Shattered Assumptions: Missiles and Deterrence in the Middle East

By Samuel Helfont

Depending on one’s stance toward Israel, its penetration of Hezbollah’s telecommunications supply chain and its decimation of Hezbollah’s leadership was either diabolical or a work of genius. Either way, it was impressive from a technical perspective. Unfortunately, that type of mind-boggling operation as well as Israel’s more recent direct attacks in Iran tend to monopolize everyone’s attention. In this case, they have overshadowed an event with more important geostrategic implications for the Middle East. Three weeks before Israel detonated Hezbollah’s pagers and handheld radios, it thwarted the organization’s attempt to launch a large, coordinated salvo of several thousand rockets, missiles, and drones. In doing so, Israel upended the deterrent logic that has underpinned the balance of power in the region for decades.

Missile Defense and the Regional Balance of Power

During much of the Cold War, the United States depended on the “twin pillars” of Iran and Saudi Arabia to maintain gulf security and the free flow of oil on which global economics relied. Shortly after the fall of the Shah in Iran in 1979, the United States began to tilt toward Iraq to contain Iran. Following the Gulf War of 1991, relying on Iraq became untenable. The United States hoped that Saudi Arabia and the Arab states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) could handle the burden of containing Iran and securing the Persian Gulf. However, it would take time to build up Gulf Arab defenses as well as their ability to coordinate. In the meantime, the United States was forced to take a much more direct role in the region’s defense. The Gulf states have never developed sufficient defense capabilities to counter Iran, and they have often failed to maintain diplomatic relations, let alone share the type of sensitive information on capabilities and vulnerabilities required for a functional defense pact. As a result, the United States has been unable to extract itself from the region.

Iran’s conventional air and naval capabilities are limited. From the perspective of the United States and its allies, the most dangerous threat to Gulf security comes from Iranian missiles and drones. Since the 1990s, U.S. missile defense efforts in the Persian Gulf have faced an increasingly complex challenge due to Iran’s growing ability to saturate missile defense systems with large numbers of missiles, rockets, and drones. Iran has invested in short and medium-range ballistic missiles like the Shahab, Qiam, and Fateh-110 series, alongside its increasingly advanced drone technology. Theoretically, these missiles can be deployed in large numbers, often in mobile or concealed sites, allowing Iran to target Gulf states and U.S. bases from various locations.

Iran’s approach leverages the concept of saturation attacks, where defenses can be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. By deploying barrages of missiles and rockets simultaneously, Iran increases the chance that at least some will evade interception. The volume of Iran’s arsenal – including an estimated three thousand high-end missiles – poses a significant threat, as defending against every incoming projectile is technically and logistically challenging. This tactic not only stretches missile defense capabilities but also exploits the finite interceptor stockpiles of U.S. systems like the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3), which is used to defend critical assets like a military base, and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), which is used to protect wider areas.

Despite advancements in missile defense technology, the U.S. PAC-3 and THAAD systems are limited by their interceptor capacities and response times. Each interceptor battery can only handle a certain number of targets before needing to reload, creating vulnerabilities in the event of a massive, sustained attack. This limitation is further complicated by Iran’s development of more maneuverable missiles and loitering munitions – drones that can circle targets and evade radars before striking. When used in conjunction, these technologies place significant stress on missile defense systems, which are primarily designed to intercept high-altitude ballistic trajectories rather than swarming low-altitude projectiles.

To address this saturation threat, the United States has urged GCC states—such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain—to collaborate on an integrated air and missile defense network that can protect all the Gulf Arab states. However, achieving this level of coordination has proved challenging. The GCC nations possess a range of missile defense systems, including PAC-3 and THAAD, but these systems are not well integrated. Political tensions and rivalries, such as the rift between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, have often stalled efforts to establish a unified command structure, radar sharing, or coordinated response protocols.

Since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran has invested considerably in growing Hezbollah’s missile, rocket, and drone arsenal. Israel’s Iron Dome and indigenous defense systems proved effective against the smaller salvos that had characterized its conflicts since 2006. However, it has had difficulties preventing missile and rocket launches from either Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Gaza, even with significant military operations. Both groups used mobile launchers that were hidden within civilian infrastructure and spread throughout their territories, making them hard to target. Israeli officials worried that a full Hezbollah attack would overwhelm its systems, cause mass casualties, and destroy significant amounts of Israeli infrastructure. This threat seemed to deter Israel from launching major attacks on Hezbollah since 2006. As such, Iran has been able to use the threat of Hezbollah to hold Israel at risk. Doing so was meant to deter Israel and to a lesser extent the United States from attacking either Hezbollah or Iran.

