Senior Iranian military officials have continued to suggest that they will carefully calibrate Iran’s response to Israel’s killing of senior IRGC commanders in Syria. This careful approach aims to avoid a direct war with Israel. Iranian Armed Forces Chief of the General Staff Major General Mohammad Bagheri said on April 6 that Iran will strike Israel “at the right time” during a commemoration ceremony for the IRGC officers killed in the likely Israeli airstrike on April 1. The Military Affairs Adviser to the Iranian Supreme Leader Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi separately said during a similar commemoration ceremony on April 7 that Iran “must wait for the right time” to deliver its response. Several senior Iranian clerics close to the Office of the Supreme Leader endorsed “strategic patience”—a long-standing regime policy that involves not immediately conducting a major response to Israeli attacks—in their weekly sermons on April 5. Such comments support CTP-ISW's assessment that Iran seeks to avoid a direct military confrontation against the United States and Israel. Strategic patience does not exclude an eventual Iranian retaliation, however. Lebanese Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah on April 8 warned that Iran will retaliate for the April 1 Israeli airstrike, illustrating the possibility of an eventual response to the attack. Nasrallah’s made these comments during a Hezbollah ceremony for IRGC commander Mohammed Reza Zahedi in Beirut. Nasrallah said that Iran has a ”natural right” to retaliate against the airstrike because it represented ”an attack on Iranian territory.” Nasrallah added that the United States and Israel recognize that an Iranian response to the attack is ”inevitably coming.” Zahedi spearheaded Iranian engagement with Hezbollah and most recently commanded the IRGC Quds Force unit responsible for overseeing operations in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and the Palestinian Territories. Zahedi was the only non-Lebanese member of Hezbollah’s Shura Council, which is led by Nasrallah and serves as the groups’ central decision-making authority.
Arabic-language media outlet Jadeh Iran reported on April 7 and 8 that Iran has conditioned its potential response to the April 1 Israeli strike on a ceasefire in Gaza. Arabic-language outlet Jadeh Iran reported on April 7 and 8 that Iran informed the United States that it would not retaliate against Israel for the April 1 strike if the United States could secure a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas, citing “an anonymous Arab diplomatic source.” Jadeh Iran is an outlet founded by an al Jazeera journalist. An Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry official told Kuwait-based newspaper Al Jarida on April 8 that the Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry told the United States that Iran would not respond to the April 1 Israeli airstrike if there was ”a ceasefire in Gaza.” The US State Department spokesperson denied these reports on April 8. The Jadeh Iran reporting coincides with claims from Western media and Israeli officials that Israel and Hamas negotiators had made "significant progress" in negotiations or reached a “critical point“ during ongoing negotiations in Cairo.
Key Takeaways:
- Iran: Senior Iranian military officials have continued to suggest that they will carefully calibrate Iran’s response to Israel’s killing of senior IRGC commanders in Syria. This careful approach aims to avoid a direct war with Israel. This approach does not exclude an eventual Iranian retaliation, however.
- Lebanese Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah on April 8 warned that Iran will retaliate for the April 1 Israeli airstrike, illustrating the possibility of an eventual response to the attack.
- Arabic-language media outlet Jadeh Iran reported on April 7 and 8 that Iran has conditioned its potential response to the April 1 Israeli strike on a ceasefire in Gaza.
- Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian is engaging in political coordination with Iranian partners and Oman following the April 1 Israeli airstrike that targeted Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officials in Damascus.
- Ceasefire Negotiations: Israel and Hamas are considering a new US-proposed ceasefire and hostage exchange deal. Israeli officials and mediating countries have acknowledged the potential for a ceasefire deal, while anonymous Hamas sources have expressed skepticism about a ceasefire deal.
- Gaza Strip: An Israeli source told an Israel Army Radio correspondent that the IDF hopes Hamas will agree to the ceasefire so that Palestinian civilians sheltering in Rafah can migrate north before an Israeli clearing operation into Rafah at the end of the six-week ceasefire.
- An Israeli Army Radio correspondent reported that Palestinian militias resumed launching rockets from Khan Younis shortly after the IDF’s withdrawal on April 7.
- Several Israeli brigades were involved in clearing operations in Khan Younis throughout February and March, likely reducing the ability of Palestinian fighters to launch rockets from the southern Gaza Strip.
- Lebanon: The IDF Air Force killed a senior official and commander in Hezbollah’s Radwan unit and two other Hezbollah fighters in an airstrike in southern Lebanon on April 8.
- Iraq: The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed that it conducted three drone attacks targeting Israeli military bases since CTP-ISW's last data cutoff on April 7. Israeli officials and media have not commented on the claimed attacks at the time of this writing. CTP-ISW cannot verify the Islamic Resistance in Iraq’s attack claims.
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