Alarm rang throughout Israel’s corridors of power April 20. The deputy head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami, threatened rocket attacks on strategic targets deep within Israel. He said, “You are surrounded on all sides and you have nowhere to run other than to fall into the sea.” The all-clear sounded two days later, when Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif minimized the option of regional war in a CBS interview, reacting with moderation to the Israeli-attributed airstrike on an Iranian base in Syria earlier this month. However, he added that Israelis “should expect that if they continue to violate territorial integrity of other states, there'll be consequences.”

There are two ways to interpret the gap between the attitudes of senior Iranians. Zarif’s pragmatism could be intended to distract attention from Iran’s growing aggression toward Israel on the borders of Syria and Lebanon. If this reading is correct, Israel has no choice but to increase its military efforts to destroy Iranian bases in these neighboring states. It's also possible that the contradictory messages reflect a deepening domestic struggle between two camps: the zealous traditionalist camp of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard versus the pragmatic Reformist camp led by President Hassan Rouhani.

Khamenei and his loyalists are unhappy with the 2015 agreement between Iran and world powers over the country’s nuclear program. They are seeking to expand Shiite hegemony in the region, even at the cost of soldiers’ lives and the well-being of Iran’s civilian population. Rouhani, on the other hand, is working to promote social and economic reforms, even at the cost of giving up Iran’s nuclear programs and supporting the 2002 peace plan that the Arab League is offering Israel. One need not be a diehard supporter of the Israeli NGO Peace Now to hope that the second camp will emerge with the upper hand in this domestic standoff. Paradoxically, however, Israeli government policy, backed by the military, is actually strengthening the hand of the extremists; every destruction of an Iranian facility attributed to the “Zionist army” invites a popular demand for a fitting response. Every funeral of an Iranian officer killed in such a strike generates calls for revenge.

As strange as it seems, Israel has an interest in Iran’s continued wallowing in the Syrian mud and its ongoing investment of precious resources in Lebanon and Yemen. A recent position paper by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center notes, “A manifestation of the growing public displeasure with the heavy financial toll Iran has paid for its military involvement in the region could be found in the wave of protests that swept across Iran in late December 2017 and early January 2018.” This toll includes a sharp 35% drop in the value of the Iranian rial over the past year and restrictions on the purchase of foreign currency for travel abroad. The increase in production recorded after the nuclear agreement was signed has since ground to a virtual halt and tens of thousands of families have lost their livelihoods.