Iran’s reformist-led government has said it has no plans to send troops to reinforce Hezbollah in Lebanon, but it is coming under domestic pressure from hardliners seeking to exploit what they regard as a failure to stand up to Israel – and also hoping to block any discussion with the west over future oversight of Iran’s nuclear programme.
Calls for a tougher Iranian response redoubled when it emerged that Brig Gen Abbas Nilforushan, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) deputy commander for Lebanon and Syria, had been killed in Beirut alongside the Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah.
Such is the tension in Iran that some conservatives have been accused of sowing a poisonous atmosphere on social media by distorting remarks made by the president, Masoud Pezeshkian, and his spokesperson to make them appear unsupportive of the “axis of resistance”.
The dominant line in government circles remains that a direct war between Israel and Iran should be avoided as it would play into Benjamin Netanyahu’s hands and draw in the US – but that Hezbollah should not be left to fight alone. This was the position Pezeshkian rehearsed in New York last week before Nasrallah’s killing.
Similarly, on Monday, the foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani vowed that Israel’s actions would not go unanswered – but said there was no need to deploy Iranian auxiliary or volunteer forces, since the Lebanese and Palestinian governments had the capacity to confront Israel’s aggression.
Pezeshkian remains aggrieved that he was given US assurances via intermediaries that if he did not attack Israel in response to the killing of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July then the Israelis would sign a Gaza ceasefire deal.
Hardliners in parliament such as Hossein Amir-Sabeti, an adviser to Saeed Jalili, one of the candidates beaten to the presidency by Pezeshkian, have claimed someone disobeyed an order from the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to strike back in revenge for Haniyeh’s death. He claimed that Tehran’s restraint had given a green light for Israel to kill Nasrallah. “Why should 80 million Iranians and the resistance front pay for the naivety of a few people?” he asked.
The allegations have even prompted the president’s son to come to his father’s defence, saying his government would never disobey the supreme leader.
Whether such a ceasefire promise was ever explicitly made to Tehran by anyone with the authority to make such an offer is disputable, but the current infighting reveals the political unease about how Iran can restore its deterrent.
In a speech later this week, Jalili is likely to call for Iran to ignite its so-called “ring of fire’ around Israel, and reject any idea that Hezbollah should effectively surrender by saying it is no longer seeking to press Israel into a ceasefire in Gaza.
In an attempt to remove any doubt about his loyalties, Pezeshkian himself went to Hezbollah offices in Tehran to deliver a handwritten note of condolence. He also stepped up his calls for Arab and Islamic countries to recognise they have a heavy responsibility to intervene.
The atmosphere in Iran appeared to have been affected by Netanyahu’s statement that Nasrallah’s death was essential to “change the balance of power in the region”. On Monday, the Israeli prime minister made an explicit call for regime change in Tehran, saying Iran will be “free … a lot sooner than people think”.
In a long message on X, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, argued that the destruction of Hezbollah’s leadership “is significant because Iran is now fully exposed. The reason why their nuclear facilities have not been destroyed, despite weak air defense systems, is because Hezbollah has a loaded gun pointed at Israel. Iran spent the last forty years building this capability as its deterrent. President Trump would often say, ‘Iran has never won a war but never lost a negotiation.’ The Islamic Republic’s regime is much tougher when risking Hamas, Hezbollah, Syrian and Houthi lives than when risking their own.”
Hailing the prospect of a new Middle East “without Iran’s fully loaded arsenal aimed at Israel”, he said it was now time for Israel to finish the job. Kushner may currently be nowhere near the government in the US, but that could change in a matter of weeks.
Such remarks are only likely to add to tensions in Tehran, and strengthen the case for Iranians who say Netanyahu has no compunction about going up the escalatory ladder – and that the US government has no means of or interest in stopping him.
For now, Iran now has few good options to re-establish deterrence. But, according to Dr Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow for Middle East security at the Rusi defence thinktank, the worst course of action would be a direct attack on Israel.
“While this may salvage Iran’s credibility with its core base inside Iran and across its axis, the risk is that, like its attack on 13 April in response to the attack on its consulate in Damascus, the barrage of missiles will be intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome system and by the US and its Arab allies. This would further erode Iran’s projection of military strength and cause a legitimacy crisis inside Iran,” she wrote.
That leaves Iran with the option of slowly rebuilding the shattered Hezbollah organisation, resorting to low-level state-backed terrorism – or building its own nuclear weapon.