Just over a year after the Oct. 7 attack, Israel's elimination of Yahia Sinwar and Hassan Nasrallah highlights the harsh military blows suffered by Tehran's major allies, Hamas and Hezbollah, raising the question of how Iran will respond to the evolving Middle East conflict.
Tehran faces three options: ignore the snubs suffered and revive the "circle of fire" strategy in order to strangle Israel with the terrorist and paramilitary groups created around its borders; try to create a balance of power among enemies with the Jewish state in order to buy time to heal the wounds suffered and succeed in getting to the nuclear weapon; take a tactical step back and agree with the important Russian ally on a different medium-term strategy in the Middle East to weaken the US and its allies, Israel and Sunni countries.
On paper, the messages that have come from Tehran in the last 36 hours suggest that the ayatollahs want to continue the military siege on Israel from seven directions: from Gaza a…
Just over a year after the Oct. 7 attack, Israel's elimination of Yahia Sinwar and Hassan Nasrallah highlights the harsh military blows suffered by Tehran's major allies, Hamas and Hezbollah, raising the question of how Iran will respond to the evolving Middle East conflict.
Tehran faces three options: ignore the snubs suffered and revive the "circle of fire" strategy in order to strangle Israel with the terrorist and paramilitary groups created around its borders; try to create a balance of power among enemies with the Jewish state in order to buy time to heal the wounds suffered and succeed in getting to the nuclear weapon; take a tactical step back and agree with the important Russian ally on a different medium-term strategy in the Middle East to weaken the US and its allies, Israel and Sunni countries.
On paper, the messages that have come from Tehran in the last 36 hours suggest that the ayatollahs want to continue the military siege on Israel from seven directions: from Gaza and the West Bank with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, from Lebanon and Syria with Hezbollah, from Iraq with Kataib Hezbollah, from Yemen with the Houthis, and from Iran itself with missiles and drones. If Tehran's Foreign Ministry promises that "others will rise up to replace Sinwar," President Masoud Pezeshkian assures that "the martyrdom of commanders does not weaken the resistance," and Hezbollah announces "an escalation of attacks against the Zionist Entity," it is because the ayatollah regime wants followers to know that the goal of Israel's destruction remains intact and the choice to pursue it through military siege will continue without hesitation. It is an ideological position that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has embodied by reciting the Tehran sermon with one hand on the rifle and to which is linked the plan to extend its hegemony over the entire Middle East by opposing the process of the Abrahamic Accords, between Israel and Sunni countries, supported by the US and EU. But it is a choice that exposes the ayatollahs to obvious risks: from the difficulty of reorganizing and reviving Hamas and Hezbollah in a hurry to the threat of an imminent Israeli attack - in response to the Iranian missile launch on Oct. 1 - that is openly aimed at weakening the regime.
Hence the scenario of the second option, which is being discussed among Western allies, with Tehran choosing to strengthen support for Houthi in Yemen and Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq, providing them with Russian missiles and more sophisticated drones, respectively, in order to continue the proxy war against the Jewish state but with a clear step back from Hezbollah and Hamas. In this scheme in South Lebanon and Gaza buffer zones could be created on Israel's borders, generating a situation of precarious stability, while the war would continue with drone and missile launches from Iraq, Yemen and Iran. Allowing Tehran to have a balance of power with Jerusalem such that it could buy enough time to reach the atomic weapon, thus also protecting itself from the risk of future attacks. Also from the United States.
There is, however, the third option and it has to do with Moscow. Indeed, the Kremlin is Tehran's most important protector and ally. It is Putin who buys Iranian drones to fight in Ukraine, provides ballistic technology to Tehran, supports its nuclear program and, most importantly, as he himself told President Pezeshkiannel recent meeting in Turkmenistan he wants to "create a new international order" in place of the one that came out of the end of the Cold War. The Putin-Pezeshkian pact on this "new order" is based on the sum between wars of attrition on multiple fronts against the West-in Europe, Africa and the Middle East-and at the same time building multilateral agreements between Brics, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Eurasian Union. It is a medium-term process in which Putin wants to associate Xi Jinping's China. So, Moscow has an interest in consolidating Tehran's pawn, not in seeing it stagger under the weight of snubs suffered by Hamas and Hezbollah or, worse, a U.S.-backed Israeli military attack. If Putin supported Hamas after Oct. 7, it is because he wanted to enlist the jihadists in the global challenge to the democracies in order to force the White House to divide its arsenal between Ukraine and Israel, but Sinwar's death may push Putin to change course, preferring to consolidate the strategic pact with Tehran, in a less military and more political perspective of challenging the U.S. Especially since, he, too, is waiting to know the name of the next occupant of the White House and knows that, should it be Donald Trump, a delicate phase of all-round negotiations will open: from the course of the Dnepr to the beaches of Gaza.
That's why all eyes are on Tehran and the choice Ali Khamenei, on whom the Guardians of the Revolution who arm, train and finance jihadist groups in the Middle East depend. And it is a looming choice because the countdown to Israel's attack has already begun.________________________________________