BySETH J. FRANTZMAN

 Within hours of reports that an Israel-linked ship had been targeted by drones off the coast of Oman some pro-Iranian social media accounts and media began to discuss the attack as “retaliation” for what they claim are Israeli attacks. The claims appear to point to a new Iranian red line that is being drawn at sea. The message from Tehran is that this is where Iran will strike. Iran has the drones and weapons, such as mines and IRGC fast boats, to target commercial vessels. It has done so over the last several years. It is saying it will strike at what it sees as a soft underbelly of Israel, or a kind of weak link, which is commercial shipping. 

What is Iran openly saying? Press TV released a clip on Saturday claiming that “informed sources believe that the raid has been in response to an Israeli missile attack on Syria.” Press TV quotes western media and Israeli sources, appearing to launder information on the attack to others. What matters here is the overall depiction of this attack as an escalation, a response and a new type of response. This is because all the former attacks did not appear to try to inflict casualties. This attack apparently involved precision drone strikes aimed at areas where crew would have been on the ship.

Defense and security analyst Farzin Nadimi writes that that the unique “Attack was designed to be merciless: one of the drones was directly aimed at the tanker's bridge, to kill people, because it was in retaliation for April 24 attack off Baniyas against Lebanese/Iranian product carrier Wisdom, in which 3 were killed, incl 2 crews [sic].” He notes that “this attack was a follow-up to the Jul 5 attack on CSAV Tyndall which was a misidentification. If Israel chooses to retaliate in kind, Iran will do the same.” Al-Alam TV in Iran says the attack was retaliation for a July 22 airstrike near Qusayr in Syria at Al-Dabaa airbase.

Veteran war correspondent Elijah Magnier asserts that this attack represents a new phase as well. “Iran started a ‘battle between wars’ against Israel. The Israeli killing of members of the ‘Axis of the Resistance’ in Syria won't be disregarded. Israel was expecting a reaction from #Iran following the attack in #Syria against al-Daba'a airport. Therefore, it should stop playing the victim and understand that every act of killing will be met by a similar act in the future,” he writes.

Meanwhile Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has slammed Iran in the context of the incident and he has spoken with the UK’s Foreign Secretary. "Iran is not just an Israeli problem, but an exporter of terrorism, destruction and instability that harms us all. The world must not be silent in the face of Iranian terrorism," Lapid said. 
All of this points to escalation, which I noted yesterday in a report. It also points to new drone technology potentially being used. However, the analysis and discussion that is taking place online appear to have a different message. The message is that Iran has entered a new stage of retaliatory messaging. Where in the past it did strike at shipping, even other commercial ships during tensions with the US in May and June 2019, now it is going further. This involves deadly strikes by drones. Will Iran risk this potential growth in tensions in the region? It appears to calculate that this is a way to send a message about tensions in Syria and elsewhere. Iran has vowed to confront Israel for years. It has usually relied instead on proxies or plausible deniability in threats. For instance in the fall of 2018 Hezbollah set up a cell near the Golan to launch drones at Israel. In addition Iran used a drone in Syria to fly into Israeli airspace in February 2018 and May 2021. But in each case Iran’s acts didn’t harm anyone. Its proxies appear reticent in this regard. Hamas was mobilized to push tensions with Israel in May which resulted in a ten day war. This war benefited Hamas and also was likely used by Iran to test Israel’s responses. Rocket fire from Syria and Lebanon during that conflict, and also claims that the Iranian-backed Houthis might join such a conflict in the future, point to Iran’s larger regional goal. 

However, on the other side of the coin, Iran has been careful about other responses. In January 2019 when Israel’s former Chief of Staff told the New York Times that Israel had carried out thousands of airstrikes in Syria, Iran did not respond. Iran also appeared reticent to do much about what it claimed were sabotage attacks on nuclear facilities such as Natanz and the killing of a nuclear official. In June 2021 The Jerusalem Post reported that former Mossad head Yossi Cohen had discussed operations against Iran. The rhetoric from analysts is that Iran is retaliating specifically for deaths of “resistance” members in Syria, either from the July 22 or April attack. Iran is saying that it will make the Gulf of Oman Israel’s “Syria,” in a sense turning it into a free-for-all of retaliation and its own “campaign between the wars” where it has freedom of action to strike. It could wage a war of attrition there, according to this logic. It may strike at the soft underbelly of commerce and target innocent people. The Iranian message is that sailors and crew should be careful to sign on with ships that are in any way linked to Israel. Commerce off the Gulf of Oman relies on maritime security from the US 5th Fleet and UK and other regional powers.

Did Iran wait until the UK’s Queen Elizabeth was in the South China Sea to conduct this incident? That answer is not known. But Iran does appear to be signaling that its drones have a new capability or at least will be put into play in this area. This could of course just be messaging about Iran’s next move. Iran has been harassing US military facilities in Iraq as well but has so far not killed anyone since the spring of 2020. That is because Iran is careful about using drones and asymmetric attacks and knows casualties increase the chance of retaliation.