Iran officials suggest planned retaliation may be scrapped if Gaza ceasefire reached
Senior security official says Tehran and its proxies will launch direct attack on Israel if no deal reached in this week’s hostage talks, amid US push to prevent regional flareup
An Iranian attack on Israel could be delayed amid hoped-for negotiations later this week for a hostage release and ceasefire deal in Gaza, three Iranian officials said on Tuesday, indicating that a successful deal could hold Iran back from direct retaliation against Israel for alleged assassinating Hamas terror chief Ismail Haniyeh on its soil.
Iran has vowed to retaliate harshly for Haniyeh’s killing, which took place as he visited Tehran late last month and which it blamed on Israel. Israel has neither confirmed or denied its involvement.
The US Navy has deployed warships and a submarine to the Middle East to bolster Israeli defenses and intensive diplomatic efforts to dissuade Tehran from attacking have been taking place around the clock.
One of the sources, a senior Iranian security official, said Iran, along with allies such as the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon, would launch a direct attack if the talks for a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas fail or it perceives Israel is dragging out negotiations. The sources did not say how long Iran would allow for talks to progress before taking action.
With an increased risk of a broader Middle East war after the killings of both Haniyeh and top Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, Iran has been involved in intense dialogue with Western countries and the United States in recent days on ways to calibrate retaliation, said the sources, who all spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
Several reports in recent days indicated Israel believes Iran intends to attack before Thursday’s renewed talks for a deal. The new comments appeared to signal that the attack would only take place after those talks, and only if they failed to yield what Iran deems to be sufficient results.
In comments published on Tuesday, the US ambassador to Turkey confirmed Washington was asking allies to help convince Iran to de-escalate tensions. Three regional government sources described conversations with Tehran to avoid escalation ahead of the indirect ceasefire-hostage deal negotiations, due to begin on Thursday in either Egypt or Qatar.
“We hope our response will be timed and executed in a way that does not harm a potential ceasefire,” Iran’s mission to the UN said on Friday in a statement. Iran’s foreign ministry on Tuesday said calls to exercise restraint “contradict principles of international law.”
Iran’s foreign ministry and its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps did not immediately respond to questions regarding the report.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and the US State Department did not respond to questions.
“Something could happen as soon as this week by Iran and its proxies… That is a US assessment as well as an Israel assessment,” White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Monday.
“If something does happen this week, the timing of it could certainly well have an impact on these talks we want to do on Thursday,” he added. Over the weekend, Hamas cast doubt on whether talks would go ahead. Israel and Hamas have held several fruitless rounds of talks in recent months.
In Israel, many observers believe a response is imminent after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran would “harshly punish” Israel for Haniyeh’s killing.
Iran’s regional policy is set by the IRGC, which answers only to Khamenei, the country’s top authority. Iran’s relatively moderate new president Masoud Pezeshkian has repeatedly reaffirmed Iran’s anti-Israel stance and its support for resistance movements across the region since taking office last month.
Meir Litvak, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University’s Alliance Center for Iranian Studies, said he thought Iran would put its needs before helping its ally Hamas but that Iran also wanted to avoid a full-scale war.
“The Iranians never subordinated their strategy and policies to the needs of their proxies or protégées,” Litvak said. “An attack is likely and almost inevitable but I don’t know the scale and the timing.”
Iran-based analyst Saeed Laylaz said the Islamic Republic’s leaders were now keen to work towards a ceasefire in Gaza, “to obtain incentives, avoid an all-out war and strengthen its position in the region.”
Laylaz said Iran had not previously been involved in the Gaza peace process but was now ready to play “a key role.”
Iran, two of the sources said, was considering sending a representative to the ceasefire talks, in what would be a first since the war started in Gaza.
The representative would not directly attend the meetings but would engage in behind-the-scenes discussions “to maintain a line of diplomatic communication” with the United States while negotiations proceed. Officials in Washington, Qatar and Egypt did not immediately respond to questions about whether Iran would play an indirect role in talks.
Two senior sources close to Lebanon’s Hezbollah said Tehran would give the negotiations a chance but would not give up its intentions to retaliate.
A ceasefire in Gaza would give Iran cover for a smaller “symbolic” response, one of the sources said.
The war in Gaza broke out on October 7 with Hamas’s unprecedented surprise attack in which its terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says close to 40,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle as of May and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 332.
April missiles
Iran has not publicly indicated what would be the target of an eventual response to the Haniyeh assassination.
On April 13, two weeks after a strike on an Iranian consulate building in Damascus killed seven IRGC guards, Iran unleashed a barrage of more than 300 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles toward Israel. Almost all of the weapons were shot down before they reached their targets.
“Iran wants its response to be much more effective than the April 13 attack,” said Farzin Nadimi, senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East policy.
Nadimi said such a response would require “a lot of preparation and coordination” especially if it involved Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, made up of its allies and proxies, which include Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and Iraqi militias.
Two of the Iranian sources said Iran would support Hezbollah and other allies if they launched their own responses to the killing of Haniyeh and Shukr, who was killed in a strike in Beirut hours before Haniyeh was killed in Tehran.
The sources did not specify what form such support could take.
