Iran Grows Silent On Its Threats of Retaliation

By Hugh Fitzgerald | November 9, 2024

After the devastating Israeli attack on Iran on October 25, when IAF airstrikes destroyed Iran’s air defense systems, including all four of the Russian S-400 anti-missile defense systems that protected Tehran and all of Iran’s ballistic missile plants, the Iranians have been warning Israel to soon expect, as the Supreme Leader put it, “a crushing response.” To make its intentions clear to the world, the Iranian government put up a huge billboard in Tehran depicting “Teloshima” — a portmanteau word combining “Tel Aviv” and “Hiroshima” — to make sure Israel understood Iran’s nuclear threat. But it has been more than two weeks since the Israeli attack, and the Iranian regime has suddenly gone quiet.

Perhaps it has realized that any attack that it now launches on Israel will be responded to with terrific force. It surely has taken in the Biden administration’s warning to Iran that it will not be able to “hold Israel back” if Iran strikes the Jewish state again — a clear allusion to the fact that Israel in its previous attack deliberately did not hit oil or nuclear installations, just as it had promised the Bidenites, but that promise will not to be renewed, and Iran can now expect Israel, if it attacks again, to hit Fordow, and Natanz, and other nuclear facilities, in order permanently remove Iran’s nuclear threat. “What happened to Iran’s bragging about ‘retaliation’ against Israel?- analysis,” by Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post, November 7, 2024:

…Iran has been blustering about another round of attacks on Israel since late October. The Tehran regime hasn’t gone completely silent. However, the rumors of an attack on November 5 seemed to vanish. In addition rumors of a “drone swarm” launched from Iraq, Syria and Yemen also vanished after the rumors were spread on IRGC channels on Telegram on November 4.

People in Tehran aren’t completely silent. The deputy commander of the IRGC, Ali Fadavi, put out a threatening statement on November 6. However, he is not the level of officer that one would expect to find serious threats. One would expect more chatter from the Iranians. Where did the chatter go? Iranian state media appears temporarily focused on other issues, such as diplomatic outreach.

Iran media 

What are IRGC media channels such as Tasnim talking about these days? Tasnim has articles about Hezbollah’s long-range missiles. Recently, Hezbollah has increased rocket fire targeting long-range targets in Israel. It has also been firing large numbers of rockets at the north.

The IRGC is also focused on a counter-insurgency campaign in Balochistan province in Iran near the Pakistan border. Fadavi, for all his bluster, has been speaking about using Iranian military hospitals to serve the citizens of Iran.

The Baloch separatists in Iran’s far east are hoping to win independence from Iran and then to join the Balochi separatists in western Pakistan in a new state of Balochistan. In recent years, Balochi insurgents — they are Sunni, which makes them even more hostile to their Shi’a rulers in Tehran — have been attacking Iranian border guards in order to permit cross-border crossings and the free flow of weapons from the eight million Balochis in Pakistani  to their two million fellow Balochis in Iran. Tehran’s counter-insurgency has indeed taken up some of the IRGC’s attention. And so have the other restive minorities in Iran — the eight million Arabs in Khuzestan Province, right on the Persian Gulf, where most of Iran’s oil is located, the 13 million Kurds in northern Iran who long for a separate Kurdish state that would include the Kurds of Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey, and the 23 million Azeris who live predominantly in northwestern Iran, right on the border with Azerbaijan. Of Iran’s 89 million people, about half are non-Iranians, and all four of the ethnic minorities — the Balochis, Azeris, Kurds, and Arabs — have separatist ambitions. Their refusal to accept Iranian domination is a continuing nightmare for Tehran.

In November, Tasnim also had an article about an Iranian missile expert, Hassan Assan Tehrani Moghaddam, and his history of developing the Fateh tactical ballistic missile for Iran. Moghaddam was an Iranian military officer in the IRGC Aerospace Forces and key architect of Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Was this article meant to suggest that Iran’s ballistic missile program, despite the Israeli attack that destroyed so many of its plants, could soon be resurrected?

Iran seems to be leaning on Hezbollah to carry out attacks. “Despite the Israeli Air Force’s constant intelligence and activity, the resistance [Hezbollah] has increased the pace of its qualitative operations, which fall within the framework of the ‘Khaybar’ series of operations, by directing concentrated and studied strikes at Israeli strategic and security centers, facilities and bases, at a depth of 145 km inside occupied Palestine, and using qualitative missiles and drones,” the pro-Iran al-Mayadeen media said on November 7.

This is mere bravado, intended to obscure from Iran’s public the scale of the devastation wrought by the IAF. And by focusing on, and exaggerating, Hezbollah’s continuing ability to successfully conduct its “qualitative operations” against military sites (“strategic and security centers”), Tehran is suggesting that its Lebanese proxy, not Iran itself, should bear the main burden of launching attacks against Israel. This is surely because the IRGC fears what would happen to Iran if the Iranians themselves launched another attack on Israel. For all their threats, it looks like the Iranians will not be launching their own attacks, but counting on Hezbollah to keep inflicting damage on the Jewish state.

This refers to recent Hezbollah attacks on central Israel using missiles. Tal Inbar, an expert on researcher on missiles, space and drone technology, posted on social media that Hezbollah had used a Fateh 110 in its attack targeting central Israel. The reported use of the Fateh missile may be linked to the fact that IRGC channels are talking about Moghaddam’s role in the missile program that developed this missile….

The Fateh missiles have been transferred by Iran to Hezbollah, which has already been firing them into central Israel. This allows Iran to claim a kind of plausible deniability: it did not use those missiles itself, but only supplied them — for “defensive purposes” — to Hezbollah.

Israel is no longer going to go along with the comedy: the IDF intends to treat any attack from a Shia proxy in Iraq as an attack from Iran itself, and will respond to Iranian targets, including its nuclear and oil installations that were deliberately not targeted on October 25.

If Iran decides, despite all its bluster and threats, not to attack Israel after all, there are two distinct reasons why it may decide to do nothing itself, but to encourage its proxy Hezbollah to continue to lob rockets and drones. First, with a Trump administration likely far more favorable toward Israel, Iran won’t want to do anything to the Jewish state that would give it all the excuse it needs to launch a “crushing” retaliatory attack that would put paid to Iran’s nuclear installations and even, perhaps — though this is less desirable because of the effect it would have on world oil prices, and on its oil installations as well. Second, Iran must now be fearing an attack not just from Israel, but also from a Trump administration. Trump has been virulently anti-Iran from his first term. He pulled out of the Iran deal and reimposed sanctions on Iran. He does not want to be involved in any long wars like those expensive catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq. But he can be persuaded that the American military could quickly destroy — with or without the help of their Israeli ally — Iran’s nuclear installations, that threaten not just the Little Satan Israel, but also the Great Satan America, as well as the Sunni Arab states of the Gulf. And that is why Iran has now become so silent about the “crushing response” that just a week ago the Supreme Leader promised he would soon deliver to Israel. Now he has had a chance to think things through, and grasp the significance of Trump’s triumph. And he has grown very silent. No need, at this point, to antagonize The Donald.