long wars like those expensive catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq. But he can be persuaded that the American military could quickly destroy—with or without the help of their Israeli ally—Iran’s nuclear installations.
Just a week ago the Supreme Leader of Iran promised he would soon deliver revenge to Israel. However, he has had a chance to think things through, and grasp the significance of Trump’s triumph. He has since grown very silent. No need, at this point, to antagonize the replacement to America’s suicidal ideology.
