Contextualizing Israel’s attack: Tap-for-tat

Yes, Israel did retaliate, but in a mostly symbolic way that leaves a way out of the current crisis for both sides

Hello again – I really did want to take a vacation from the blog, but the timing hasn’t exactly worked out considering the Israel-Iran crisis.

So, in the wake of Israel’s strike on Iran last night, I’d like to put it in the context of crisis management theory as I did last weekend.

To recap, Israel responded late last night to last week’s barrage of approximately 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles and 30 cruise missiles by hitting one site around Isfahan with a handful of drones and apparently air defense positions in Syria. The strike apparently caused some damage but reportedly no casualties.

While this strike counts as a retaliation, it is certainly not the one that many had feared. Israel reportedly canceled two strikes planned earlier under U.S. pressure. It is safe to assume that those strikes would have been more forceful. Israel’s national security minister, the far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, expressed his frustration by calling Israel’s calculated response, “Feeble!” on X.

When analysts discuss retaliation in conflicts, the term “tit-for-tat” – responding to an attack with an equivalent attack – as a strategy to send a message that if you hurt me I’ll hurt you. But this response wasn’t so much tit-for-tat as tap-for-tat. The Israeli strike came nowhere close to the force of the Iranian attack, but that sends its own message: We can reach you if we want to.

 This response reflects a number of crisis management strategies that seek a way out without leading to war. To quote crisis management scholar Alexander George, Israel “deliberately slowed down” the momentum of military moves by responding with far fewer ballistics and not killing anyone, let alone a general as it had on April 1. Israel “signaled resolve” and avoided military moves that “give the opponent the impression that one is about to resort to large-scale warfare.” As one Israeli official told the Washington Post early this morning, the strike “was intended to signal to Iran that Israel had the ability to strike inside the country.”

Iran, in turn, is also playing the diplomatic game, finding a way to tiptoe around the threats it had made before the Israeli strike. Iranian news outlets have reported there was “no sign of explosion or damage” and that Isfahan is “completely calm and secure.” Iran is even denying the attack came from Israel, with officials claiming “there are no reports of an attack from abroad against Isfahan or any other part of Iran” and that “infiltrators from inside” Iran had flown the mini-drones.

It is also significant that Iran essentially gave Israel three days to prepare for its attack, while Israel gave no warning to Iran either before the April 1 strike on its compound in Damascus or before last night’s attack. In fact, Israel spread disinformation last night, with the news reports all stating that an attack before Passover was unlikely. While Israel wanted to make sure that its targeted strikes would not be foiled, Iran was apparently more interested in making a show of force without causing so much damage as to provoke a massive response.

Here are my takeaways form this episode:

1)    Both sides view the conflict between them as more political than military; neither side is hell-bent on the destruction of the other but do want to assert their respective rights to hurt the other should it interfere with their national and regional interests.

2)    The exchanges exemplify the ambiguity of diplomatic language. When Netanyahu warned, “Anyone who hurts us will be hurt,” we are liable to assume he means causing massive damage, but in the end even this small flick on Iran’s wrists counts as fulfilling his vow. “Retaliate” is also an ambiguous term, in that it says nothing about how forcefully one will respond; Iran escalated when it retaliated, while Israel arguably deescalated when it retaliated.

3)    Adhering to crisis management principles and strategies helps avoid a worst-case scenario. It seems the Biden administration played a significant role in pressuring Israel to respond in a way that would give Iran a way out to back down from this current crisis

4)    Authoritarian regimes have the advantage that they can craft their own narrative to suit themselves. In 2023, Iran justifiably blamed Israel for a drone attack on Isfahan, so it’s not like it doesn’t know that Israel is capable of such an attack. Yet, it chose to minimize the attack and even write off the notion that the Israelis did it as “propaganda” so as to avoid having to carry out the threat made by its foreign minister to respond immediately and at “maximum level” should Israel retaliate.

5)    Democratic governments can engage in disinformation as much as any authoritarian regime, when they perceive doing so as serving their interests.

So, while anxiety from the Israel strike is driving oil prices higher and prompting politicians to air their concerns, I still remain confident that both sides intend to and can avoid the worst.  Israel can claim it retaliated. Iran can claim that Israel didn’t do anything worthy of response. We are not out of the woods, but there is no reason to expect any imminent attack at this point, as long as both sides remain vigilant. But, unfortunately, another crisis is only a matter of time as long as both Iran and Israel view each other as implacable enemies. When it does come, we can only hope that both sides adhere to the same strategies and principles as they apparently have this round.