How Iran's Attack Could Change Israel's Strategy

In July 2019, Israel and the United States announced that they had successfully carried out a series of tests of the Arrow 3 missile defense system in Alaska. With typical bombast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the tests "were successful beyond any imagination. … Today, Israel has the ability to act against ballistic missiles that could be launched against us from Iran or anywhere else."

Almost five years later, in the early hours of April 14, Iran launched a mass attack on Israel, involving around 120 ballistic missiles, 30 cruise missiles, and 170 drones—of which some 99 percent were shot down. Nine missiles pierced Israeli defenses and hit two air force bases, but they caused only minimal damage.

Israel's success in neutralizing Iran's attack has been a rare moment of good news for the country. It demonstrated the unique effectiveness of Israel's multilayered missile defense—including systems such as the Arrow 3, David's Sling, and the Iron Dome—in knocking Iran's projectiles out of the sky. It also provided great reassurance to Israelis that their country was able to call on the United States, Britain, France, and Jordan to help intercept the attack.

The April 14 attack has the potential to transform Israel's strategic calculus. If Israeli missile defense capabilities are really this good—not least due to support from the United States—it not only reduces the number of potential Israeli casualties, but also provides leaders with more time and flexibility to react. Effective defenses could reduce the scope of any retaliation—and perhaps even obviate the need to respond at all—which, in turn, would help safeguard Israel's international standing and legitimacy. An Israel that feels more secure could also feel less pressure to carry out a preemptive strike against Iran, which could drag the United States into a wider Middle Eastern war.

The Iranian attack also seems to have given fresh urgency to U.S. efforts to weave a net of security partnerships in the Middle East. In early May, a State Department spokesperson said that the United States and Saudi Arabia were "very close" to a deal on security and technology sharing that could also include normalization of Saudi-Israeli relations.

Israel's burgeoning relationships with its Arab neighbors—and its dependence on them to blunt any Iranian attack, as April 14 showed—will have many ripple effects on Israeli policies, from increased pressure to compromise with the Palestinians to a greater need to consult with allies instead of relying on its capacity for unilateral action.

The shift in the Israeli calculus already appears to be happening. In the immediate aftermath of the Iranian missile attack, there was strong pressure within Israel's government to launch a fierce and immediate counterstrike. The United States and its allies, in turn, pushed hard for Israel to exercise restraint or at least scale down its military response.

They had a compelling argument: Israel had already struck a significant blow against Iran on April 1, when it killed a number of senior generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Damascus. U.S. President Joe Biden therefore reportedly counseled Netanyahu: "You got a win. Take the win."

Although Netanyahu's war cabinet had initially approved a major counterstrike on Iran, the plans were scaled back. The eventual strike, which took place five days after Iran's April 14 attack, targeted an Iranian Air Force base near Isfahan, Iran, close to facilities involved in Iran's nuclear program. But Israel did not strike any strategic sites or cause significant damage. There is little doubt that Israel's successful neutralization of Iran's missile strike diminished the attractiveness of a muscular unilateral retaliation against Iran.

During the Gulf War in 1991, then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir understood the value of cooperation and restraint. The administration of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush had forged a wide coalition to fight Iraq under its leader Saddam Hussein after it invaded and occupied Kuwait. Iraq fired 40 Scud missiles at Israeli civilian targets, killing two civilians and injuring several hundred people, in a deliberate attempt to draw Israel into the Gulf War—and fracture the 42-country coalition lined up against Saddam.

The United States called on Israel not to retaliate. The Bush administration transferred Patriot missiles to Israel in the belief they would have a stabilizing impact. Although the Patriots were not particularly effective in intercepting Iraq's Soviet-made Scud missiles, they played a role in persuading Shamir to stay out of the U.S.-led war. The anti-Iraq coalition held and handily defeated Saddam. Netanyahu was a deputy minister at the time; Shamir is widely considered to have been his mentor.

Israel's air defense is infinitely better today, but can it ever be enough? It would take only a single nuclear missile to make it past Israel's shields to produce unthinkable consequences. What's more, by focusing on intercepting any nuclear strike, Israel could also be sending a message to its adversaries that it was no longer relying on deterrence to avert such an attack. An overreliance on missile defense would suggest that policymakers have concluded that nuclear deterrence cannot be relied on to guarantee security.

That may already be true: Iran was not deterred by Israel's assumed nuclear capabilities when it attacked in April. In 1991, too, Israel had warned the Iraqis that there would be massive retaliation in response to any kind of attack, yet this did not stop Saddam from launching his missiles.

Since the earliest years of its existence—not least the result of numerous wars aiming to erase it from the map—Israel has believed that it has a moral right to act unilaterally when facing threats. This policy has become known as the Begin Doctrine, named after then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who famously authorized the bombing of Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. In 2007, then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert authorized a raid that destroyed the Syrian al-Kibar nuclear facility.

Yet there are growing questions over whether the Begin Doctrine, favoring unilateral action, is still relevant today. Iran's nuclear facilities are widely dispersed and embedded underground, making them unlikely to be destroyed by a preemptive strike. This was foreseen by the British strategist Lawrence Freedman in an article published in 2003. "The enthusiasm for preemption reflects a yearning for a world in which problems can be eliminated by bold, timely, and decisive strokes," he wrote. "Cases where this can happen today are likely to be few and far between."

The lessons from Iran's attack will be unpalatable for the extremists in the Israeli government and the hawks in the country's defense establishment who believe that Israel can rely only on itself. Israel's interception success would not have been possible without the intervention of the United States and other allies, including Israel's Arab neighbors and partners.

Specifically, the United States has played a vital role in funding and developing Israel's missile defenses, including by connecting Israel to the U.S. global missile warning system. The dependence on the United States that was demonstrated during the attack in April is likely to circumscribe Israel's room for unilateral military action against Iran, and it underlines the existential importance of having allies—including allies in the Middle East.

This becomes even more important if Iran becomes a nuclear-armed state. The United States remains determined in its ambitions to develop and consolidate a regional air and missile defense system along the lines of NATO's anti-missile system in Europe to face down the growing threat from Iran and its allies.

Israel views Iran as a dangerous adversary that seeks its destruction. The Gulf states, while clearly in a strategic confrontation with Iran and its proxies, want to maintain relations with Tehran and avoid a path of open, spiraling conflict. An Israel that unilaterally escalates against Iran could jeopardize Israeli-Arab cooperation, which has become essential to Israel's security.

The Israeli public, too, appears to have a limited appetite for unilateral action against Iran. According to a recent opinion poll conducted by Hebrew University, 74 percent of Israelis surveyed were against Israeli retaliation against Iran if it harmed security cooperation with Israel's allies. Israel would be making a catastrophic mistake if it made light of the supportive role played by its allies and neglected the potential to develop a stronger relationship with moderate Arab states, including Saudi Arabia.

The Hamas massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, and Iran's attack on April 14 have made it abundantly clear: Israel can no longer rely only on itself to prevail against its adversaries.