Low Heat, High Stakes: Is Another Hybrid War Between Israel and Iran Coming?

By Elijah J. Magnier –

The prospect of a renewed Israeli–Iranian confrontation is no longer hypothetical but increasingly explicit in the rhetoric of political and military leaders. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently declared that Iran “has 400 kg of 60% enriched uranium intact,” insisting that Israel retains the right to “destroy Iran’s military nuclear capability.” The statement was widely interpreted as a signal that the twelve-day war between the two adversaries—halted only by a verbal ceasefire rather than a formal agreement—was not an isolated clash but a prelude to further escalation.

On the Iranian side, sources close to decision-makers suggested that Israel could attempt to reignite hostilities if its intelligence, supported by Western agencies, were to locate and assassinate Supreme Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei. They noted that Sayyed Khamenei’s rapid intervention and control during the twelve-day conflict—appointing all military commanders within six hours of the war’s start—was decisive in stabilising the system and retaliating to the Israeli and the Americans.

Defence Minister Amir Nasirzadeh conceded that Iran had overstated aspects of its military capabilities prior to the conflict, fostering a degree of overconfidence within the leadership. At the same time, he emphasised that Tehran deliberately withheld its most advanced systems during the fighting. “We possess missiles with warheads of far greater destructive power than those used in the 12-day war,” he noted, citing manoeuvring re-entry vehicles designed to evade missile defences as well as the Qasem Basir, described as Iran’s most precise missile system. Importantly, Nasirzadeh underlined that production lines remained uninterrupted throughout the conflict, projecting both resilience and continuity under sustained bombardment.

A parallel assessment emerged from Hezbollah’s internal investigative committee, which reviewed the aftermath of the 66-day Israeli war on Lebanon. Its findings likewise acknowledged that Hezbollah’s leadership had overstated the movement’s ability to impose a sustained strategic deterrent on Israel—particularly the capacity to dissuade Tel Aviv from contemplating a major offensive over the long term. This overstatement of capabilities also reflected a miscalculation shared with Tehran: both Hezbollah and Iran underestimated the scope of Israel’s intelligence-gathering apparatus, the depth of its cooperation with Western agencies, and the extensive bank of targets Israel had compiled over decades. These factors, coupled with Israel’s determination to strike the heart of Hezbollah command and control, leaders and missiles warehouses on one side and Iran’s missile program and nuclear infrastructure decisively, exposed the limits of the deterrence narrative that both Tehran and Hezbollah sought to project. The lesson was that exaggerating capabilities not only risks fostering false confidence internally but also invites adversaries to expose vulnerabilities, undermining the credibility of deterrence itself.