Preparing for Iran’s Retaliation: Military Build-Up and the Risk of a Regional War Including Hezbollah and Iraqi Forces

By Elijah J. Magnier

Washington’s preparations for renewed attacks on Iran should not be assessed solely through the vulnerability of American bases and Gulf infrastructure. Iranian retaliation would include Israel from the outset, even if Israeli aircraft did or did not participate in the opening strikes. That would immediately widen the war. Tehran would not confine its response to American military facilities or business interests in neighbouring countries as well as energy, harbours and airports. The scenario examined here involves concentrated strikes reaching successive Israeli cities, one city at the time, making Israel bear direct destructive consequences alongside Washington. The precise targeting sequence remains undisclosed; the strategic point is the refusal to isolate American involvement.

Iran would also face the next confrontation with Middle Eastern partners whose calculations increasingly concern their own survival. According to sources familiar with Hezbollah’s position, the organisation will participate if war against Iran resumes. That will also be valid for the Iraqi resistance groups who will join the next war without hesitation.

Together, these developments raise a question beyond whether Washington can damage Iran further. Could another offensive connect several conflicts that previous negotiations attempted to manage separately? The danger is that pressure intended to isolate Tehran instead persuades its partners that fighting together offers greater protection than waiting for separate confrontations.

Hezbollah and the danger of being isolated

For Hezbollah, participation concerns more than solidarity with Iran. A campaign destroying Iranian energy facilities and infrastructure would weaken an essential source of support while damaging Tehran’s capacity to recover. Hezbollah’s calculation is that such an outcome would leave it more vulnerable to the next phase of Israeli military pressure.

Israel could then seek to advance further into southern Lebanon, occupy additional territory and exploit Hezbollah’s reduced strategic support. Expansion beyond existing positions is a risk rather than an accomplished decision. Nevertheless, the prospect explains why Hezbollah does not regard remaining outside Iran’s war as a reliable guarantee of safety.

The Arabic proverb expresses that calculation: “I was devoured the day the white bull was devoured.” Three bulls survive through unity until a lion persuades them to abandon one another. Facing death alone, the survivor recognises that the first abandonment destroyed the protection on which his own survival had depended.

Hezbollah’s intervention would not mean that it could stop Israel militarily. Its purpose would be to impose additional demands on Israeli forces and complicate the concentration of pressure against Iran. Fighting across several fronts could increase the political and operational costs of a campaign designed around confronting each adversary separately.

For Lebanon, the intended opportunity would be a comprehensive agreement with Washington ending hostilities across connected fronts. This would seek a different route from the Lebanese–Israeli framework, whose failure to deliver dependable cessation, withdrawal and implementation has undermined confidence in its ability to provide protection against continuing Israeli military pressure.

The distinction concerns implementation as much as signatures. Israel’s continued operations and Washington’s failure to secure durable compliance have deprived the framework of credibility among its opponents. Their argument is that American sponsorship has not delivered sufficient restraint, making another separately negotiated Lebanese arrangement appear inadequate without stronger regional guarantees.

Tehran previously sought to include Lebanon within the Islamabad understanding, while the separate Lebanese track allowed that linkage to be bypassed. The strategic objective now would be to restore the connection: ending the confrontation with Iran would also require addressing Lebanon, rather than permitting negotiations to leave one front exposed.

Iraq and Yemen: resisting separate settlements

Some Iraqi resistance factions face a related calculation. Their independent weapons remain a target of American pressure, and Iran’s weakening could reduce their capacity to resist demands for disarmament. From their perspective, their future cannot be secured through an Iranian settlement that leaves them facing subsequent political or military coercion.

That reasoning supports a demand for an agreement encompassing the resistance organisations rather than successive settlements isolating them. It does not make those factions identical to the Prime Minister’s ‘Popular Mobilisation Forces’ as a whole, nor remove Baghdad’s authority. Their organisational interests remain distinct from the Iraqi government’s responsibilities towards its citizens.

Yemen cannot be omitted from that calculation. Ansar Allah’s objectives extend beyond Iran’s security or the reopening of maritime routes. In the scenario examined here, it intends to continue fighting until Yemen is liberated from foreign military involvement, including the departure of Saudi forces, rather than accept a limited accommodation.

Those objectives create a challenge for any regional negotiation. A bilateral American–Iranian agreement would not automatically settle Yemen’s territorial and political disputes. Conversely, connecting every front increases the demands placed on a comprehensive agreement. The attraction of collective protection therefore comes with greater complexity in defining acceptable and enforceable terms.

From deterrence by narrative towards unified action

The consequence could be a transformation of the Axis of the Resistance. Over more than eighteen years, its collective identity has supported deterrence by narrative: adversaries had to consider possible intervention by multiple partners, despite differences in command, national priorities and willingness to fight on any particular occasion or front.

That history should not be described as an absence of all coordination. Earlier joint-operation claims and documented cooperation contradict such an absolute formulation. The important distinction is that selective coordination did not establish permanent, comprehensive authority over every member. A regional network was not automatically one army under one commander.

