The low-boiling conflict between Israel and Iran has shaped the Middle East for decades. Among the many conflicts that have shaken the region, theirs has long been among the most explosive. While the two have avoided escalating into direct war, they have attacked each other mostly silently and, in the case of Iran, often by proxy.

With the outbreak of the current war between Israel and the Iranian-backed Palestinian group Hamas, the conflict has entered a dangerous new phase. This struggle attracted Iran as well as other Iranian-backed militant groups. Tensions rose after Hamas political leader Ismail Haniye was killed, possibly by Israel, while visiting Iran in July. Then in late September, Israeli forces assassinated the leader of Hezbollah, Iran’s most valuable regional ally, and advanced into southern Lebanon as part of a campaign against the militias. Iran fired nearly 200 missiles directly at the country, a major escalation on October 1. In retaliation, Israel launched airstrikes on targets across Iran in the early hours of October 26.

Why are Israel and Iran enemies?

Israel and Iran had been allies since the reign of Iran’s last ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in the 1950s, but the friendship ended abruptly with the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979. The country’s new leaders adopted a strong anti-Israel stance, condemning Jews. The state as an imperialist power in the Middle East. Iran has supported groups that regularly fight Israel, particularly Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthi rebels, which the United States designates as a terrorist organization.

Israel sees Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons as a threat to its existence and is thought to be behind a sabotage campaign against the country’s atomic program. Iranian leaders say they have no ambitions to build nuclear weapons. The Israelis point to a cache of documents that intelligence agents smuggled out of Iran in 2018 that suggest otherwise. Israeli officials have repeatedly hinted that if Iran reaches the threshold of its weapons capability, they would attack its nuclear program using air power, as they did against Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007.

What is Hezbollah’s role?

Lebanon is the oldest front of the shadow war. In response to Israel’s invasion of the south of the country in 1982, a militia that would become Hezbollah was formed by Lebanese Muslims belonging to the Shiite sect of Islam dominant in Iran. Their group has to some extent become a proxy for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s leading security force.

Israel and Hezbollah have fought many times, including in 2006. Since Hamas attacked Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, provoking the current war, Hezbollah has expressed its solidarity with Hamas by firing missiles, mortars, and rockets at Israel almost daily. It encourages Israel to return fire of its own. With its significant combat power and arsenal, which includes long-range and precision-guided missiles, Hezbollah is considered Iran’s most valuable asset to project its influence in the Middle East.

What are the other fronts of the Israel-Iran conflict?

Syria. Iran has established a military presence in Syria throughout the civil war. He did this both to support his ally, President Bashar al-Assad, and to aid Hezbollah by creating a land bridge for the transfer of weapons from Iran through Iraq and Syria. For Israel, this created a second enemy presence on its northern border beyond Hezbollah. To counter this and stop the flow of weapons, Israel has been attacking arms shipments inside Syria and other targets it says are linked to Iran and its allies for years, killing Iranians in some cases, according to media reports. Attacks on Iranian targets in Syria attributed to Israel accelerated after October 7.

Regional waters. Tit-for-tat attacks against commercial ships began in 2019. Although neither Israel nor Iran has claimed responsibility for the attacks on connected ships, they are thought to be behind them. Targets include Iranian tankers carrying oil to Syria; an Iranian ship serving as a floating base for the Revolutionary Guard off the coast of Yemen; and cargo ships owned or affiliated with Israelis.

As naval battles escalate, Houthi rebels in Yemen disrupted shipping in the Red Sea by attacking ships as a sign of solidarity with Hamas. They say they are targeting Israeli-bound ships, as well as the US and UK, which are carrying out retaliatory attacks on Houthi targets. However, ships without such ties were hit.

Yemen. The Houthis, who have controlled Yemen’s northwest since the outbreak of the civil war in 2014, also launch missiles and drones at Israel. Most have been captured, but in July a Houthi drone killed a man in Tel Aviv. Israel launched retaliatory air strikes on Yemen.

Iraq. Iran, which accuses separatist groups in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region of collaborating with foreign security services against it, has launched multiple attacks in the region since late 2022. Israel has used facilities in northern Iraq to gather intelligence on Iran in the past, according to multiple reports.

What about attacks within the two countries?

Israel and Iran opened fire on each other’s territory for the first time earlier this year. Iran launched a massive missile and drone attack on Israel on April 13. This attack was precipitated by an airstrike two weeks ago on Iran’s diplomatic buildings in the Syrian capital Damascus, which was widely attributed to but not acknowledged by Israel. Seven Iranian military personnel, including a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guard, were killed in the attack.

The Iranian attack led to a more limited return offensive by Israel on April 19. The dams caused minimal damage, but they set a precedent for open and direct conflict between the two countries. Then came the changes in October.

In the past, Iran has mostly absorbed Israeli attacks on its interests in Syria. With one exception, in 2018 forces there unleashed a barrage of missiles aimed at Israeli positions on the Golan Heights, a plateau that Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 war and later annexed. Israel responded with a much greater show of force.

Covert attacks have become more common in both countries. Both Iran and Hamas hold Israel responsible for the killing of Hamas leader Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31. Israel is widely thought to be behind the assassination of five Iranian nuclear scientists in Tehran and numerous attacks on nuclear sites inside Iran since 2010.

More than a decade ago, malware known as Stuxnet compromised operations at an Iranian nuclear enrichment facility that was suspected to be a U.S. and Israeli operation.

In October 2021, an Iranian general said that Israel was likely behind a cyberattack that crippled gas stations in Iran. And in January 2023, after a drone attack on Iran’s ammunition depot near the central city of Isfahan, two US newspapers reported that Israel was responsible.

Cyberattacks launched by Iran include a hack aimed at disrupting computers and water flow in two regions of Israel, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

How do the Israeli and Iranian armies compare?

Israeli forces have a huge technological advantage over Iranian forces. This is due in part to military and financial support from the United States, which has long sought to ensure Israel’s advantage as part of its commitment to the security of the Jewish state. Israel, for example, is so far the only state in the Middle East to purchase Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 fighter jet, its most expensive weapons system ever.

Israel is also believed to have nuclear weapons, but this capability has never been acknowledged. Iran has accumulated enough enriched uranium to build several nuclear bombs if its leaders choose to purify the heavy metal to the 90% level typically used in such weapons. He will still need to master the process of weaponizing the fuel to produce an operable device capable of hitting a distant target.

Sanctions and political isolation have blocked Iran’s access to foreign military technology and led it to develop its own weapons, including the missiles and drones it fired at Israel in April. Iran’s warplanes are mostly older models inherited from before the country’s 1979 revolution. The country hopes to improve its military capabilities through increased cooperation with Russia. So far, the high-end Russian military products Iran wants most, including the Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, remain on its wish list.

The Iranian military, despite being at a technological disadvantage, is thought to have a significant stockpile of ballistic and cruise missiles and cheap unmanned aerial vehicles, or unmanned aerial vehicles, which it deployed against Israel in April.

As Iran learned in this strike and the subsequent one on October 1, penetrating Israel’s key air defenses is a tall order. Israeli Air Force fighters lag behind. There are also Israel’s Arrow and David’s Sling air defense systems, as well as interceptor capabilities from the United States and other allied forces in the region.

Iran’s own defensive arsenal includes surface-to-air missile systems against aircraft and cruise missiles, including Russia’s S-300 and the domestically produced Arman anti-ballistic missile system. These are not as battle-tested as Israel’s defenses; This is evidence that Iran prefers asymmetric warfare in which it can project enormous power over head-on combat.