This is a turning point – one more – in the Middle East. By firing more than 300 drones and missiles during the night from Saturday to Sunday, Iran, for the first time, sought to directly strike Israel on its territory. Author of Holocausts (Plon), an essay which analyzes the cycle of violence triggered by October 7, Gilles Kepel discusses for L’Express the consequences of this Iranian attack, which “places Netanyahu in the situation of the victim authorized to respond”. For the university professor, the Israeli Prime Minister, after having weakened Hamas, could heavily hit Hezbollah, another pillar of the “axis of resistance”, and experience on the domestic level one of these political rebounds of which he has the secret. Interview.
By attacking Israeli territory directly for the first time without causing great damage, has Iran not given a gift to Benjamin Netanyahu ?
Gilles Kepel Iran indeed seems to me to be in a paradoxical position of weakness. These six months of war in Gaza, with tens of thousands of civilian casualties, have tarnished the reputation of Israel and Netanyahu. But the military reality is not glorious for Hamas, which only has a very small part of its troops intact, hidden under Rafah around Yahya Sinwar. This spearhead of the “axis of resistance” is no longer capable of representing a significant threat.
By directly attacking Israel, which has benefited not only from its own air defense forces, but also from interceptions carried out by the United States, the United Kingdom and France, Iran places Netanyahu in the position of the authorized victim to reply. The Prime Minister is of course dependent on the United States, and Joe Biden explicitly told him “no escalation”, that is to say not to attack Iran directly. But this does not prevent an attack against Hezbollah, which would make a large part of the Lebanese happy, who no longer support the dictatorship exercised by this organization having largely contributed to the total ruin of the country. This would mean that Tehran’s second proxy in the Levant would also be very weakened. From there, Iran would lose a large part of its capacity to cause harm. Which would delight not only Israel, but also most Sunni countries. In any case, Netanyahu today benefits from a sort of free hand to take military measures that will hurt Iran.
So you think Israel is preparing to hit Hezbollah harder?
Everything indicates it in any case. More than 80,000 Israelis living on the northern border are still evacuated, allowing an attack without major retaliation. Hezbollah was unable to retaliate when Saleh al-Arouri, No. 2 in Hamas’s political branch, was killed on January 2 in the heart of the stronghold of Dahieh, a southern suburb of Beirut. Since then, the military leaders of God’s party have been systematically targeted by Israeli attacks. The Jewish state has proven that it has very sophisticated means of identifying its main leaders, as well as its nerve centers.
Does this attack by Iran mark a turning point for Israel?
In any case, this confirms, after October 7, that the inviolability of Israel no longer exists. This state was created in 1947 by the UN to give Jews a haven, in which they would no longer have to fear a genocide comparable to that of the Nazis. Beyond the massacres, mutilations and rapes committed by Hamas, October 7 shook this cornerstone of Zionist state ideology, hence the strong trauma felt in Israel. The attack by hundreds of Iranian drones and missiles on the night of April 13 to 14, even if it was incomplete and the human toll is in no way comparable, is part of the same logic. After having been called into question by the ground, Israel’s inviolability was questioned by heaven. Apart from Netanyahu himself, the entire Zionist doctrine of an inviolable territory and technological superiority shows flaws, which forces Israel, if it wants to insert itself sustainably in the region, to reinvent itself quite extensively.
“The Iranian regime also faces a complicated internal situation”
Will Netanyahu benefit electorally from this attack?
If he manages to inflict very violent blows on Hezbollah, he can make one of those rebounds with which his career has been familiar. Despite his legal troubles, not even to mention his lack of vigilance before October 7, Netanyahu can hope to succeed in his political survival if, ultimately, he presents himself as the man who very significantly weakened Hamas (even at the cost of tens of thousands of deaths in Gaza…) before reducing Hezbollah’s offensive capabilities. But the civilian victims will have a lasting impact on his political future.
How can you explain what you present as a current Iranian weakness?
Let us not forget that General Zahedi, killed on April 1 in Damascus, was the boss of Iranian military operations throughout the Levant. It was a decisive position, which made him the highest ranking Revolutionary Guard based outside Iran. The Quds Force, by keeping Israel under threat, is a deterrent force. In the event of an Israeli attack on nuclear research centers, Hezbollah has the means to inflict significant damage on the Jewish state. But today, Iran is in a complex situation externally. The country was attacked on January 3, during the commemoration of the fourth anniversary of the death of General Soleimani, the greatest symbol of Iranian power, by an EI-K jihadist group, the same one which targeted Russia on the 22 March in Moscow. In response, Iran fired missiles into a desert area in neighboring Pakistan, where the attackers were believed to have come from. Allied to the United States and a nuclear power, the latter responded much more violently, and the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs had to go to Islamabad to say that it was a misunderstanding. Even there, the regime was not capable of real retaliation.
With the attack on the night of April 13 to 14, the Iranians wanted to show that they were capable of targeting Israeli territory. But we have the impression that they are at the maximum of their capacity, proposing to leave it there. This attack, unlike October 7, did not benefit from any surprise effect. Tehran has been warning of upcoming reprisals for two weeks.
From the outset, Iran mandated the Houthis to respond, which represents a very low-cost investment, but which pays off relatively big by disrupting merchant traffic in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. But it also harms the Chinese ally, because cargoes pile up in the ports of Shanghai or Ningbo. China, which is suffering a major economic crisis, is not happy. His statement, after Iran’s attack on Israel, resembles a judgment of Solomon by saying that the great powers had to ensure that there was no overflow, while Putin’s Russia she praised this “fair reply”.
But the Iranian regime also faces a complicated internal situation. After the repression of women, Kurds and Sunnis in the south-east of the country, after an unprecedented abstention this year in the legislative elections, the base of the ultra-radical team in power is increasingly narrow. This is also a consequence of the militarization of the regime, and of the fact that the Revolutionary Guards largely replaced the clergy, who had access to all layers of society. The Guardians come from peripheral environments. Soleimani, for example, was buried in Kerman, a distant province, and not in Tehran. Where the clergy has the ear of both the people and the prince, the Revolutionary Guards are much less connected with the bourgeois and commercial spheres. Which explains in particular the violence of the repression of a power made up of ruffians, in the face of protests from urban and educated civil society.
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