Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
On October 26, 2024, Israel launched three waves of attacks against Iran targeting Iranian anti-aircraft systems. The Israeli strikes came in retaliation to an October 1, 2024, Iranian missile barrage targeting sites across the Jewish state.
In the aftermath of the Israeli strikes, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and top regime officials announced that Iran would respond. Too many diplomats assume that Iranian retaliation will mean a third direct strike on Israel. Perhaps it will. Rhetoric from Iranian officials, however, suggests Iran’s retaliation could go further. “The enemies, whether Israel or the United States of America, … will receive a devastating response,” Khamenei declared. Hossein Salami, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, likewise lumped the United States and Israel together in a recent speech. Citing the campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, he said, “The Americans and Israelis are arriving at their sunset, and in due time we will respond to them.”
Khamenei finds himself between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, his domestic support base demands he respond to the Israeli attack. On the other, his attacks on Israel have backfired. Not only did they fail to damage Israel significantly, but Israel’s retaliation also degraded Iran’s military. A third round of attacks on Israel would not likely succeed but would invite more Israeli attacks and degrade Iranian targets further.
There is an alternative path for Khamenei: Iran can attack the United States.
A third round of attacks on Israel would not likely succeed but would invite more Israeli attacks and degrade Iranian targets further.
In the past, Iran has responded to Israeli attacks by striking at U.S. interests in Syria and Iraq. Khamenei realizes Iran cannot deter Israel, but it can deter the United States given the Biden administration’s delusions about diplomacy and its lack of will to retaliate in kind. Iran has used this dynamic in the past to push Washington to constrain Jerusalem.
With the Biden administration on its way out and loath ideologically to strike at Iran, Khamenei may try to damage U.S. military equipment or kill American personnel. To show his base that he can strike Americans at will bolsters his image.
There is a second scenario: Iran may not seek a barrage against U.S. forces to harm. After President Donald Trump killed Qods Force chief Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, Iran wanted both to save face and to pause the hostilities.
Reportedly, Iranian intermediaries in Iraq warned the U.S. military in advance to allow the U.S. military time to shelter American personnel from Iraq’s Al-Assad Airbase. Javad Zarif, then Iran’s foreign minister and now the strategic adviser to the president, tweeted, “Iran took & concluded proportionate measures in self-defense under Article 51 of UN Charter targeting base from which cowardly armed attack against our citizens & senior officials were launched. We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression.” He sought an off-ramp to save face while preventing a response. Then, as now, the attack occurred after a U.S. presidential election during the sitting president’s lame duck period. As Trump cited his refusal to engage the U.S. in new Middle Eastern wars as a pillar of his legacy, Khamenei and Zarif calculated Iran could get away with a direct strike on Americans. Biden is similar. He, too, brags that he is “the first president in this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.”
Too often, American analysts waive off adversaries’ militant statements as rhetorical flourishes. Khamenei, however, means what he says.
Get ready for missile theater. If Iran attacks U.S. forces in Bahrain, for example, Khamenei could seek to incite the island nation’s majority Shi’ite population, punish Bahrain for joining the Abraham Accords, and remind Trump of the hundreds of Americans permanently stationed at the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters on the island. Similar attacks could target U.S. forces in northeastern Syria, Iraqi Kurdistan, or Saudi Arabia.
Too often, American analysts waive off adversaries’ militant statements as rhetorical flourishes. Khamenei, however, means what he says. He often talks about “the enemy.” By naming the United States alongside Israel as his top “enemies”—he rarely uses the plural form—he may be preparing his audience for an attack against U.S. forces. The United States must stop believing they can be bystanders to Iranian aggression, especially when Khamenei believes the U.S. is weak or self–deterring.
Shay Khatiri is vice president of development and a senior fellow at the Yorktown Institute.