Iran president adviser says anti-Israel response to be 'intelligence-based'

An adviser to Iran’s president has told The Washington Post that Iran’s anticipated response against Israel will be “intelligence-based” and not through missiles and drones.

Aliasghar Shafieian, campaign media adviser to newly elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, suggested to The Washington Post that Tehran’s retaliation was unlikely to be a repeat of April’s hours-long volley. The killing of Haniyeh “was an intelligence-based mission,” he said, and “Iran’s response will be of a similar nature and at a similar level.”

Iran will respond after it takes time for “contemplation and patience,” Shafieian said. He acknowledged that the fallout from Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran is “a significant challenge” for Pezeshkian but said the government was capable of “managing the situation.”

“Maybe 40 years ago, some of Iran’s actions were out of excitement and emotional,” he said. Now, he added, the country will respond in a “mature” way.

A response from Iranian intelligence could take the form of attacks on soft Israeli targets overseas, such as embassies, said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA senior operations officer who served in counterterrorism roles in the Middle East.

“I don’t believe the Iranians have the reach to hit Israeli security officials, for example, on Israeli soil,” he said.

“The Iranians and their allies are treading cautiously,” said a Lebanese individual with close ties to Lebanon’s Hezbollah who has been briefed on communications with Tehran. A similar account was provided by a member of parliament in Iraq who is closely linked with Iranian-backed militias in the country: "We were told [by Iran] that it’s going to be a limited response," he said, because Tehran "doesn’t want to expand the war."

In recent meetings, according to the Lebanese individual with ties to Hezbollah, Iran has expressed concern that Israel and the United States could strike its nuclear program, using a full-scale conflict as a pretext for “essentially neutralizing Iran’s nuclear deterrence.”