One of the most notable aspects of the relative abilities of Iran and Israel’s ability to project power across the Middle East is that Iran is more flexible and strategic in its approach. It has developed a “Unification of the Arenas” strategy which coordinates all its proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Iraqi Shia militias and the Houthis in Yemen.

As such, Iran is encircling Israel in order to be able to create a multifront war against it. The intention is to enable Iran to provide a nuclear umbrella to its proxies, threatening the survival of the Jewish state. Just as Russia wields its nuclear weapons to deter the West from greater involvement in Ukraine, imagine if Iran had a nuclear weapon and was able to provide Hamas and Hezbollah with a nuclear umbrella. Iran would be able to restrain Israel from entering Gaza to eliminate Hamas.

In contrast, Israel can only allocate its resources to a single arena at any one time - such as Gaza now to dismantle Hamas - or conduct individual strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon. It cannot realistically contend with a full-blown conflict against Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran simultaneously.

Israel and Iran’s strategic competition sits against the backdrop of the US lacking a coherent Iran strategy. At the start of his administration, President Biden said his priority was, “how we move forward and what is needed to allow us to move back into the JCPOA.” By November 2022, however, President Biden admitted that the JCPOA was “dead”. Since then the US has failed to formulate a replacement strategy for Iran.

The US and Israel have not responded significantly to Iran’s provocations across the region, enabling it to act with impunity and never face any consequences for its actions. Despite Iran seeking to escalate and regionalise the conflict, the Biden administration’s priority of localising it led the US to initially deny Iran’s involvement in the October 7 massacre. At best, the US merely responds rather than pre-empting Iranian-led threats. Israel has similarly adopted a restrained approach towards the Iranian regime, focusing on preventing Iran from establishing a military base on its border with Syria by conducting airstrikes on Iranian proxies or the IRGC when it operates near Israel’s borders.

Similarly, Israel has sought to delay Iran’s nuclear programme rather than focus on preventing it from going nuclear. Instead of destabilising the regime, Israel has participated in tit-for-tat shadow warfare with Tehran.

As a result, Iran has been encouraged to establish new normals for the levels of accepted terrorism. The international community instead draws an artificial distinction between Iran’s proxies and the regime that sponsors these proxies. Iran is not held to account for threatening international shipping by wielding the Houthis to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and conducting piracy near the Strat of Hormuz. Similarly, the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon have increased their rocket fire against Israel.

Iran’s regional dominance has led to it setting the agenda vis a vis Israel’s conflict against Hamas in Gaza. In January 2024, representatives of the Biden administration met Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani to request that Iran restrain Yemen’s Houthi rebels and that its proxies in Iraq and Syria cease targeting US forces. In response, Kani made this contingent upon the US brokering a ceasefire in Gaza. In turn, the Biden administration became increasingly critical of the manner in which Israel was conducting the war in Gaza and began to advocate a ceasefire. This created daylight between the US and Israel and emboldened Iran.

After attacking Israel directly on 13 April, Iran’s mission to the UN posted on X that this “is a conflict between Iran and the rogue Israeli regime, from which the US MUST STAY AWAY!”. Qatari news outlet Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported that the US administration insisted that Israel did not carry out a large strike in response to the attack, in exchange for the US accepting Israel’s military operation in Rafah. The rationale for rejecting a proposed Israeli counterattack against Iran was that it would erode deterrence and escalation tensions in the region. Thus the blame was inverted: it became Israel’s responsibility, not Iran’s, to avoid causing regional escalation.

My recent report Restoring Deterrence: Destabilising the Iranian Regime asserts that making the de-escalation of tensions a priority and overlooking Iranian aggression only contributes to Iran escalating tensions. Give the association of Iranian proxies with the regime itself, the US and Israel need to be willing to target nuclear facilities, drone factories and IRGC bases on Iranian soil. As such, Israel should expand its power projection with the aim of destabilising the Iranian regime and preventing it from hiding behind its proxies.

Barak Seener is a Senior Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and co-host of the Geo Godfather Wars podcast. Barak can be followed on X at @barakseener