TEHRAN – Standing before the cameras last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to appear confident and assured while addressing the threat of Iranian and Hezbollah retaliation for the assassinations of Hezbollah commander Fouad Shokor and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh.

“Israel will exact a very heavy price for any aggression against us,” he said before promising that the regime is “ready for every scenario.” Netanyahu made the remarks on July 31, the day Israel targeted Haniyeh in his temporary resistance in Tehran with a short-range projectile. The Palestinian leader had traveled to Iran to attend President Masoud Pezeshkian’s inauguration ceremony. 

Following the prime minister's remarks, a coordinated effort emerged to diminish the perceived threat of Iran's impending retaliation, and possibly that of the entire Axis of Resistance. Both the regime's media and Western outlets worked in tandem to remind people of Iran's "failed" operation against the occupied territories in April. The operation involved the launch of about 300 hundred of Iran’s older drones, which aimed to occupy Israeli, American, British, and Jordanian air defenses before handfuls of missiles could hit Israeli military bases involved in the regime’s attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus. 

Once Operation True Promise ended, Iranian officials reported that all their intended aims had been successfully targeted. Israel and its Western allies, however, initially claimed that 99 percent of the projectiles had been intercepted – a claim they were forced to drop after videos of several missiles hitting their targets emerged online. Later, some officials came up with a new interception rate of 86% while the regime banned the distribution of footage captured the night of Iran’s attack. Israel and its allies eventually stopped addressing those questioning the true success of Tehran’s operation altogether. 

The audience Netanyahu hoped to sway, and the media has been trying to reassure, have seemingly seen through the vainglorious act and lies. Reports show that since Haniyeh's assassination, Israelis have been spending their nights in shelters, with footage capturing complete emptiness on Tel Aviv's streets during the darker hours. The fact that Netanyahu himself has allegedly decided to reside in a missile-proof house in the occupied al-Quds, doesn’t help soothe his people’s anxiety either. 

Why can't Israelis escape the grip of fear?

By the end of Tuesday, Iran's response had yet to come, but Israelis were already reeling from a one-two punch delivered by Hezbollah, which is expected to accompany Iran in retaliation. The Lebanese movement’s rockets infiltrated the occupied territories on Saturday, followed by drone strikes on an Israeli military base on Tuesday. One Tel Aviv resident, expressing mounting anxiety on social media, questioned how the regime could effectively "tackle Iran's retaliation" when Israelis were already dying before the storm had even arrived. She made the remarks under a picture showing the aftermath of the second Hezbollah attack, which left multiple dead and several wounded. 

West Asia analyst Alireza Komeili believes the reason why Israelis can’t find peace of mind despite constant efforts by the media can be understood by taking a look at the security identity the regime has tried to build in the past 7 decades. “Throughout its existence, Israel has been trying to project an image of unparalleled and self-reliant military and intelligence strength,” he told the Tehran Times. “Today, nothing is left of that image. The regime’s security failure on October 7, its woeful inability to defeat Hamas in Gaza in the past 10 months, its hesitancy to reciprocate Hezbollah’s attacks that have emptied north of the occupied territories, and its exposed reliance on the U.S. to protect itself against Iran have completely shattered the deterrence Israel had established for itself.”

The regime's assassinations of key Resistance figures are a desperate attempt to reassert its pummelled deterrence, the expert said, adding that Israel is unlikely to succeed at the task. “These terror acts show the regime understands that it would be unable to engage in long confrontations with Iran or even Hezbollah for that matter. So, I think returning to the level of deterrence Israel had before October 7, would be almost impossible,” Komeili explained. 

An inability to restore deterrence means Israel would have to refrain from acting recklessly in the future, the analyst said. “There are huge rifts in the Israeli society and the war in the past ten months will certainly exacerbate the regime’s economic woes.  So, I think that in the future, Israel will be a far weaker entity that the U.S. can no longer use to importune regional countries. Of course, that’s if some Muslim nations don’t choose the path of betrayal.”