Courcy’s Intelligence Brief
Iran seems to say "bring it on"
There are now three clear strands to Iran’s anti-Israel rhetoric. The first is that it does not believe the US will attack it. The second is that it does not believe that Israel will attack without US support. And the third is that if it is wrong on the second point, well then that will present an opportunity for Iran to destroy Israel. It is now saying this so consistently that it would be foolhardy not to believe that that is indeed what it believes.
A symptomatic commentary on how Iran views the danger of a US attack was published on 22 September by Jaam-e Jam. It noted that the US was increasingly coming to understand that talk of confrontation between Iran and the US was having undesirable economic consequences and that even President Obama had acknowledged that talk of war was pushing up the price of oil.
The commentary went on to analyse the US’s refusal to draw “red lines”, beyond which Iran’s nuclear development would not be allowed to proceed. It said that this refusal to set red lines was “due to the challenges and failures that America is facing in the world” – in other words the US does not want further confrontation with Iran. The US was also, said the commentary, beginning to understand that it would be unable to defeat Iran.
No doubt it was in order to encourage this feeling in Washington that, on 23 September, Brigadier-General Amir Ali Hazizadeh, commander of the Aerospace Division of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), warned that any US-Israeli attack on Iran would “spin out of control...to degenerate into World War III”. He added: “Iran considers the US bases in the region as part of American soil and will definitely target them if a war breaks out.”
Hazizadeh also said: “We...can by no means imagine that the Zionist regime would initiate a war without US support...” Other senior Iranian figures have made the same point, but they have also suggested in the past week that they would almost welcome this as an chance to deal with Israel once and for all.
As an example, on 22 September, IRGC chief Major-General Mohammad Ali Jafari said than an Israeli attack Iran "will eventually happen" but would lead to the Israeli regime's obliteration.
The next day, on 23 September, the deputy-commander of the IRGC, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, said that Iran is no longer concerned about threats from Israel because: “If the Zionists really do strike Iran, it would provide a historic opportunity for the Islamic Revolution to wipe [Israel] off the face of the earth”. He added that an Iranian infantry battalion would be able to “break Israel's back” within a day as “Israel is only 24 kilometres wide in parts” – and that then Iran would “reclaim the lands occupied by Israel for the Palestinians”.
On 26 September, the conservative Javan made a similar point when it said: “There is no doubt that Israel is like a vulnerable cobweb as shown in the wars against Hamas and Hezbollah in 2008 and 2006. Any fresh mistake can lead to the end of its filthy life; in other words, an opportunity that Iran should not ignore."