Iran knows the world is watching and waiting – so what will be its next move?

Statements from Iran and the United States in the past 24 hours testify to tensions reaching fever pitch in what is already one of the most dangerous parts of the world.

From Tehran came a televised speech from Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who warned openly for the first time that Iran would punish Israel for an attack on a consular building in Damascus last week, in which 13 people died, including senior officers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. “The evil regime must be punished, and it will be punished,” he said.

Then from Washington came a very public undertaking from, president Biden – that may or may not have been in response to the ayatollah – pledging that Israel would have “iron-clad” US support in the event of an attack from Iran. “Let me say it again,” he said. “Iron-clad."

While the two statements appear straightforward, there was more to both than necessarily met the eye.

The first was interpreted as an indication that an Iranian reprisal was imminent, but may also have been an attempt by Iran’s leader to assuage popular anger, including from the Revolutionary Guard, and rebut any suggestion of weakness or indecision on his part.

Biden’s statement, too, was not just a pledge of support for Israel, but surely also a warning to Iran that, in the event of an attack, it would have to contend not just with Israel, but with the United States. His forceful words may also have been intended as a counterweight to his earlier criticisms of Israel’s operations in Gaza and calls for a ceasefire, lest Iran or its proxies conclude that US support for Israel’s security was any less than it had always been.

If anyone faces a dilemma, however, about what to do next, it is Iran. In the immediate aftermath of 7 October Hamas attacks on Israelis, Iran set out as clearly as any country could do that it had no intention of exploiting the situation or intervening itself. That undertaking came from the same ayatollah who now insists that the Damascus attack must be punished. But how, realistically, could there be no response from Iran without, on the one hand, leaving the leadership discredited and on the other giving Israel a free pass for more such raids?

Between 7 October and the 1 April attack on Iran’s consulate in Syria, Iran would appear to have been as good as its word. There was no marked escalation in Hezbollah attacks on Israel from southern Lebanon. There was no evidence of Iranian help either for Hamas to defend Gaza against Israel, or for Yemen’s Houthi rebels attacking mainly Western- and Israel-allied vessels in the Red Sea.

Israel mounted its attack on Iran’s Damascus consulate regardless, even though it was bound to be seen as a significant step up from other actions it had taken outside its borders since 7 October. While both Israel and Iran may be engaged in high-risk endeavours, however, this is not to say they do not have their reasons.

Iran has been weakened by protests – especially by women demanding more rights. Recent legislative elections – that can still prove destabilising, however undemocratic the regime – will only have added to Iranian leaders’ sense of insecurity. Although the vote favoured the status quo, the turnout, at 41 per cent, was the lowest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution – hardly a massive expression of confidence in the regime. This is hardly an opportune time for Tehran to become embroiled in a war, but it cannot afford to show weakness either.

As for Israel, it is hard to escape the impression that it has exploited the disorder in and around Gaza - a disorder it has done much to exacerbate, if not to create – to strike at the power it sees as its prime threat: that is, Iran.

Hamas is one sort of enemy – an unpredictable, often disorganised, asymmetric threat. But it is one that Israel could, and should have been able to defend itself against. That it did not or could not, on that night in October, constituted a huge failure of intelligence, and then of military preparedness. But the only way that Hamas could have presented a realistic threat to the survival of the state of Israel would have been if it had been followed by a more general Palestinian uprising in the occupied West Bank, perhaps aided and abetted by the Palestinian Authority. But this did not happen.

Iran is quite another sort of threat, and one against which Israel is now even more determined not to drop its guard. I have been struck on visits to Israel over the past 20 years or so by the preoccupation with Iran at practically every level of society, but especially at the top. No other regional power seems to come near Iran in terms of the threat it is perceived to present to Israel. Depending on who you talk to, the Iranian threat may have an intellectual aspect, a military aspect or a geopolitical aspect, or all of them rolled into one. But it has often seemed to me – perhaps wrongly – to exceed a rational appraisal of Iranian capability or of how Iran might regard its own interests.

In some ways, it seems to resemble the China threat as perceived by many in the United States, especially members of Congress, or the Russia threat as seen by many in the UK establishment – having roots in mutual suspicion, going back through recent or less recent history, but for some reason magnified by a lack of curiosity and sheer fear.

As to its origins, one might hazard the threat perceived by Israel from militant Islam in the immediate wake of Iran’s Revolution, or the infamous 2005 statement by Iran’s then president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling for Israel to be wiped off the map. That statement has since been both questioned and disavowed, with Iran’s subsequent leaders seeming to regard their state less as a disruptor and more as a so-called status-quo power. But there has been no effort, on either side, at anything like a rapprochement, let alone normalisation.

The continuing lack of diplomatic relations between the US, Israel’s chief backer, and Iran, more than 40 years after the 1979-81 hostage crisis, has to be a contributing factor.

Iran’s nuclear ambitions may well be another factor, even as there may be confusion – on both sides – as to action and reaction. Israel is known to have a nuclear capability, justified by its security concerns in a hostile neighbourhood, but it maintains official ambiguity on the subject and stays outside any international non-proliferation arrangements.

Iran on the other hand, which might well regard acquiring a nuclear capability less as an end in itself than as a counter to Israel’s, has seen its own ambitions thwarted by repeated US and EU attempts first to place it under international supervision, and then – after it allegedly breached the terms – to eliminate its nuclear programme altogether, by missile strikes, sabotage or assassinating its scientists.

The rights and wrongs of Iran’s nuclear programme, and whether its original purpose was primarily civilian or military are now hard to unravel. But the injustice perceived by Iran is as profound as Israel’s fear of Iran, and even if an argument could be made that where long-standing adversaries each possess a nuclear capability, they may be more careful not to get into a war – the US and Russia during the Cold War, India and Pakistan since, that restraint might not apply between Israel and Iran. Their animosity and suspicion may just run too deep.

All these considerations exacerbate the dilemma for Iran, when it considers how to respond to Israel’s attack on its generals in Damascus. To say that its options are constrained is an understatement. Its undoubted political and military weakness argues against too risky an operation, while that same weakness leaves it no choice but to respond. Meanwhile, even the United States, as president Biden’s warning shows, has little choice but to watch and wait.