World waits anxiously for Iranian response to Israel’s killing of top general

The world is watching Iran. After Israel assassinated a senior commander in an embassy annexe in Damascus, the one thing every diplomat, general and politician from Tehran to Washington could agree on was that Iran would have to respond.

There has been nearly two weeks of speculation about when, where and how, fanned by US intelligence reports that Iran or its proxies were preparing for strikes on Israel.

On Saturday, days after Tehran said it could close the world’s most important oil shipping route, the Strait of Hormuz, its Revolutionary Guards seized a cargo ship linked to Israel and took it into Iranian waters. Israel accused Tehran of piracy and a military spokesman said it would “bear consequences” for further escalation.

Israel placed its armed forces on full alert yesterday and called off school trips and other youth activities planned for the coming days, the beginning of the Passover festival.

Announcing the measures in a televised briefing, chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said dozens of combat planes were airborne as part of the state of readiness.

Related: Israel on high alert after Iran’s missile retaliation threat

That in itself marks a victory for Tehran, said Yagil Levy, professor of military sociology at the Open University of Israel. “Iran doesn’t have to do anything. It has an achievement in that most Israelis are now terrified, afraid of leaving their homes – many are travelling abroad, cancelling plans,” Levy said. “I guess that someone in Tehran is following the events of Israel with a lot of pleasure.”

Moreover, President Joe Biden cut short a weekend stay at his Delaware beach house and was returning to the White House to meet his national security team and monitor the situation. Soon after the White House announced the change of plans, the Pentagon reported that the defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, had spoken with his Israeli counterpart “to discuss urgent regional threats”. Iran’s options range from a direct attack on Israeli targets from its own soil – the most provocative choice – to using Hezbollah in Lebanon, militias in Iraq or the Houthis in Yemen to attack Israeli-linked targets abroad.

A direct attack from Iranian soil would mark a significant departure from the country’s record of restrained response to attacks, said Maryam Alemzadeh, associate professor in Iranian history and politics at Oxford University. “The government has called it ‘strategic patience’ to ideologically appease its minority hardliner supporters. But it has been the right strategic move in realpolitik terms as well,” she said.

“Iran’s military equipment is at best suitable for asymmetric warfare only; it cannot rely on international support, even from lukewarm allies China and Russia; and its economy is on the brink of collapse due to years of international sanctions and domestic corruption and mismanagement.”

Even the US assassination of General Qassem Suleimani in 2020, commander of the Quds force, was followed only by non-lethal attacks on US bases in Iraq.“If I were to guess based on history, based on experience, I doubt anything spectacular will happen, because that’s not the way they operate,” said Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University. “They’re more into asymmetrical warfare over a long period of time.”The Damascus strike on 1 April was a particularly strong test of Iranian restraint, however. It killed Brig Gen Mohammad Reza Zahedi and another Quds commander, along with his deputy and several diplomats, inside an embassy annexe, which under diplomatic convention is considered the territory of Iran.

“In all these years that I’ve been monitoring shadow war between Iran and Israel, I have not seen this degree of bottom-up pressure on the regime from its own core constituents,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group. “People are saying [the government] needs to respond, its strategy of strategic patience has failed and has resulted in Israel pushing the envelope too far.”

Iran’s perceived need to respond has spurred a flurry of diplomatic activity, as western allies who had been publicly sparring with Israel’s government over the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza once more rallied to the country’s support.

President Joe Biden buried his dispute with the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to issue a one-word warning to Iran. “Don’t,” he said, adding the US was “devoted to the defence of Israel”.

Britain’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, said on Saturday he had spoken to Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, to discuss “our shared concerns about Iranian threats. Further escalation in the region is in no one’s interest,” he said.

But behind the public support, officials are privately frustrated about an attack that undid weeks of work on preventing the war in Gaza escalating into regional conflict. America was quick to tell Iran that it had not been informed about the attack in advance, and had not given its approval.

“Israel basically put the whole region into a situation of red alert,” said Vali Nasr, professor of Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins univerity. “It sent a message to all the region, including Iran, that the US basically has no control over Israel.”

Calls from foreign ministers across Europe and the region to Iran, urging restraint in the country’s response suggest that despite the public support of Israel, hopes of avoiding escalation are lodged with Tehran.Many regional analysts see more appetite for full-blown conflict in Israel – where hardliners are pushing for a pre-emptive attack on Hezbollah – than in Iran.

“We’re actually in a bizarre way calculating on Iran being very strategic,” Nasr said. “Every one of the foreign ministers calling them is hoping Iran is actually not the Iran of our imagination, that it’s not rash, it’s not religious, it’s not suicidal. That Iran actually will understand complexity and act accordingly. That’s our hope.”

The country is trying to find a way to send a message of deterrence while increasing international pressure on Netanyahu, he added.

There is an acute awareness among Iran’s leadership that international focus has shifted away from the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which was causing a major rift with allies. Any escalation that forces the US closer to Netanyahu would be a win for the embattled Israeli leader, who is facing growing protests at home, and pressure abroad over Gaza.

His position has already been shored up in the short term, by fallout from the attack and efforts to stave off escalation. Critics have questioned whether he might have political motives for launching such a provocative strike.

Retired General Tamir Hayman, former head of military intelligence and now managing director of the Institute for National Security Studies thinktank, said Netanyahu had handled the relationship with the US badly but ruled out a political motivation for the assassination. “I know how the system works, and I know how those strikes were probably planned and conducted and what elements of timing would be needed,” he said. “I think operational tactical opportunity is what stands behind the timing, not political [manipulation].”

He sees Iran calibrating carefully, to make a show of strength, but not anything dramatic enough to prompt escalation to full-blown war, or draw in the US. But even a moderate response will just be the next move in a dangerous game between long-term enemies. “This is the first strike. The next question will be: what will be the counter-retaliation of Israel?”