October Missile Attack Proves Costly for Iranian Regime

Iran has threatened another strike against Israel in recent days. While Iranian attacks impose significant costs on Israel by requiring the use of costly missile interceptors, they are even more costly for the Iranian regime. Iran’s October 1 ballistic missile attack cost the regime around $2.3 billion, at least four and six times the estimated cost (and at least 42 and 124 times more in terms of GDP per capita) for the United States and Israel, respectively, to defend against it. [This version of the brief was updated on December 9th to reflect U.S. and Israeli GDP per capita.] 

This suggests that direct Iranian attacks using its most sophisticated weapons are far less advantageous to the regime than the asymmetric costs its proxies can impose on Israeli and U.S. defenses with more rudimentary projectile attacks. Iran’s attack also incurred a strong Israeli response that knocked out the regime’s main air defenses and elements of its ballistic missile and nuclear programs.

JINSA’s analysis underscores that the cost curve is more favorable to Israel and the United States when it is Iran—not its proxies—forced to engage in the conflict, and bear its expenses, directly. Iran’s strike also shows the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) high degree of effectiveness in neutralizing Iran’s proxy strategy, as Israel’s degradation of Hamas and Hezbollah to unprece-dentedly weak states ended Iran’s longtime approach of staying at arm’s length to inflict costs on Israel, instead forcing Iran to act—and absorb costs directly—on behalf of its proxies.

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