Since the Syrian civil war began, Tehran has firmly supported Bashar al-Assad while Ankara has aided those fighting against him. Thus, the Iranian president’s recent condemnation of the Turkish incursion into Syrian Kurdistan should come as no surprise. Yet, argues Doron Itzchakov, while Turkey is now helping Sunni Islamist groups seen by Iran as a threat, the two country’s interests are not entirely at odds:

Tehran does not want to risk its relationship with Ankara, which allows it to circumvent U.S. sanctions and constitutes an essential channel for the supply of Iranian gas to major European countries. . . . Kurdish national aspirations, [moreover], pose significant challenges to all four countries that contain large Kurdish populations, [of which Iran is one]. The precedent of a Kurdish autonomous territory in Syria is unacceptable to the Iranian establishment, which remembers the uprising that led to the establishment of [a short-lived Kurdish polity in Iran] in January 1946. . . .

[In fact], the Turkish offensive could advance Iranian interests. . . . The [recently concluded] defense agreement between the Kurds and the Assad regime, enabling the deployment of Syrian military forces in Syrian Kurdistan, will whet Iran’s appetite and prompt its Revolutionary Guards and their subordinate militias to consolidate their presence in northern Syria, with Assad’s approval. As has happened before, Iranian troops will be disguised by Syrian army uniforms.

The Iranian regime [also] has high hopes that the international community will turn its eyes to Turkish aggression. A global focus on Ankara’s actions will divert attention from Tehran’s attempt to expand its [own] strategic depth, as did the world’s attention to the problem of fighting Islamic State. . . . Iran is likely to make extensive use of the Turkish incursion into northern Syria to expand its hold on the region, with the aim of threatening Israel’s border.

Tehran’s condemnations of the Turkish invasion thus look like mere lip service, as the revolutionary regime may well benefit from the new situation created by the U.S. withdrawal. . . . For Israel, by contrast, this is a zero-sum game, because the promotion of Iranian interests is an inherent threat. Israel should prepare itself for challenges to come.

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].