The cargo manifest filed in Larnaca had recorded that there were fruits and vegetables on board. A few hours later, Transporte Aéreo Rioplatense’s two-decade-old Canadair CL-44 four-engine turboprop disappeared off the Soviet Union’s air-defence radar one summer morning in 1981, showering recoilless rifles and tank parts over the mountains near Yerevan. Later, it would be said that a Sukhoi-15 pilot had crashed his jet into the plane when it defied commands to descend; other stories involved a missile or a simple mid-air malfunction. Three Argentinian crew died, together with the British-born, Miami-based arms dealer Stuart Allan McCafferty.
The aircraft had made three earlier flights, ferrying military equipment secretly sent by Tel Aviv to Tehran, as part of a $70 million lifeline of aircraft engines, tyres and tank parts provided by the nation the Ayatollahs called “Little Satan”.
Earlier this week, as Israeli missiles ploughed into military bases near Tehran, Khuzestan and Ilam—long-awaited retaliation for Iran’s earlier attack on Israel—some have predicted the beginning of a regional war that could draw in the Great Powers. That is, indeed, a possibility.
A second possibility is just as likely, though. Iran’s strike, some believe, was designed to demonstrate it could hit Israel, but without causing the maximum damage possible. Israel, in turn, seems to have heeded United States advice to avoid hitting Iranian nuclear targets or oil infrastructure. Even as both sides exchange lethal blows, both seem to be stopping short of the edge.
“This should be the end of the direct military exchange between Israel and Iran,” one United States official said after the attack on Tehran. The story of the aircraft that came down in 1981 helps us understand the forces that are acting to restrain both countries, even as their leaders blow the trumpets of wars in public.
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Friends and enemies
The historian Jay Mens has called the Israel-Iran confrontation “a war without a name”: The conflict between the two countries neither resembles conventional conflict, of the kinds both have fought, nor the Cold War, nor the battles-by-proxy waged familiar to South Asia. There is, indeed, some question as to whether the Iran-Israel conflict can be conceptualised as a war at all. Their use of force is concerned not principally with demonstrating military power but compelling one to accept the existence of the other as a credible geopolitical actor.
Full understanding of this complex dynamic requires understanding that, for much of their history, the strategic interests of Iran and Israel have overlapped. To contain the rise of Arab nationalist regimes, the two countries collaborated on intelligence-gathering and missile production. Iran secretly sold oil to Israel. Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres even offered Tehran nuclear power technology.
Even after its arms sales to Iran were exposed—potentially damaging Tel Aviv’s relationship with the United States—Israel signed a $135 million deal with its devil, which included Lance and Hawk missiles, laser-guided artillery shells, and field guns. The arms shipments were to be routed through Rotterdam and Antwerp. According to one estimate, Israel sold Iran almost half of the weapons it acquired in the first months of the new, theocratic regime’s war with Iraq.
Following its war with its Arab neighbours in 1967, scholars Bishara Bahbah and Linda Butler have written that Israel rapidly transitioned from an agricultural economy focused on citrus exports to a technology and electronics powerhouse. Firms in the civilian sector like Tadiram, Amcor, Soltam, and Volcan installed production lines and emerged as subcontractors to military industries. This industry proved to be a key geopolitical tool.
As Central Intelligence Agency analysts observed in a now-declassified memo written in 1985, the arms sales to Tehran were a tool to retain influence when what it saw as an inevitable United States-Iran rapprochement took place. Israel also saw Iran as a long-term source of energy security and as a key to its strategic interests in the Persian Gulf. Times might have changed, but those interests haven’t.
The collapse of the Soviet Union, followed by the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, removed the pillars that held up this security cooperation. The two countries, though, continue to share many vital interests—among them containing the power of jihadist movements and ensuring stability in the Middle East.
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Fictions for victory
Ever since 2020, Israel has committed itself to a doctrine it calls Decisive Victory—essentially, the idea that technology enables the destruction of enemy capabilities within days or just hours. The Israeli concept, expert Jean-Loup Samaan points out, resembles earlier doctrines calling for high-intensity operations of limited duration, like India’s Cold Start or the United States’ Air-Sea battle. The Israeli doctrine sought to deliver decisive defeats on what it called “rocket-based terror armies,” like Hezbollah and Hamas—and their sponsor, Iran.
There were plenty of sceptics, though, who argued that such doctrines are more political manifestos than thought-through plans. The build-up of military force to secure quick victory, many critics have argued, is too expensive, and the outcomes are prone to the inherent uncertainties of war.
Even worse, the scholar Jean-Loup Samaan noted, Israel’s Decisive Victory strategy took for granted “Israel’s ability to control, or dominate, the logic of military escalation: The Israel Defence Forces would determine when an operation starts and when it ends.” This, in turn, rested on the assumption Israel’s superior military means would guarantee victory.
General Andrian Danilevich, among the Soviet Union’s most perceptive strategists, warned that overwhelming superiority did not guarantee victory. “If the military art could be reduced to arithmetic,” he observed, “we would not need any wars. You could simply look at the correlation of forces, make some calculations, and tell your opponent, ‘We outnumber you 2:1, victory is ours, please surrender.’”
For its part, besieged by United States sanctions, Iran turned to what has come to be known as the Rings of Fire strategy. Knowing it could not win a conventional conflict against the United States, Tehran developed tactics of asymmetric warfare, intended to inflict losses its enemies would not be willing to suffer. The country also cultivated proxies from Gaza to Yemen, to ensure future wars would have to be fought on many fronts.
The assumption was that Iran would be able to outlast its enemies through sheer numbers. As the soldier and historian Dave Palmer famously wrote, though: “Attrition is not a strategy. It is, in fact, irrefutable proof of the absence of any strategy. A commander who resorts to attrition admits his failure to conceive of an alternative. He rejects warfare as an art and accepts it on the most non-professional terms imaginable.”
“He uses blood in lieu of brains,” Palmer pithily concluded.
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A lose-lose game
Today, both Iran and Israel find themselves locked in a lose-lose situation. Iran’s Rings of Fire have not secured its frontiers. Instead, its regime is economically crippled and losing legitimacy within. Even though fantasies the Ayatollahs might be overthrown have proven ill-founded, the country remains isolated and vulnerable. For its part, Israel’s maximum-force tactics have cost it international legitimacy and threaten its hard-won Arab regimes like Saudi Arabia. Worse, it could confront an Iran armed with nuclear weapons in the not-too-distant future.
From the restraint both Iran and Israel have shown as the Gaza war began to spill across borders in April, it’s clear leaders in both countries understand this, notwithstanding their hostile polemics. The Ayatollahs in Iran, though, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel, have locked themselves in political traps of their own making, which allows them little room for manoeuvre.
Earlier crises were tamped down by superpower intervention, which often ensured regional adversaries were compelled to back down from self-destructive intransigence. A United States mired in domestic political crisis and an international system broken by the war in Ukraine has, however, proved unable to respond effectively this time around.
This has left Iran and Israel both perched on the edge of lines both know they would be ill-advised to risk crossing. Their leaders, though, have left themselves no easy route for retreat.
Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint. He tweets with @praveenswami. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)