Iran Counts on U.S. Weakness to Check Israeli Strength

Excerpt

Israel’s killing of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president was undoubtedly meant to amp up awe for Jerusalem’s power of deterrence. Israel can get its man, anytime, anyplace. The Islamic Republic pledged to retaliate. As Tehran demonstrated in its clash with Israel in April, the Iranian theocracy isn’t afraid of a regional war. When Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei unleashed 300 missiles and drones, he wasn’t hoping that Israel and America would intercept them.

Killing Haniyeh in Tehran was a bold move. The Mossad demonstrated again its ability to penetrate Iran’s security services and humiliate the regime. Israel’s killing of the military commanders of Hamas and Hezbollah, and earlier of Iranian scientists inside Iran, deeply wounded the clerical regime’s pride and rhetoric (the two are often indistinguishable). Iran routinely depicts the Jewish state as irreversibly in decline. Israel is testing the sacred proposition that all militant Muslims welcome martyrdom. Iran’s leaders know that the Mossad appears to have recruited Iranians who have access to clerical circles and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

Mr. Gerecht is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.