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Notes -
The nature of the relationship with the proxies, the nature of the threat the proxies pose to the opponent, the nature of the ways to provide both off-ramps to the target to stop the proxy war, and the relative difference in escalation risk of attacking proxies in the backer's countries as a contrast to the status quo.
(Or- in other words- Russia is not already in a conventional military conflict with NATO, and both does not face existential risk from the proxy and can end the proxy war by a return to conduct that respects Russia's existence. Iran's coalition instigated the framing conflict, is already in the attempted Intifada, is already executing a sustained bombardment campaign, is already disrupting maritime shipping- Iran can't really leverage threats it is already executing as deterence against an Israeli escalation.)
In case you were reading a moral judgement, don't. This was a utility-viewpoint assessment.
If you missed the argument, I suppose, but even that wouldn't mean that the distinction between being a country and not being a country isn't rightfully a dominant distinction, or even the only distinction that needs to be defended.
The international system revolves around the premise of state sovereignty. States are owed / entitled / accorded certain privileges and presumptions that non-state actors, hence why Russia spent it's pre-war justification narrative trying to discredit that there was a Ukrainian nation to have an independent state. While Iran and its axis of resistance have also rejected the right of an Israeli state to defend itself, Israel is indeed a state, and states do have a right to defend themselves against other states who perpetrate attacks against them.
Iran's mistake in disregarding the plausible deniability / gap between proxy and state backer is that this gap is what is required to try and exploit an advantage of unilateral aggression between states, even as Iran set up a weak paradigm that decreased it's deterrence against being called out. Israel pre-attack was already in the midst of an Iranian-backed attempted Intifada, major artillery campaign, maritime disruption campaign, and global anti-jewish terrorism efforts... and these all were instigated / arranged while competition with Iran was at a much, much lower level. Iran doesn't get deterrence value out of threats it is already executing- it's the threat of retaliation that drives deterence, and pre-emptively executing it just leads to targets accepting it as a sunk cost and retaliating.
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