Hassan Nasrallah<\/a>.<\/p>\nSince the U.S.-Israeli war began in February and killed much of Iran\u2019s top former leadership, including Mr. Khamenei, Iran\u2019s new rulers believe their willingness to act more aggressively \u2014 from blockading the vital Strait of Hormuz to attacking its Gulf neighbors \u2014 has been a major success.<\/p>\n
To them, analysts say, being more aggressive allowed them to not only survive Washington and Israel\u2019s attacks, but to inflict economic pain and emerge with strategic leverage through control of the strait, a crucial global shipping route for oil and gas.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s new leaders have also found President Trump more responsive to their more aggressive strategy. Last week, he convinced Israel not to strike Beirut. On Monday, after Israel\u2019s strikes on Beirut\u2019s outskirts and Iran\u2019s retaliation, he called for both sides to step back.<\/p>\n
After his comments, Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guards Corps quickly announced that it would halt its attacks but said it may attack again if Israel pursues strikes in southern Lebanon, a near certainty.<\/p>\n
Such strikes may also offer Iran the opportunity to test the relationship between Mr. Trump and Israel\u2019s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Mr. Memarian, the analyst.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey understand there\u2019s a gap between Israeli and U.S. objectives,\u201d he said, \u201cand they want to put pressure on Trump to contain Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
A pro-government demonstration in Tehran, last month.Credit…Arash Khamooshi\/Polaris for The New York Times<\/p>\n
But the defense of Hezbollah is not only about testing or posturing. Iran assessed the group\u2019s ability to continue attacking northern Israel during the recent war as critical to giving Iran room to focus its attacks on its oil-rich Gulf neighbors, said Hamidreza Azizi, an Iranian security expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.<\/p>\n
Allowing Israel to weaken Hezbollah further, he said, would therefore be militarily costly for Iran in a future conflict, which it deems inevitable.<\/p>\n
Iran also saw its retaliation as necessary, he said, because it views Israel\u2019s attacks as part of an apparent U.S.-Israeli strategy to try to quietly erode its strategic gains in the recent conflict even as it tries to negotiate a deal to end the war with Washington.<\/p>\n
For weeks, U.S. forces have been quietly escorting vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. Many analysts describe this as a U.S. attempt to alleviate pressure on the global economy while it tries to increase the economic pressure on Iran by reinforcing its own blockade of Iranian vessels. Iran worries that Israel\u2019s efforts to weaken Hezbollah are another facet of that strategy.<\/p>\n
The Iranians believe the United States and Israel \u201care using the cease-fire to shape the realities on the ground in a way that would erode the leverage Iran has achieved during this war,\u201d Mr. Azizi said.<\/p>\n
Tehran\u2019s willingness to retaliate forcefully also shows how unlikely Iran thinks it is Mr. Trump, who is about to host the World Cup games, and faces a deepening global economic crisis ahead of midterm elections this fall, to rejoin the fray.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t think Trump is going to go to war,\u201d said Farzan Sabet, an Iran analyst at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland. \u201cBut even if he does, they\u2019re fairly confident they can manage it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At first glance, Tehran\u2019s retaliation for Israeli attacks in Lebanon might seem like a reckless act that risks…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":853433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,22497,218427,5959,4783,10273,83,277065,99,13192,8992,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,277,67,201827,69783,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-853432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-benjamin","tag-defense-and-military-forces","tag-donald-j","tag-hezbollah","tag-international-relations","tag-iran","tag-islamic-revolutionary-guards-corps","tag-israel","tag-lebanon","tag-netanyahu","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-trump","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-defense-and-military-forces","tag-united-states-international-relations","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116716150911942812","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}