Some in Israeli war cabinet will want to 'take advantage' of Iranian strike, says ECFR director

Well, I think it was more than symbolic. If if you look at the fact that you had more than 300 drone and ballistic missiles headed Israel’s way in an unprecedented fashion, Iran has never directly attack Israel in this manner. So this was more than just symbolism, this was a notable shift of strategy. What I think was clear was that Iran messaged ahead of time what it was going to do and it implemented this an attack in a manner that was meant to be calibrated, that I think was meant not to cause casualties. And it very quickly came out saying that it didn’t want to engage in a further cycle of escalation. So Iran felt it had to respond to the embassy attack, the Israeli attack on its embassy in Damascus on April one. But did it in a manner that was intended to address that as a one off and then put this to a side where we go next in terms of stability and regional conflict, as I think your colleague just said now very much dependent on where Israel goes next and whether there is a wider retaliation from the Israeli side which will provoke Iran into a new response on its part. I wanna take a step back and look at the overall geopolitical picture here because we cannot forget also what’s happening over in Ukraine. And the President Zelensky has to some extent use these latest developments out of the Middle East to highlight the importance of air defense systems and what happens when so many countries come together to protect skies, in this case Israel’s skies. What do you make of his comment and what do you think this situation in the Middle East means for Ukraine? Obviously the Ukrainians are trying to draw parallels and saying if you’re doing this for Israel, why can’t you also be doing it for for Ukraine. They want more response mechanism, defense mechanisms to respond to Russian missile and drone attacks. But I think from a from a Western perspective and obviously you had the US, the UK and the French involved in helping defend Israel here. These are two very different contexts with different risk calculations. And I don’t think that the the Western countries here are going to be prepared to engage in Ukraine in the same manner that they were in Israel. So I think for the moment, these are different stories and one shouldn’t imagine that we’re going to see the same thing happening in Ukraine going forward in terms of what the US and its allies are immediately willing to put on the table. I want to go back to your point about the Iran attack. You’re saying it’s much more than symbolism. However, they did Telegraph it days in advance. They gave the USA warning and a heads up and at the same time they said that the matter is concluded. It does not seem that Iran wants to escalate this in any way. Is that actually adding to some of the danger in this situation? Do you believe that possibly Israel may they see that as a sign of weakness and that actually may be part of the reason why we could see an escalation? Well, I I think that there has been a sense of confidence in Israel since since October seven that that they’ve been able to take the the kind of military battle to Iran without huge repercussions. They’ve launched a huge series of assassinations in in Lebanon and Syria or senior Iranian officials. They took out this embassy. The sense was that Iran wouldn’t respond. Iran did finally respond, but as you say, they did it in a manner that was calibrated and intended not to cause a wider conflict. So I think there will be some in Israel who read that as well as the fact that Israeli defense mechanism worked successfully to effectively block all of these attacks. Who read this as a further sign of of Iran being on the back foot that now is the time to launch a wider campaign against Iran, whether in the region or in Iran itself. Now is the time to inflict a bigger blow on Tehran and that Iran doesn’t have the political will all the capabilities to, to to stop that from happening. So I think yes, there are those in in the war cabinet now who will be aggressively pushing for a wider campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah, against Iran itself to take advantage of this moment.