On October 1, Iran launched 181 ballistic missiles at Israel. Israel was prepared for the escalation, having learned of it earlier in the day from the United States. Israel’s Home Front Command warned the country’s almost ten million people to prepare to go to their local bomb shelters. Shortly after the warning, Iran’s ballistic missiles streaked across the sky, targeting several locations in the Negev and in central Israel. Iran knew it was gambling with this attack, and it has tried to deter an Israeli response by claiming that it will attack with “an even more crushing and stronger response” next time.

Israel has vowed a harsher response to this attack than the previous one in April when Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel. Iran has been gambling and testing Israel over the past year. Over the past decade, the Islamic Republic has increased its capabilities to strike at Israel. It has expanded its ballistic missile arsenal and improved its range and precision. It has also invested heavily in kamikaze drones. It has exported both its missile and drone technology to proxies in the region, such as the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon. It has also moved drones and ballistic missiles to aligned militias in Iraq. This has had deadly results. Kataib Hezbollah, one of the militias backed by Iran in Iraq, killed three U.S. soldiers in a January drone attack in Jordan.

Iran’s decision to arm its proxies and test its weapons through them generally has come without a cost. For instance, Iran attacked Saudi Arabia directly in 2019, targeting the Abqaiq energy complex with drones and cruise missiles. The Houthis also attacked Saudi Arabia. Hezbollah intervened in the Syrian civil war. The Iran-backed militias in Iraq have attacked U.S. forces hundreds of times since 2019. These attacks led President Trump to order the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike in 2020. In the car with Soleimani was Kataib Hezbollah leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Iran then retaliated for that attack by launching ballistic missiles at the Asad base in Iraq, targeting U.S. forces there.

The Iranian attack on Asad can be seen as the Iranian model for provoking, receiving a response, and then attacking more to get the last punch in. What this means is that Iran often carries out attacks or sends weapons to its allies to carry out attacks, and then it claims that any response will be met with a stronger response by Tehran. Iran is, therefore, willing to threaten, bluff, and gamble in this rising game of stakes.

Threatening Israel has been a long-term Iranian objective. Over the years, it has sought to empower proxies and arm them with increasingly long-range and precise weapons. For instance, Hamas only started developing small rockets in 2001. Iran helped Hamas increase its range from a few miles to reach most of the major population centers of Israel. On October 7, Hamas launched thousands of rockets in conjunction with a ground assault. The Houthis also went from a small rebel group to a formidable force able to threaten first Riyadh and then Israel with ballistic missiles. Now, the Houthis have wreaked havoc on Red Sea shipping. Similarly, Hezbollah expanded its arsenal from around 15,000 rockets in 2006, when it fought a month-long war with Israel, to some 150,000 rockets today.

Iran has felt confident in slowly building up the capacities of the proxies, moving them all closer to Israel in the last several years. During the war on ISIS and the Syrian civil war, Iran was able to move militias into the vacuum left behind. At this time, the IDF was engaged in what it called the “Campaign Between Wars” to prevent Iranian weapons transfers to Hezbollah. The IDF carried out thousands of strikes, but Iran kept rolling, moving weapons via Albukamal in Syria to Lebanon. While the IDF was talking about “third circle threats,” Iran was rapidly moving toward Israel’s border by moving its pawns into place.

Iran gambled after October 7. It supported the Hamas attack and then supported Hezbollah and the Houthis attacking Israel. This has led Iran to engage in direct attacks on Israel in April and October of 2024. Iran practiced this by using ballistic missiles in precision strikes in Syria and Pakistan in January 2024. It has also used missiles against Kurdish dissidents in Iraq. It also monitored how the Houthis used long-range missiles against Saudi Arabia. The Houthi war on Saudi Arabia led to a ceasefire in 2022 and Saudi Arabia’s reconciliation with Iran in 2023. This is how Iran feels that its threats result in appeasement. Iran also feels empowered because it has exported drones to Russia for use against Ukraine. Iran-Russia relations are expanding, Iran’s state media reported on October 3. Iran, therefore, feels it has more support than ever before to confront Israel directly. It feels the Gulf states will not oppose its actions because of fears they may become embroiled themselves. It believes it has ringed Israel with proxies.

Iran’s gamble faces hurdles. Israel’s strikes on Hezbollah in the last two weeks of September have weakened Hezbollah. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed on September 27. The IDF launched 1,600 airstrikes on Hezbollah on September 23. Israel also launched a ground operation against the Iranian-backed group. Now, the IDF has two divisions in southern Lebanon, slogging through Lebanese villages seeking out Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure.

The October 1 attack by Iran is its largest gamble yet. It knows Israel is primed to respond. It knows that Israel has backing from the West. It also knows Israel greatly weakened Hamas and Hezbollah, removing two of the Iranian-backed fronts against Israel. Nevertheless, Iran’s regime believes it is stronger than it was in the past and ready to confront Israel. It assumes that the West is also weaker, and a multi-polar world order with Russia and China balancing the United States may benefit from its provocative ballistic missile attacks.

About the Author: 

Seth Frantzman is the author of The October 7 War: Israel’s Battle for Security in Gaza (2024) and an adjunct fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Image: Creative Commons.