Calculating Iran's Next Move

November 16, 2011 | 0403 GMT

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Three days after explosions at an  Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) base near Tehran killed 17 people, including senior commander Brig. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam, a key figure in Iran’s ballistic missile program, Iranian officials have publicly held to the official line that the blast was accidental. Privately, however, they appear to be contemplating whether the blast was an act of sabotage worthy of response. In a eulogy posted on Fardanews on Tuesday, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said “Moghaddam was unknown in the Revolutionary Guard. Our enemies knew him better than our friends. He is irreplaceable.”

“Though the geopolitical climate is working in Iran’s favor, Tehran has to be aware of possible pitfalls — especially in its covert battles against its adversaries. “

In an equally cryptic statement following the explosions, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israeli military radio, “I don’t know the extent of the explosion, but it would be desirable if they multiply.” Regardless of whether it was involved in the incident, Israel has an interest in spreading the perception that the mountainous barriers of the Islamic Republic are not impervious to Israeli covert operations. Though the circumstances of the blast leave open the possibility that it was accidental, there remains a strong chance that this was in fact a case of Israel pulling off a significant sabotage attack against the IRGC.

Psychological impact

If so, we would expect to see Iran clamp down internally for a while to understand how such a significant failure in munitions handling could have occurred in the first place. At minimum this was a serious accident caused by the IRGC’s negligence; at most it was a breach of operational security by foreign infiltrators. The psychological impact of such a sabotage effort is just as critical as the physical elimination of the intended target. The worries caused over where along the line the breach occurred — and the time and resources spent trying to track that leak down while reinforcing security at other potential targets that may have been compromised — is a major drain on the victim and a major boon for the saboteur. This same type of impact could potentially be accomplished by a successful Israeli disinformation campaign to falsely claim credit for an accident and label it as an attack.

During Tehran’s period of introspection, Iran will also likely contemplate the much broader question of what barriers Iran could face as it pursues its strategic aims in the region. Iran’s strong position in Iraq is beyond doubt, as the United States is withdrawing its forces and leaving a power vacuum that Iran will fill. At the same time, Iran has maintained an effective deterrence strategy against a military strike — the most potent component of that strategy being Iran’s feared ability to disrupt 40 percent of the world’s seaborne crude through the Strait of Hormuz by unconventional military means. Simply put, there is little hiding the fact that the United States, Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council states are struggling to develop an effective containment strategy against Iran.

Though the geopolitical climate is working in Iran’s favor, Tehran has to be aware of possible pitfalls — especially in its covert battles against its adversaries. The assassinations, kidnappings and defections of Iranian nuclear scientists in recent years help sketch the outlines of a U.S.-Israeli campaign designed to slow down Iran’s nuclear program. As part of that campaign, the United States and Israel appear to have focused much of their resources on developing cyberweapons like the Stuxnet worm. The political crisis in Syria further complicates matters for Iran by threatening Tehran’s strategic foothold in the Levant. As Turkey and the Arab League states watch Iran’s moves warily, they are more likely to view the crisis in Syria as an opportunity to break Iran’s arc of influence in the region — and will increasingly focus their efforts toward this end.

 As Iran becomes more confident in the region and asserts its influence more boldly, more clandestine efforts against the country are likely to intensify. Iran’s leadership will likely consider this dynamic when contemplating a potential response to the Nov. 12 explosions. STRATFOR has already been receiving indications from Hezbollah that the Shiite militant organization is readying its artillery rocket arsenal under orders from Tehran. Though Hezbollah and its Iranian proxies have a strategic interest in spreading such information to create the perception that Iran has a potent retaliatory option to ward off further attacks, Hezbollah’s actions in and beyond the region should be watched in the coming weeks. Iran could also deploy its covert capabilities in places like Bahrain, Iraq, the Palestinian Territories and northern Yemen, but Tehran faces limitations in all these arenas — particularly in Iraq, where Iran does not want to give the United States any reason to push back its timetable for withdrawal.

Iran is not likely to respond quickly or rashly to this situation — it may not even respond at all. Following the February 2008 assassination of Imad Mughniyah, one of Hezbollah’s top commanders, Iran’s adversaries braced for a response that never came. Iran likely calculated that such a response was not worth the campaign of mutual retaliation that would have ensued. It remains unclear just how shell-shocked Iran’s leaders are from the Nov. 12 explosion, but if the blast was indicative of Israel’s covert reach into Iran, we would expect Iran to be expending a lot of energy in the coming weeks trying to recover from and repair what could have been a significant breach in its internal security apparatus.

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