Iran Preparing for War With Israel, but Hoping to Avert It

Tehran has several plans for responding to a threatened retaliatory strike by Israel, depending on its severity, and might also do nothing, insiders say.

By Farnaz Fassihi

As it braces for an expected retaliatory strike from Israel, Iran has ordered the armed forces to be prepared for war but also to try to avoid it, having witnessed the decimation of its allies in Lebanon and Gaza.

Four Iranian officials said in telephone interviews this week that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ordered the military to devise multiple military plans for responding to an Israeli attack. The scope of any Iranian retaliation, they said, will largely depend on the severity of Israel’s attacks. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military preparations.

If Israeli strikes — a response to a barrage of missiles from Iran earlier this month — inflict widespread damage and high casualties, they said, Iran will retaliate. But if Israel limits its attack to a few military bases and warehouses storing missiles and drones, Iran might well do nothing.

The officials said Ayatollah Khamenei had directed that a response would be certain if Israel strikes oil and energy infrastructure or nuclear facilities, or if it assassinates senior officials.

The officials, including two members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said that if Israel inflicted major harm, the responses under consideration included a barrage of up to 1,000 ballistic missiles; escalated attacks by Iranian proxy militant groups in the region; and disrupting the flow of global energy supplies and shipping moving through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran publicly maintains that it does not want war. But punishing military blows from Israel would pose a challenge to its leaders, who are intent on not appearing weak and vulnerable, particularly after Israel’s assassinations of multiple leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah. Both of those groups are backed by Iran.

“In the event of an Israeli attack, the shape of our response will be proportionate and calculated,” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told the Russian news media on Wednesday on the sideline of the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia.

For the country — and the region — the stakes could not be higher. An all-out war between Iran and Israel would deepen the chaos, likely doom any prospects for cease-fires in Gaza and Lebanon, and possibly lead the United States into military action in support  of Israel.

In recent weeks, Iran has been trying to strengthen alliances with regional Arab countries — but also warning them that any assistance to Israel for an attack would make them a legitimate target. Mr. Araghchi said at a news conference in Kuwait on Tuesday that he had received assurances from neighboring countries that Israeli jets would not be allowed to use their airspace or refuel at their bases in any attack on Iran.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi of Iran at a news conference in Kuwait. He has been on a diplomatic blitz to shore up Arab support.Credit...Yasser Al-Zayyat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Over the past week, Iranian officials have displayed competing views in public comments on how to confront Israel’s threatened strike. President Masoud Pezeshkian and Mr. Araghchi have vowed retaliation, but did so in measured tones. One commander even dismissed any potential attacks by Israel as too insignificant to merit a major response. But a senior Revolutionary Guard commander threatened in a speech to eliminate all Zionists.

“The thinking now is that if Israel’s attack is symbolic and limited, we ought to let go and end the ping pong of attacks,” said Nasser Imani, a political analyst close to the government in a telephone interview from Tehran. “Iran is really not keen on having a major war with Israel. We don’t see any benefits in the region exploding.”

Mr. Imani said that at this stage Iran did not view war with Israel as an existential threat, but that it believed a prolonged conflict would be destructive and derail the new government’s plans to negotiate with the West in the hope of getting tough American sanctions lifted and improving Iran’s dire economy.

Tensions between Israel and Iran have been growing still more severe since  Hamas conducted its Oct. 7 terrorist strike on Israel a year ago.

In April, Iran and Israel exchanged fire after Israel attacked an Iranian embassy compound in Syria. In its strike on Israel earlier this month, Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles to retaliate for the Israeli assassinations of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, while he was in Tehran, and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah.

Expecting a response, Iran has conducted a recent diplomatic blitz. Mr. Imani said it was partly to send back-channel messages to Washington to try to contain Israel and prevent war, but also to strengthen alliances with Arab countries and consult with Turkey and Iran’s key allies, Russia and China.

Mr. Pezeshkian met with both the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Kazan this week. Mr. Putin said after their meeting that Russia and Iran’s outlook on the region was “the same or very close,” and that he “highly valued” Ayatollah Khamenei’s positions, according to a broadcast of his comments on Iranian state television.

Iranian missiles being intercepted over Israel on Oct. 1.Credit...Amir Cohen/Reuters

Iran has not faced such a significant external threat since a war with Iraq ended more than three decades ago. While Iran and Israel have been engaged in a covert war playing out in the sea, air, land and cyberspace, Israeli fighter jets dropping bombs on Iran would represent uncharted territory, analysts said.

“Iran’s problem is that they have escalated to a point that they are essentially in a shooting match with Israel with far less military tools at its disposal than Israel,” said Afshon Ostovar, an associate professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and an expert on Iran’s military.

For weeks now, anticipating Israel’s retaliation, Iran has placed its armed forces on full alert and enhanced air defenses at sensitive military and nuclear sites, the four officials said.

The two members of the Revolutionary Guards familiar with military planning said that senior generals who commanded battalions in Iraq and Syria fighting the Islamic State militant group have been deployed to all of the border provinces. The concern, they said, is that armed ethnic separatist groups and militant groups like ISIS might stage attacks and stir unrest if the country went to war.

Nasser Hadian, a political commentator based in Tehran, said in a phone interview that Iran had spent decades building up militant groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon to act as a defense force along Israel’s border to deter the United States from attacking. Now, he said, that focus has shifted.

“Israel has become the real threat for Iran, ” he said. “We thought it was America all these years.”

Israel’s decimation of Hezbollah’s chain of command and military infrastructure has flipped the calculations for Iran, Mr. Hadian said. “Deterrence works as long as there is no war, and right now after the heavy blows to Hezbollah a large part of Iran’s deterrent power has been diminished,” he said.

On the streets of Tehran, the only visible signs of war are propaganda murals threatening Israel in Hebrew, residents said in interviews.

“We know nothing, we are kept in the dark,” said Assal, 21, who works in marketing and asked that her last name be withheld for fear of retribution. “We don’t know how to prepare ourselves because we are not informed by the government.”

A mural in Tehran shows Israeli hostages being held in Gaza and says that none will be freed following the killing of the leader of Hamas.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

In recent days, the beleaguered Iranian currency, the rial, has fallen further against the dollar while the price of gold has spiked, both typical benchmarks of an economy responding to a crisis and inflation. On Thursday the government banned civilian drones from the skies, and most foreign airlines have suspended flights to Iran, leaving travelers with scant options, increased prices and overbooked flights.

Support for war with Israel appears to be limited to staunch ideological supporters of the government, who say in social media posts and on state television that they would volunteer to fight. But many other Iranians say in interviews and on social media that they are anxious and angry about being dragged into a war they neither want nor support.

“A lot of people like me stayed in Iran with all its problems and struggled to survive,” said Raika, a 47-year-old artist in Tehran who asked to be identified only by her first name for security reasons. “I do not want us to get involved in other countries’ wars. I do not want to die for something that has nothing to do with my country and my people.”

Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting from Belgium.

Farnaz Fassihi is the United Nations bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the organization, and also covers Iran and the shadow war between Iran and Israel. She is based in New York. More about Farnaz Fassihi