Iran has to be taken seriously, especially when it says that it fired missiles as a "secret Israeli base" in the Kurdish region of Iraq. Foreign media reports have, in the past, claimed that the Mossad intelligence agency is active in the area so it stands to reason its agents were the target of what Iran wanted to be retaliation for the killing of two IRGC officers in a reported Israeli airstrike near Damascus last week.
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Iran has a long score to settle with Israel, mostly over Israel's success in foiling weapon smuggling in Lebanon and Syria, and operations preventing Shiite militias from finding a foothold in Syria. Other reasons include revenge over the 2020 assassination of nuclear program mastermind Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and the Islamic republic overall desire to deter Israel from pursuing future operations against it.
Tehran has targeted Israeli interest several times over the past few years – mostly Israeli-owned vessels sailing through the Persian Gulf – but Sunday's missile strike was an escalation.
Iran's brazenness is a mark of its self-confidence and a reflection of the weakness shown by the West in the nuclear talks in Vienna and vis-à-vis Russia in its war against Ukraine. The latter has diverted global attention away from Iran, perhaps breeding a sense of immunity in Tehran.
As a result, Iran is growing more aggressive both in the scope of its actions and by making them public. Firing precision missiles at the installation in Erbil was meant to kill. The fact that, unlike in the past, Iran has made no attempts to hide the fact the missile was fired from its soil proves it has shed the need to use its regional proxies to attack Israel. Now it is willing to take overt action, under the Iranian flag, flaunting its defiance.
Ostensibly, this does not bode well. Iran is a far more formidable foe than Hezbollah, Houthis, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Syrian and Iraqi militias combined. It has an extensive weapons arsenal and together with motivation and gall – especially when any restrictions placed on its actions are lifted – Iran is a dangerous enemy that cannot be taken lightly, and certainly not when it is seeking to exact a price from Israel, anywhere in the world, at any cost.
Israel, however, is not without its advantages. By presenting itself to the world as an instigator of war and terrorism and by operating from its own soil so publicly, the Islamic republic is actually freeing Israel to publicly strike back.
So far, Israel has been careful to act clandestinely on Iranian soli, saving more overt action to other parts of the region, but Tehran's latest actions have given Israel license to act freely and call it self defense by way of preventing Iran from pursuing the same course of action in the future.
This type of escalation in the shadow war between Israel and Iran was expected. It was also clear that the emerging nuclear deal being stitched together in Vienna would fuel any such escalation because Iran would grow brazen.
In the global balance of power and interests, there do not seem to be any international forces that have the capacity or desire to prevent this development, leaving Israel and Iran alone in the arena, to a borderless war that is now moving to visible and violent tracks.
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