The present scenario points towards convergence around a common command and objective: preventing successive defeats and securing a settlement encompassing all fronts. This is the strategic development identified here. Its institutional form, operational authority and allocation of responsibilities remain undisclosed; shared participation alone cannot establish how a unified command functions.

Preparing the shield alongside the sword

Additional Patriot deployments in Saudi Arabia and Qatar illustrate the relationship between protection and offensive freedom. Reporting linked the reinforcements to concerns about Iranian retaliation against energy facilities. Washington is addressing vulnerabilities that could otherwise strengthen Gulf opposition to attacks whose regional consequences neighbouring governments would struggle to avoid altogether.

Protecting those facilities has an immediate defensive purpose. It can also make offensive action politically easier by reassuring governments worried about their principal revenue sources. Yet reassurance is not consent. Receiving American protection does not establish that Gulf leaders approved another campaign or obtained influence over its objectives and timing.

The defensive coverage remains incomplete. Additional batteries can protect selected installations without shielding every refinery, pipeline, airport or commercial centre. Saudi Arabia’s geographical scale and renewed exchanges with Ansar Allah compound the demands. Reinforcement can reduce particular vulnerabilities while leaving substantial exposure to disruption, interception failures and prolonged economic uncertainty.

Military movements and the danger of miscalculation

Recent Israeli flights towards Iran added another source of tension. Reporting described aircraft crossing Syrian and Iraqi airspace before turning back near Iranian territory. Israel reportedly described the operation to Washington as an exercise and demonstration of force. That account does not itself establish joint planning or American operational authorisation.

Iran’s reported missile exercise belongs separately in the chronology. It was reported before the Israeli flights and should not be described as their established consequence. Both developments demonstrate signalling under conditions of distrust, when one side’s exercise can resemble another side’s attack preparation and create pressure for precautionary military responses.

Naval movements also require distinctions between planned deployment, documented location and arrival. Early reporting associated approximately 9,000–10,000 personnel with the Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group and Makin Island amphibious force. Those totals describe formations, rather than a verified net reinforcement after departing ships, rotations and temporary overlaps have been counted.

The 19 October fleet report placed Theodore Roosevelt departing Yokosuka following a visit to Japan. Its reported destination must remain distinct from that documented position. Projections of three carriers operating together should likewise remain projections until confirmed. Greater concentration would expand American options without supplying an achievable political objective automatically.

Reported withdrawals of American personnel from regional diplomatic and military facilities add another dimension to force protection. American intelligence warnings described alleged Iranian preparations to attack Americans. Those assessments deserve scrutiny, while remaining distinguishable from independently established evidence of particular plots or a publicly demonstrated operational order issued by Tehran.

The RAF Fairford investigation illustrates that distinction. Police re-arrested two men on 20 October on suspicion of assisting Iranian intelligence and assessed Iranian state involvement as highly likely. Investigative assessments, criminal charges and judicial findings remain separate stages. Their political significance must not erase the evidential differences between those stages.

Diplomacy and the struggle over objectives

Diplomacy nevertheless remains possible. On 24 October, Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan said Tehran had offered to reopen Hormuz in exchange for lifting the American naval blockade. He accused Washington of rejecting that proposal. The account matters because it describes reciprocal initial steps rather than insisting every dispute be settled beforehand.

That proposal should be distinguished from Iran’s broader demands concerning sanctions, frozen assets, compensation and regional hostilities. Initial arrangements and comprehensive settlements involve different sequences. Iran may reject concessions presented as capitulation while accepting reciprocal measures, provided its leadership believes implementation would produce tangible relief and protection against another attack.

Netanyahu’s declared objective of overthrowing Iran’s government deepens Tehran’s distrust. Infrastructure attacks can then appear part of a campaign against the state’s capacity to survive, rather than leverage towards limited concessions. Under those circumstances, additional destruction may strengthen resistance if accommodation offers no credible protection from continuing attempts at destabilisation.

Whose war, and towards what outcome?

Trump has declared objectives concerning Iran’s nuclear capabilities, regional activities and threats to Americans. Renewed bombing of commercial, business and energy infrastructure would not achieve those objectives. Destruction alone provides no mechanism guaranteeing nuclear restraint, political compliance, reduced retaliation or an enforceable settlement protecting American interests.

Israel could nevertheless obtain a different result: deeper damage to Iran’s wealth, infrastructure and capacity to recover. Weakening a regional adversary could serve its pursuit of military predominance even if Tehran conceded nothing. A campaign could therefore deliver Israeli gains while failing the political tests Washington invoked to justify it.

The distinction is between an operation that destroys effectively and a strategy that secures American objectives. Washington could incur regional retaliation, additional military burdens and economic disruption while Israel gains from Iran’s prolonged weakening. Calling that outcome an American success would require demonstrating benefits beyond the destruction of another country.

If war resumes on those terms, my conclusion is that its objectives would be Israeli, without a convincing connection to greater American security. Iran’s inclusion of Israel and Hezbollah’s participation would widen the consequences immediately. Closer resistance coordination could then turn another campaign into the regional confrontation Washington cannot control.