Israel’s attacks on Iran broke a 40-year taboo. Tehran faces tough decisions on what to do next

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(CNN)- Iran was quick to downplay the impact of Israel’s attacks on its territory this weekend, suggesting it had found a way to avoid a wider war, but said the attack set a precedent that could lead to the Islamic Republic 40 Been trying to escape since its creation years ago.

The adversaries have spent decades avoiding direct confrontation, choosing instead to trade in shadow wars. Israel used covert operations to assassinate prominent Iranian figures and carry out cyber attacks on vital facilities as Iran continued to activate its allied Arab militias to attack the Jewish state.

Saturday’s attack marked the first time Israel acknowledged attacking Iran, highlighting a shadow war and crossing a border that has led some in the Islamic republic to question the country’s deterrent capabilities.

In April, after Iran attacked Israel in response to an Israeli attack on its diplomatic building in the Syrian capital, Damascus, US officials said Israel responded by attacking Iran just days later. Israel did not publicly acknowledge that attack.

However, the previous attack was different. Israel openly stated that it carried out “precision strikes” on military targets in Iran.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari praised the achievements of the strike, saying, “Israel now has greater freedom of air operations in Iran.”

Immediately after the attack, Iranian state media published photos showing daily life continuing as normal in its cities. Schools continued to operate and Tehran’s streets were filled with traffic. Radical commentators mocked the attack on television and social media memes mocked the limited nature of the Israeli response.

In his first comments after the attack, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, decided to give a moderate response, saying that the attacks “should neither be exaggerated nor underestimated.”

But that initial wave of disapproval eventually waned and an internal debate raged over whether Iran should respond harshly to prevent Israeli attacks from becoming commonplace against a regime focused on its survival.

“The feeling is that if they don’t respond they will normalize the idea that Israel can attack Tehran without getting a response,” said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington. The fear is that if they do nothing then Israel will start treating Iran the same way it treated Syria, which means from time to time (the Israelis) will attack.”

These attacks, which were a response to the Iranian attack on Israel three weeks earlier, stayed away from nuclear and oil facilities – instead attacking what the Israeli military described as “strategic systems in Iran” that were of “great importance.” “Keeps. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran’s defense systems and ability to export missiles have been seriously damaged. CNN has not been able to independently verify these claims.

Iranian officials said some military sites suffered “minor damage” that was “quickly repaired.” According to the Iranian government, five people were killed, including four members of the army.

However, experts say the damage was more extensive than Tehran has acknowledged.

“Iran’s air defenses and some radars that are critical to identifying incoming missiles have been destroyed in the first wave,” said Nicole Grajewski, a fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The long balance of power prevented a regional war until Hamas, backed by Iran, attacked Israel from Gaza last year, killing 1,200 and taking more than 250 hostages. This sparked a fierce Israeli offensive that destroyed the area and killed more than 42,000 Palestinians. The expansion of that conflict into southern Lebanon led Israel to kill Iran’s most formidable representative, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, and destroy the organization’s command hierarchy.

The downfall of Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran’s strongest allied militias, as well as the weekend attacks on Iran have sparked another internal debate in Iran: whether regional proxies are an effective deterrent.

“There are certainly voices within the political class that question the effectiveness of the “forward defense” doctrine, or the notion that Iran’s network of regional alliances can provide a security umbrella. “If this is changing, a natural aspect of the debate is what might happen to restore deterrence,” said Mohammad Ali Shabani, editor of Amwaj.media, a London-based news site focused on Iran, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula. ”

Since the Trump administration left the nuclear deal with Tehran in 2018 to curb its nuclear program, the Islamic Republic has gradually increased the enrichment of uranium, a key element in a nuclear bomb when purified to high levels. There is a component. Its stock has reached 60% purity, a step away from weapons grade, which is 90%.

Iranian officials have repeatedly said they have no intention of weaponizing the country’s nuclear program, while also having no intention of leveraging its potential in negotiations with the West.

Parsi said that as Israel dismantles Iran’s deterrent capability, minority voices in the Islamic Republic in favor of weaponizing its nuclear program are growing louder. “The trajectory and momentum is at odds with those who say this wouldn’t have happened if Iran actually had a nuclear deterrent.”

Experts have cast doubt on Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons, even if it could purify uranium into weapons. The process of building and testing a nuclear bomb could take years, leaving Iran vulnerable to Israeli attacks on its nuclear facilities.

Grajewski said the nuclear bomb option is “much more public now” and has become “normalized in conversation”, but Israel has been able to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program in the past and may be able to do so again.

Parsi believed that if the Israelis attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities, Tehran would try to build nuclear weapons regardless of whether the Iranians could quickly get a bomb.

Parsi said, “Even the most hawkish American president has not been in favor of carrying out a military strike because the most likely possibility is that, at some point, it will lead to Iran going nuclear.”