Iran’s leaders may be trying to rally support at home by adopting a belligerent stance towards critics of its nuclear program and threatening to plunge the Middle East into war, some experts say.

Tensions in the Middle East rose steadily Tuesday as Iran threatened to launch preemptive strikes against Israel and the West.

A day after it launched a massive military exercise to simulate defending against attacks on key nuclear sites — and two days after vowing to cut off oil sales to Britain and France in retaliation for sanctions — the deputy head of Iran’s armed forces said that, if threatened, Iran will launch preemptive assaults against its foes.

“Our strategy now is that if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran’s national interests, and want to decide to do that, we will act without waiting for their actions,” Mohammed Hejazi the deputy head of Iran’s armed forces told the Fars news agency.

His comments came as Iran is reeling from economic sanctions imposed by Washington and the West and as talk of a potential Israeli military strike against Iran has escalated.

Iran’s leaders see themselves as victims of an undeclared war being waged by a coalition of the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and some European states, said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, a Middle East expert at Syracuse University in New York state.

They are under threat from cyber attacks like the Stuxnet virus; someone is killing their nuclear scientists and blowing up their nuclear facilities; the United States and Europeans have ratcheted up sanctions and are increasing contacts with Iranian opposition groups.

“Tehran’s leaders are trying to rally support by speaking tough to the outside world,” Mr. Boroujerdi said. “They are trying to use threats to enhance their position. By reading the riot act to their nemesis, they are saying we too have aces up our sleeve and are capable of acting.

“I think this is Iran’s way of saying, ‘Look out, we can reach out and touch you.’”

Some elements within Iran’s ruling elite may think it is worthwhile to provoke some sort of military response from Israel, simply to solidify their own hold on power.

“I think there’s a legitimate concern that you have hardline actors in Tehran who feel like the walls are closing around them internationally and domestically there is this tremendous popular disaffection. And one way to try to resuscitate revolutionary fervor is to invite an attack, provoke some type of a military conflagration for their own domestic expediency,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Earlier this month, Alireza Forghani, a former governor of Kish Province and an ally of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, published an essay on the Internet entitled. “Iran Must Attack Israel by 2014.”

The article echoes Israeli claims for the need to attack Iran’s nuclear sites before Tehran enters a “zone of immunity” in which its nuclear program can not be rolled back, claiming it would be possible to “annihilate Israel” in just nine minutes through a series of rocket and missile attacks centred on specific urban centres, nuclear facilities and military targets.

The Iranian article appeared just a day after Ayatollah Khamenei delivered a Feb. 3 speech in which he talked of the need to wipe out the “cancerous growth” of Israel.

Iran has adopted an increasingly bellicose tone just days after it was accused of sending teams of assassins after Israeli diplomatic targets in India, Georgia and Thailand last week.

There has been a steady drumbeat of threats and counter-threats that have seen Iran promise to block international oil shipments through the Straits of Hormuz should oil sanctions cripple its own economy.

Iranian naval threats in the Strait of Hormuz have been matched by a U.S. naval build-up, supplemented with warships from Britain and France, in the Persian Gulf. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has also recently lost three surveillance drones over Iran and Iran claims it broke up a U.S. spy ring and has condemned a U.S. citizen to death.

“At times of crisis it is usually easier to control the domestic situation and it is easier, they think, to make the public make sacrifices,” said Ali Alfoneh, an expert on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards at the American Enterprise Institute. “For example, during the war with Iraq the Iranian public paid a very, very high price. But the public was ready to do that because of the war.

“Here the regime is running a risk. They think it may be easy to mobilize the public, even when there are many deep divisions within Iran’s political elites. I’m not sure the public will go along.”

It is significant, he said, that Iran made its threat to launch preemptive strikes against Israel just one day before Iran officially starts the campaign period for parliamentary elections scheduled for March 2.

So far, Iran has settled for talking tough and attacking soft targets, Mr. Alfoneh said.

“This is very important because if Iran would attack hard targets, military targets in Israel, that could spin out of control. That could bring about a war, which Iran is not interested in,” he said.

Right now, the United States appears to have launched an intense diplomatic campaign to convince Israel to postpone any possible attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.

After spending a week meeting with officials in Israel, General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, returned to Washington on the weekend and told reporters, “I don’t think it is a wise thing at this moment for Israel to launch a military attack on Iran.”

He said a strike “would be destabilizing” and “not prudent.”

U.S. National Defence Director Tom Donilon and U.S. National Director of Intelligence James Clapper are expected to preach the same warning all this week during visits to Israel in advance of a March 5 White House meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama. (© 2012 National Post, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. 02/22/12)