Upending Assumptions

A day after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Hezbollah began firing rockets at northern Israel. Hezbollah avoided the type of large-scale, high-casualty attacks that would trigger a full-blown Israeli response. However, the attacks and threats were enough to force tens of thousands of Israelis to flee their homes in northern Israel. For most of 2023, Israel and Hezbollah engaged in tit-for-tat strikes. Both sides seemed deterred from escalating. This situation was tenable for Hezbollah. For Israel, the displacement of large portions of its population was unacceptable, and it began to launch more aggressive operations toward Iran and Hezbollah.

On April 1, Israel struck an Iranian consulate in Damascus Syria, killing senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officers. On July 31, it killed the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, while he was visiting Iran. The same day, it killed the Hezbollah military commander, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut. Hezbollah insisted that it would respond forcefully, especially for the killing of Shukr. On August 25, Hezbollah assembled the type of large-scale attack that Israel had feared.

Yet, unlike the one-off attacks that were difficult to prevent, the type of large-scale attack that could saturate Israeli missile defense required widescale coordination. The Israelis were able to detect and neutralize the threat. According to some reports, “100 fighter jets struck more than 40 Hezbollah launch sites primed with thousands of rockets and drones in southern Lebanon shortly before 5 a.m. local time.” It turns out that the type of large-scale attack that could overwhelm Israeli missile defenses proved to be not just a difference in scale but a difference in kind. Israel could not prevent small, one-off missile launches, and it was assumed that neither it nor the United States would be able to prevent larger attacks by Hezbollah or Iran. That assumption proved false.

Hezbollah’s deterrence was broken. In the following weeks came the beeper and handheld radio attacks, then the systematic killing of Hezbollah’s leadership and the ongoing destruction of its infrastructure in Lebanon.

The shattered assumptions in Israel’s war with Hezbollah have important regional implications. Most obviously, Iran has lost Hezbollah as a deterrent against Israel and, to some extent, the United States. More interestingly, the logic of missile defense in the Gulf and, thus Gulf security itself may need to be reexamined. Iran has launched two salvos of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel. Neither was large enough to saturate regional air and missile defense systems. Some missiles did get through, but they were not accurate or powerful enough to cause significant damage. Yet, in both cases, Israeli and American intelligence were able to detect the preparations for the attacks long before they were launched. In the latter attack, Iran denied that it offered any forewarning. Recent events in Lebanon might suggest that the Iranians could have trouble coordinating the type of large-scale attack capable of saturating regional air and missile defense without exposing themselves to a preemptive strike.

Nevertheless, there are reasons to doubt that Israel’s ability to thwart an attack from Hezbollah has serious implications for the United States and its allies to do the same against Iran. Most importantly, Lebanon is a small, compact state and most of Hezbollah’s missiles are a short distance from the Israeli border. Iran, by contrast, is several magnitudes larger and is separated from most US and allied Arab militaries by the Persian Gulf. Thus, the tyranny of space and distance would impede attempts to strike disparate targets spread throughout Iran. Additionally, it remains unclear to outsiders how exact the information that the United States and its regional partners were able to collect on Iranian missile launches earlier this year and whether that information was precise enough to launch preemptive strikes. Air and missile detection systems in the Gulf are probably not as sophisticated or as penetrating as Israel’s systems for monitoring Hezbollah.

Yet, one would assume that a massive Iranian attack on Gulf Arab infrastructure would not occur in a vacuum. The United States and its allies would have ample time to position for such an attack. If coordinating a large Iranian attack produces the same sort of targetable intelligence as it did when Hezbollah attempted to do so, the United States could preemptively neutralize a significant number of Iranian missiles and drones prior to their launch, even if they were deep inside Iran. That type of preemptive attack almost certainly would not eliminate the threat, but it might make anti-air and missile systems such as THAAD and PAC-3 effective enough to forestall a crushing Iranian blow.

Conclusion: Deterrence of the Mind

Whether or not the United States and its allies in the region could really prevent a massive Iranian air and missile barrage might not be as important as the doubts that have already been raised. Deterrence ultimately occurs in the minds of stakeholders. The Iranians have already lost Hezbollah as a deterrent. If Iranian leaders feel uncertain about their remaining capabilities, they may begin to look for alternatives. Nuclear weapons are the most obvious option, but they could move in other, unexpected, and for now unknown directions as well. In the meantime, strategists dealing with the region need to begin reexamining their deeply held beliefs. The assumptions that have characterized the past few decades – and the careers of most analysts – may have just been upended.  

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Samuel Helfont is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Middle East Program, and an Associate Professor of Strategy and Policy in the Naval War College program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.