📌 Spoiler alert

Iran is insisting on marking its territory in Lebanon by making it evidently clear it won’t negotiate a deal that doesn’t allow it to retain Hezbollah.

The Iranian missile barrage attack on Israel overnight, that came in response to an Israeli assassination in Dahiye, is an apparent red line Iran is attempting to impose should it go further in its negotiations.

The immediate aim is to reestablishing deterrence on behalf of Hezbollah after the latter lost all ability to deter Israel. But the broader goal it territory marking.

📌 Iran and Israel both want to spoil each other’s ‘good’ deals

Israel wants to spoil any deal between the US and Iran that doesn’t guarantee it an advantageous security position.

Iran wants to spoil any scenario that divorces Dahiyeh from Tehran. This includes disrupting a ceasefire brokered through American-Lebanese diplomacy that Iran deemed ‘unacceptable.’ As we have seen, the pattern is clear; First the fire reaches Iran before later being transferred and contained in Lebanon.

Meanwhile this attack restores Iranian soft power in the Shiite psyche in Lebanon and gives Hezbollah a new message, bolstering its position vis-à-vis Israel but also internally against the Lebanese state.

📌 Playing on the divergence

No doubt that as in the Hamas war in Gaza, American and Israeli objectives can significantly diverge. This divergence creates room for Tehran to play both America and Israel against each other in the short term.

While Israel has the proven ability to defy America and derail its foreign policy, Iran has the endurance and pain threshold to wait out American patience for global chaos.

And in the midst of this power struggle, the favorable battlefield remains south Lebanon, and the weakest link its state.