Long time journalist The Economist and to USA Today, where she covered the Middle East, Barbara Slavin is now a researcher emeritus at the Stimson Center (non-partisan think tank) and a lecturer at George Washington University. For L’Express, this Iran specialist analyzes the risks of escalation following Iran’s attack on Israel. According to her, “the worst thing that could happen would be if the Israelis decided to attack Iran’s nuclear program.” Interview.
L’Express: “The long shadow war between Israel and Iran is now coming to light” you wrote in the daily Haaretz. Has Iran crossed the Rubicon by directly attacking Israel?
Barbara Slavin: We are more than forty years into hostility. The Iranian revolution is profoundly anti-American and anti-Israeli (the “big” and the “little Satan”). The regime does not only defend the Palestinian cause, it calls into question the entire Jewish state. So in a way it’s rather surprising that this open confrontation took so long.
Over time, the shadow war between the two countries has evolved. In the 1980s, Israel saw Iraq as the main threat and helped Iran with weapons. But in the 1990s, Iran was excluded from the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. He therefore promoted Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in order to make it fail. Then, in the 2000s and 2010s, there were opportunities between Iran and the United States, notably with the nuclear agreement which Netanyahu did not want. The Israelis murdered Iranian scientists working on the nuclear program. This issue, along with the involvement of both countries in the war in Syria, has accelerated the shadow war.
The assassination on April 1 in Damascus of seven Iranian officers was one insult too many for Tehran. The pressure on Ali Khamenei from his own base was too intense. Revolutionary Guards were killed. However, without them, the supreme leader would no longer have a regime. The Iranians had to respond, and they did so in a way that was both spectacular and ineffective.
And now ?
That’s the big question. Can Israel be persuaded not to retaliate? Can we convince him to stop the war in Gaza? For Iran, this would be the moment to put pressure on Hamas to release the hostages. Because a new “round” against Israel would only divert attention from the Palestinian cause and would harm Iranian interests: since the attack on April 13, Israel has been less isolated on the international scene.
But is it reasonable to think that Netanyahu will do nothing?
No. But he doesn’t need to act now. The United States has made it clear that while it defends Israel, it will not participate in an offensive operation. We can hope for a break. It’s almost Passover, I’m not sure Israel wants a new war during this time. Everyone needs to catch their breath.
“The worst response to this Iranian attack would be to cause more Palestinian deaths in Gaza”
What should Western countries do to prevent escalation?
Do everything to obtain a ceasefire in Gaza. Use all possible channels to convince Hamas to release the hostages, and Israel not to engage in Rafah and not to widen the conflict. But the new mobilization of Israeli reservists is not a good sign. In any case, the worst response to this Iranian attack would be to cause more Palestinian deaths in Gaza. This would only help Iran, by supporting its narrative of Israelis being monsters who deserve the worst.
What is the role of China and Russia, Iran’s allies?
China weakly condemned the Iranian attack, calling for calm. Beijing has strong economic relations with Tehran. The Chinese regime communicates a lot, but has hardly acted diplomatically. Russia welcomes this distraction from the war in Ukraine. Despite what appeared to be strong relations with Israel, Russia showed no sympathy for the Israelis. This should make Netanyahu think twice about his relationship with Putin…
Within the Iranian regime, hardliners and the Revolutionary Guards appear to have gained power…
Indeed, the political space in Iran has been shrinking for around ten years. In 2009, fraudulent elections unfairly gave Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term, before the post-election uprising, called the “green movement”, came under heavy repression. There followed a short period when things seemed to improve, under the presidency of Hassan Rouhani, in particular, with the calming of relations between Iran, Europe and the United States, and the agreement on Iranian nuclear power signed in 2015.
Trump blew it by pulling out of the deal. The Iranian system concluded that the West should not be trusted. Rouhani, Foreign Minister Mohammad Djavad Zarif and the entire camp of pragmatists and “pro-Western” people have been discredited. The current president, Ebrahim Raïssi, was brought to power in 2021 in an election that was a complete joke, because no other viable choice was allowed to run against him. Same thing for the recent parliamentary elections.
It was this tight base that pushed Khamenei to authorize strikes on Israel. However, the moderates are still there, and I do not lose hope. This will depend a lot on the evolution of the Iranian economy, as well as relations with China. In any case, we must reach out to those in Iran who do not want to cut their country off from the West. We must first defuse the nuclear issue, it is the absolute priority.
Especially since the Westerners established channels with the Iranians which worked well, notably allowing them to be warned that an attack was going to take place against Israel. The United States has deployed assets in the region in order to be able to shoot down the missiles. Turkey has been a very useful intermediary, as has Switzerland. We must therefore use these channels to establish a strategy for the region that includes Iran.
Today, many are talking about the possibility of a new alliance to counter Iran. How many times have we heard of an Arab NATO? This can’t work! Arab countries are too vulnerable to Iranian attacks, which is why they began a process of détente with Iran in 2023. It is therefore absolutely necessary to develop a diplomatic solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which integrates the entire region and Iran. Because if this country feels excluded, it could ruin everything again.
What do the Iranian people think?
If the regime were to change course, it would be more in line with what the majority of Iranians want. Already in 1996, during my first visit to Iran, the question on everyone’s lips was: “why does Iran, made up of Persians who despise Arabs, care about the Arab cause?” In fact, Iranians are, above all, extremely proud and nationalistic Persians. Support for Hezbollah, which contributed to the collapse of Lebanon, or for the militias in Iraq which made that country a very precarious state, is not only a huge waste of Iranian resources, but also a factor of isolation in the Middle East and around the world. However, the Iranians do not want to be a pariah state.
“Iran was a middle class country, that is no longer the case”
The regime’s geopolitical choices also have serious economic consequences. Over the weekend, the Iranian currency fell sharply, falling to 700,000 riyals to the dollar! Iranians experience inflation on a daily basis, particularly on imported goods. Iran used to be a middle class country, that is no longer the case.
What would be the worst scenario in the event of a widening of the conflict in the Middle East?
The worst thing that could happen would be if the Israelis decided to attack Iran’s nuclear program. This would force the Iranian government to respond with missile and drone attacks, but this time without warning anyone. One can imagine that they would target Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor, for example.
The Middle East faces a serious risk of nuclearization of the conflict. If Iran’s Bushehr reactors were hit, radiation would spread across the Persian Gulf to Iran’s Arab neighbors, causing massive human losses. In this disaster scenario, Hezbollah would unleash its 100,000 rockets and target Tel Aviv. Israel would certainly use nuclear weapons against Iran, targeting Tehran…
The escalation possibilities are terrifying and the human losses would be considerable.
Couldn’t Netanyahu strike Hezbollah instead?
Netanyahu has many options in front of him, but I think that, unfortunately, he will target Iranian territory directly. This is no longer a shadow war and, therefore, hitting proxies in a third country would be insufficient in Israel’s eyes. Especially since many Israelis are salivating at the idea of striking Iranian nuclear facilities.
So you are pessimistic…
Journalists who cover the region are used to saying that the situation can always get worse… We just have to hope that this attack by Iran will sober the Israelis, that they will realize that they were lucky. They knew about the attack, they received help from the West and Jordan. But this luck may not be repeated in the future.
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