Is pressure mounting in Iran? Dr. Hassan Al-Ashmian, an Iran affairs researcher, addressed today (Thursday) the delay in the Iranian response to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, and claimed that there is a dispute among regime officials about the nature of the attack on Israel.
“There is a major disagreement within the Iranian regime. The question is—should we enter into a war for a Palestinian who died in Tehran?” Al-Ashmian said in an interview with Saudi network "Al-Hadath." “The Iranian regime has not even managed to convince its loyalists to go to war for a Palestinian who died in Tehran.”
According to him, “From the very beginning, I had doubts about whether Iran would respond strongly against Israel. It now seems that such a response will not come from the Iranian side—and even if it does, it will be merely formal and for show, not something that will cause Israel significant pain.” However, the Saudi researcher estimated that the attack will still take place in the next two days: “In my estimation, we will see an Iranian action on Thursday or Friday.”
“I believe that the Iranians, and even Hassan Nasrallah, have come to the conclusion that an engagement involving the Iranian regime or missile fire from Iran at Israel means entering a ‘classic’ war—and in such a war, the Iranian regime will ultimately lose,” he emphasized. “For 45 years, they have been releasing slogans about how they want to destroy Israel. But now they do not have advanced air defence systems, so they have asked Russia to provide them with such a system. There are many economic issues in Iran. In the future, Iran’s ‘proxies’ will carry out this mission because the costs will be borne by the people in those countries, the Yemeni and Iraqi people.”