Iran’s Year of Living Dangerously

Over four decades, in an effort to preserve itself, project regional influence, and deter adversaries, the Islamic Republic of Iran has invested in three projects: funding and arming a network of nonstate allies; developing ballistic missiles that can reach its rivals; and launching a nuclear program that can be either dialed down to deliver economic benefits or dialed up to deliver a nuclear weapon. Setbacks to the first, mixed results from the second, and uncertainty over the third have increasingly called this strategy into question.

After Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, groups in the Iranian-backed “axis of resistance” quickly mobilized on multiple fronts. In Yemen, the Houthis’ missiles and drones menaced maritime traffic in the Red Sea. In Iraq and Syria, militias launched drones and rockets at U.S. forces. And in Lebanon, Hezbollah ramped up cross-border fire into Israel. As Israel waged its military campaign in Gaza, Israel also sought to douse Iran’s ring of fire, including by targeting Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel. In April, an Israeli strike on an Iranian consular facility in Damascus—which the leadership in Tehran considered a direct hit on sovereign territory—killed several of the IRGC’s senior commanders. In response to the mounting losses of IRGC officers in Lebanon and Syria, Tehran, for the first time, mounted a direct military attack against Israel. Iran indirectly telegraphed its strike in advance to the United States, rendering the barrage of drones and missiles largely ineffective. But Iran’s leaders nonetheless declared their attack a success.

The April strike, dubbed Operation True Promise, may have set a precedent in Israel and Iran’s long-standing rivalry, yet it did little to strengthen deterrence for Tehran. Israel quickly responded with a surgical strike against an air-defense facility near Isfahan, exposing the IRGC’s vulnerabilities not far from multiple nuclear facilities and deterring Tehran, at least temporarily, from another direct strike on Israel. Iran’s government played down the incident. But in late July, Iran’s vulnerability was further exposed by an Israeli operation it could not so easily dismiss: the killing of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was in Tehran for the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

This time, and despite fierce rhetoric, the regime held its fire. A U.S.‒led push to nail down a cease-fire in Gaza provided one stated rationale, as did warnings to the new Iranian government that its effortsto improve relations with the West would be dented before they could be tested. A surge in U.S. warships and fighter jets to the region, and concerns that Israel would retaliate with overwhelming force against an Iranian response, also likely tipped the scales in Tehran against further action.

Yet it would prove a temporary reprieve. The Gaza negotiations made no apparent progress toward a cease-fire, while Israel began to ramp up operations on its northern front against Hezbollah—not just the closest of Iran’s allies but also the one whose military capacities Tehran had done the most to bolster as part of an insurance policy against an attack on its own soil. A September 17 operation triggering explosions in thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah cadres was the start of a blitz that, in less than two weeks, killed some 16 top Hezbollah commanders, as well as its chief, Hassan Nasrallah. Israel’s strikes on Hezbollah were notable for both the intelligence capacities and the military capabilities they revealed, including an ability to penetrate internal communications and track the group’s operatives. Already on the receiving end of more than a few Israeli covert operations in the past, including against nuclear sites and personnel, Tehran may no longer believe itself to be immune to such Israeli operations either.

Iran’s leaders likely saw themselves as having only bad choices: stand by and lose both what was left of its diminishing deterrence as an adversary and credibility as an ally, or enter the fray once more despite the risk of an even greater counterstrike from Israel. With little forewarning, it launched its second direct attack on Israel on October 1, which the U.S. Department of Defense estimated to be double the size of the April attack. (The 180 ballistic missiles caused some damage at two Israeli military air bases, which may raise concerns about the potential of future Iranian attacks, although both the Israeli military and senior U.S. officials judged their impact to be operationally “ineffective.”)

The Islamic Republic’s hand has undoubtedly been weakened.

That attack, which Tehran dubbed Operation True Promise 2, was a far bigger gamble than its April namesake, all but inviting a response at a time when Israelis (and some senior officials in Washington) are bullish about the speed and ingenuity with which Israel has degraded Hezbollah’s leadership and military capacities. U.S. President Joe Biden has publicly counseled Israel against attacking Iran’s nuclear and oil facilities, while ongoing military campaigns in both Gaza and Lebanon may slightly temper an Israel retaliation that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has foreshadowed as “lethal, precise, and especially surprising.” Yet even if this round of exchanges can be contained, it may, once more, prove to be a brief respite.

With its proxies enfeebled, the failure of Iran’s second missile barrage to do significant damage, and its adversaries’ superior military and intelligence capacities, the Islamic Republic’s hand has undoubtedly been weakened. Unsurprisingly, a growing segment within the system’s political class and propaganda networks is more loudly vocalizing calls that had previously been whispers: shedding the nuclear program’s ostensibly peaceful pretense and moving toward weaponization as the ultimate deterrent.

CIA Director Bill Burns recently estimated that Iran’s breakout time—the amount of time needed to enrich enough fissile material for a single bomb to weapons grade—at “a week or a little more.” It would then take only a few more months to fashion it into a deliverable weapon. Given the advanced nature of Iran’s nuclear activities, as well as setbacks on the other legs of its strategic triad, the regime has both motive and opportunity to make a decision it has long deferred. For three reasons, however, that step could compound rather than resolve its problems.

The first is that even if Iran’s nuclear facilities are spared from an initial Israeli retaliation, a dash toward weaponization, which Burns assessed would be detected “relatively early on,” could well be treated by Israel and the United States as a casus belli, putting key Iranian nuclear sites squarely in Israeli and potentially U.S. cross hairs. Although Israel can inflict damage on Iran’s highly fortified and widely dispersed nuclear facilities, only the United States can set Iran’s program back significantly.

A nuclear arsenal is unlikely to resolve Iran’s strategic dilemmas.

A second problem is one that has, ironically, been underscored by the Iranian government’s own actions. The case for pursuing a nuclear weapon as the ultimate deterrent has been undermined by Tehran’s own willingness to carry out conventional attacks against not one but two nuclear-armed powers this year: Israel and Pakistan. In other words, if Iran’s objective is not just to guarantee regime survival but also to dissuade adversaries from counterstrikes, it seems peculiar to expect improved deterrence by means that have failed to deter Tehran itself.

The third challenge that would come from moving toward building a nuclear arsenal is the likely collapse, at least in the near to medium term, of any prospect of using the nuclear program as a point of leverage to gain relief from international sanctions. As recently as late September, the Pezeshkian government was testing the waters with Western powers on the potential parameters of renewed engagement. If Tehran developed nuclear weapons, the European participants in the 2015 nuclear agreement (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) would almost certainly reconsider those tentative contacts. Instead, they would take the lead in restoring UN sanctions lifted under that deal and reclassifying the Islamic Republic as a threat to international security under the UN Charter.

For Iran’s leaders, the sudden exposure of its vulnerabilities may be fueling an increased appetite for risk—risks that they may hope will compensate for mounting failures and prevent future ones. Yet a change to its nuclear doctrine is unlikely to resolve the Islamic Republic’s strategic dilemmas. A move toward a nuclear weapon would likely bring conflict in the short term. In the longer term, even obtaining the ultimate deterrent would not necessarily safeguard the regime against enemies at home and abroad, who will continue to exploit its inferior intelligence, weakness in conventional weapons, failing economy, and eroding legitimacy.