With Hizballah on the ropes, Tehran risks losing one of its most important strategic assets. Yet it has so far refrained from retaliating against Israel either directly or through a massive, coordinated strike from its other proxy forces. It still hasn’t even carried out its dramatic threats to avenge the killing of Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil. Farhad Rezaei explains:

First, the regime is facing several crises at home, with the most pressing being a severe economic crisis that has persisted since the United States withdrew from the nuclear agreement in 2018. . . .  Sustaining a war effort against Israel would require a strong economy, and given the depth of Iran’s current economic crisis, the regime would struggle to afford such a conflict.

The ongoing crisis has ignited widespread riots across the country, with the most recent unrest in 2022–2023 resulting in the deaths of over 630 Iranians at the hands of the regime’s security forces.

That unrest, Rezaie observes, is indicative of the Islamic Republic’s crisis of legitimacy and the rapidly diminishing faith in the regime:

A regime facing such a deep legitimacy crisis at home would struggle to engage in a direct conflict with Israel, as sustaining public support during a war would be highly challenging. . . . In fact, during past incidents, such as the alleged Israeli attack on Iran’s major gas pipelines in March 2024, which severely disrupted vital services, regime leaders were deeply concerned that additional Israeli strikes could further destabilize the country and cripple the already fragile economy.

The regime also understands that engaging in a direct war against Israel would likely drag the United States into the conflict—a war in which Iran would ultimately be the loser.

In 2000, the late Hassan Nasrallah famously likened Israel, which Hizballah had just driven out of Lebanon, to “a spider’s web” that looks elaborate but can easily be swatted away. While the October 7 attacks appeared to support that characterization, it is now Iran that is beginning to look like a spider’s web. That at least is the optimistic interpretation. The alternative is that Iran is just waiting until it can finish building some nuclear bombs.

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.