Iran’s Missile Attack is a Challenge Israel Can’t Ignore

Iran faces “no good options in retaliating against Israel,” following the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, according to a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London based think tank. Burcu Ozcelik said in a commentary that Iran could “mobilize militia in Iraq and Syria against Israeli, U.S. and U.K. targets, but refrain from direct confrontation.” She added that Iran could mobilize attacks from the Yemen-based Houthi militia “against sensitive targets inside Israel."

Oana Lungescu, who was Nato’s chief spokesperson for 13 years, said money would be a major test for Rutte. “He will need to bolster his credentials as a strong advocate of increased defence spending across the alliance and that will help consolidate his credibility as the Nato secretary general, both with Washington, but also with the countries of central and eastern Europe, which perhaps were a bit lukewarm at the beginning when his name was put forward.”

Tehran’s network of proxies was supposed to serve as a deterrent to a direct Israeli attack on Iran itself, said Matthew Savill of the London-based Royal United Services Institute, who was a senior official in the U.K.’s Defense Ministry. But Savill said recent events have “exposed the weakness at the heart” of Iran’s proxy strategy. “While Iran will use its partners in defense of itself,” he said, “the reverse is not true, and it is unlikely to go to war with Israel to save one of those partners.”