Israel's limited airstrikes on Iran prompt calls for de-escalation

A man reads a newspaper in Tehran after Israeli airstrikes nearby.

Oct. 26, 2024 Updated 2:03 PM PT

Israel bombed targets in Iran in limited retaliatory airstrikes on Saturday.
The U.S. warned another spark could ignite a dangerous new round of escalation in the Middle East: “This should be the end of this direct exchange of fire between Israel and Iran.”
The fear looming behind Israel-Iran attacks is that the United States could eventually be drawn into a regional war.

TEHRAN — Israel’s retaliatory bombardment of Iran on Saturday appeared to be limited in scope, but Western nations including the U.S. warned another spark could swiftly ignite a new and dangerous round of Middle East escalation.

Israel on Saturday declared its mission accomplished after three waves of predawn airstrikes hit military targets, including missile batteries and production facilities, near Tehran. Iran sought to downplay the damage and said only four soldiers were killed.

Life in Tehran, the capital and other cities seemed to return to normal Saturday, after a noisy night of exploding munitions. People sat in cafes, children went to school and traffic was routine, but with long lines at gasoline stations. The Iranian news agency FARS published photos of a “bustling” bazaar in the capital amid other attempts to show calm.

By limiting its attacks to military targets, Israel may have been heeding entreaties by the Biden administration to avoid Iran’s oil fields and nuclear research facilities as a way to temper any Iranian retaliation.

Men, some in uniform, sit around a table.

“This should be the end of this direct exchange of fire between Israel and Iran,” a senior Biden administration said in a briefing with reporters after Israel declared the overnight operation to have been completed. “If Iran chooses to respond once again, we will be ready, and there will be consequences for Iran once again. However, we do not want to see that happen.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, pausing during a campaign swing to speak to reporters, said the administration was “very adamant” about seeing de-escalation in the region. “That will be our focus,” she said.

Israel’s bombardment of Iran came in response to Iran launching nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Oct. 1. That attack was in retaliation for Israel’s killing of senior leaders of the Iranian-backed militant groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip — two of the factions Tehran uses to fight its archenemy Israel by proxy.

“I am clear that Israel has the right to defend itself against Iranian aggression,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Saturday. “I am equally clear that we need to avoid further regional escalation and urge all sides to show restraint.”

Yet containing wider conflict has become ever more difficult.

Fury throughout the region over Israel’s killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza remains intense — and the anger is growing as Israel expands its operations into Lebanon, bombarding cities and sending troops into the country’s south.

Just over a year ago, Hamas militants crossed the border from Gaza and attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and seizing around 250 hostages. In response, Israel launched an operation that has decimated the Gaza Strip, killing more than 42,000 Palestinians and displacing some 90% of its population.

The day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, Hezbollah started firing rockets and missiles into northern Israel, and in the last year it drove some 70,000 Israelis from their towns. After Israel escalated bombardments and launched a ground invasion in late September, more than 2,000 Lebanese have been killed and 1 million displaced, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

Israel says its military campaigns target militants who have killed Israelis and who often hide in hospitals, schools or other civilian structures, but the Biden administration and others say the high civilian toll of deaths and injuries is “unacceptable.”

In the weeks leading up to Saturday’s attack, Biden administration officials repeatedly urged Israel to choose its targets carefully, avoiding civilians as well as the energy sector. Although Israel has routinely ignored U.S. advice in recent months in its prosecution of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon and in negotiations over truces, this time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apparently heeded the calls to calibrate targeting.

It is not yet clear why. Netanyahu’s office denied he based targeting on U.S. pressure. Washington gives Israel about $3.8 billion in mostly military aid annually, and this month added to Israel’s arsenal a highly sophisticated missile defense system known as THAAD along with 100 U.S. troops to operate it.

Not everyone struck a conciliatory tone. Several ultra-right members of Netanyahu’s government said Saturday’s barrage was just a first step. Even the more moderate Benny Gantz, a former member of the Cabinet, said the “significant attack” across Iran “constitutes a new phase in our war against Iran that lays a foundation for further actions.”

The fear looming behind the exchanges between Israel and Iran is that the United States could eventually be drawn into a regional war. That is a development that neither the U.S. nor Iran wants, analysts say.

“Iran doesn’t see this as just a war with Israel but one where the U.S. would inevitably be dragged in and Iran would be 100% outgunned,” Dina Esfandiary, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group, said in an interview from Geneva. “The way they are downplaying [the Israeli strikes] confirms to me what Iran has been saying for a year: They don’t want escalation. They don’t want to fight a war they can’t win.”

The U.S., in the middle of a presidential election, is loath to take on yet another foreign conflict. Washington is already extended, primarily with money and weapons, as it supports Ukraine against Russia and Israel against Hamas and Hezbollah.

From Iran on Saturday, there were a handful of bombastic comments from hardliners, but not from Iranian leaders. Instead, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying it was “entitled” to self-defense but did not make specific threats.

Iran “considers itself entitled and obligated to defend against foreign acts of aggression,” the statement said.

Later, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said: “Iran does not set any boundaries for itself in protecting and defending its interests and territorial integrity and its people.”

Iran has not endured full-fledged war on its soil since its disastrous fight with Iraq in the 1980s, and trauma from that conflict, which claimed tens of thousands of lives, lingers today.

More concretely, Iran is struggling with widespread domestic discontent over its repression of dissent and a weak economy battered by U.S. and other international sanctions. After the Oct. 1 ballistic attack on Israel, the European Union went so far as to sanction the Iranian airline, making it impossible for its planes to land in most European destinations.

Iran must calculate how to save face by standing up to Israel, analysts say, yet minimize antagonizing the West as it seeks sanctions relief and possibly new negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal, drafted and signed by President Obama and six other world powers but jettisoned by President Trump.

Above all else, analysts say, Iran’s priority is the survival of the Islamic Republic and its government.

Sanam Vakil, a Middle East analyst at Chatham House in London, said Iran will be reluctant to openly attack Israel now because its military reputation has suffered recently. (Most of the ballistic missiles it hurled at Israel were intercepted and damage was minimal.) Instead, Tehran will shift focus to Gaza as a rallying point and use its diplomatic arm to attempt to deepen Israel’s isolation, Vakil said.

Despite those factors, the moment remains volatile, she said.

“What is clear is that both Israel and Iran are in reactive mode, and the terms and conditions of their long adversarial relationship have been redefined,” Vakil said on the social media platform X. “Without guardrails, red lines or a strategy to de-escalate, further conflict remains in the cards.”

Times staff writer Wilkinson reported from Washington and special correspondent Mostaghim from Tehran.