Iran-Israel war: The best analysis

Why Israel finally attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities (David Horoviz, Times of Israel)

The IDF, in an official statement issued soon after Israel began attacking Iran’s nuclear program, described the resort to force as a “pre-emptive strike.”

Why pre-emptive? Because in the assessment of Israel’s security chiefs, Iran’s nuclear weapons program had advanced to the point of existential threat, from a regime avowedly seeking to bring about Israel’s destruction. After years of vows to take military action, the IDF’s Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, in a statement to the nation, declared that the situation had “reached the point of no return.’

The UN’s nuclear watchdog has highlighted Iran’s accelerated uranium enrichment program. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a prerecorded video address issued when the Israeli attack was under way, specified that the regime now has enough enriched uranium for nine nuclear weapons…

The aim of the Israeli strikes is to deeply damage Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities — including key facilities and key commanders — and thus avert that perceived existential threat. The assessment in the security establishment is that this was the right and necessary moment to strike — before Iran has rebuilt defenses destroyed in Israel’s far less dramatic attack last October, and at a time when intel on the Iranian program is regarded as particularly strong.

Can Israel destroy Iran’s nuclear program? (Richard Nephew, Foreign Affairs)

There is tremendous uncertainty about how much quantifiable damage Israel has done to Iran’s nuclear program. But the more important question may be whether Israel’s attack destroyed Iran’s will to move forward.

At first, it might seem outlandish to think that Iran would respond to an Israeli attack with anything other than belligerence. But if the damage to Iran’s nuclear program and military is greater than it seems, Tehran might look for off-ramps. Iran might also consider diplomacy as the damage continues to rise. Israel, after all, is not yet done, and its strikes may only become more devastating in the days ahead. The Israeli military has completely eviscerated Iran’s air defences, so it could attack ever more central government structures and regime officials. Israel could also take out parts of the Iranian oil and gas sector, which are essential to the country’s economy. In the face of such damage, Tehran might opt to sue for peace, leading to an agreement that limits its nuclear program.

But it is reasonable to be sceptical that Iran will accept a deal at the barrel of a gun. Even if Iran did strike a bargain, the country might not faithfully implement it. Instead, the most likely outcome is that Iran continues to retaliate while trying to convince the rest of the world that Israel is a rogue actor, having used force just days before talks were to recommence between

How Sinwar ruined Iran's dominance in Middle East (Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post)

What has happened since October 7 is a methodical, deliberate reversal of what Sinwar had envisioned and what Iran had been planning for. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the early days of the war that Israel would change the face of the Middle East. Step by step, it has.

First, Hamas has been decimated militarily: most of its leaders are dead, and its arsenal is mostly wiped out. Gaza, its stronghold, is being dismantled.

Second, Hezbollah – the cornerstone of Iran’s “ring of fire” strategy – has been defanged, so much so that the Lebanese government, which for years was under Hezbollah’s thumb, on Friday warned Hezbollah against firing at Israel and dragging Lebanon into this war. Syria, which Iran essentially turned into a client state, is a client state no more, depriving Tehran of being able to rebuild Hezbollah or turn it into a staging ground for attacks against Israel.

And now, after all that, Israel’s attention has turned from the tentacles of the octopus to the head of the octopus itself. For more than three decades, Iran’s strategy was to surround Israel with heavily armed proxies, creating a deterrent wall so formidable that Jerusalem would never dare strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. And if Israel did strike, the logic went, the price would be unbearable.

But that strategy is now unraveling. Piece by piece, Israel has peeled away the layers. First Hamas, then Hezbollah, then Syria. Iran’s deterrent shield has been punctured. The Houthis are still standing, but they are geographically distant. And while they’ve shown they can be disruptive, they were always the weakest link in the axis.

Today, the IAF is operating in the skies over Iran with near-complete freedom – something that, if mentioned even a few weeks ago, would have been dismissed as pure fantasy.

Iran's leaders may perceive an existential threat that will drive them to change the nature of the war (Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz)

Iran is likely to conclude that there's no longer any point in negotiating about uranium enrichment and the outlines of the nuclear agreement because the Israeli-American goal is to bring the regime down.

Tehran can prove this by pointing to Israel's attack on Iran's largest natural gas field and its threat to damage other economic and civilian infrastructure – steps unrelated to Iran's nuclear program.

And so, even if the Iranians believe they can stop the war by agreeing to a change in the wording of the nuclear agreement, Israel is making clear that the war's goals have changed. Also, Israel is perceived as trying to dictate to Trump goals that are dramatically broader than the technical-legal framework the president was trying to achieve – to the point of destroying that framework.

In other words, if Trump wants an agreement with Iran, he'll have to get it under conditions dictated by Israel, which include the elimination of the regime in Tehran.

That's an ambitious goal, especially considering Israel's failure to achieve "total victory" in Gaza. But even if the probability of this dream coming true is far removed from reality, diverting the war's focus from neutralizing the nuclear program to dealing the regime a hefty blow is likely to change the nature of the war.

If Israel pushes Iran to consider the war an existential threat, we shouldn't rule out that Iran will throw caution to the wind – a scenario that hitherto has only been heard in the media and belligerent statements by Iranian politicians.

Why war with Iran was not inevitable (Jamie Cohen, Times of Israel)

In 2015, then-US President Obama, in conjunction with other Western leaders, announced the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). “Under its terms, Iran agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear program and open its facilities to more extensive international inspections in exchange for billions of dollars’ worth of sanctions relief.” 

While most intelligence and military experts in Israel and in the US felt the agreement didn’t go far enough in restraining other Iranian militarist actions, they still supported the agreement. In contrast, then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu adamantly opposed it. Netanyahu then took the extreme measure of accepting an invitation by the then Republican Speaker of the House to address Congress about the agreement. In an extraordinary speech, Netanyahu attacked the agreement and President Obama. I watched the speech and was appalled.

Prior to the speech, US support for Israel was overwhelmingly bipartisan. All previous Israeli Prime Ministers sought to maintain bipartisan support even when they disagreed with US administration positions. Having worked in Congress for several years and being involved politically for most of my life, I knew this was a mistake of gargantuan proportions. Honestly, I had never seen a foreign leader of a US ally make such a disastrous decision.

Don't give up on diplomacy with Iran (Alia Vaez, Foreign Affairs)

Outgunned by Israel and, at least for now, with degraded nuclear leverage, Tehran is probably open to returning to the table to save its neck. More important, it needs to save face. The White House should warn Tehran that further escalation could result in American casualties and suck the United States into the conflict.

Yet it should also offer Iran a reasonable nuclear deal that includes significant and sustainable sanctions relief. Trump could, for example, promise to roll back nuclear-related U.S. sanctions and end the primary U.S. trade embargo if Iran wraps its uranium enrichment program into a multinational consortium with Saudi Arabia for that purpose—as Tehran expressed an openness to doing before Israel’s attacks. Such a consortium would provide fuel for nuclear reactors across the region while depriving Iran of the fissile material it could use for a weapon.

There is precedent for this kind of American pressure. In 1982, U.S. President Ronald Reagan twisted Israel’s arm to end its bombing of Beirut. In 1988, he intervened in the Iran-Iraq War, playing an essential role in persuading Tehran to accept a cease-fire. Such a course will not be easy for Trump. It would require the president to commit to difficult diplomacy while staring down fierce opposition in Washington from politicians and interest groups who see Israel’s campaign as an overdue comeuppance for one of the United States’ most bitter adversaries.

But if Trump is committed to a nuclear-free Iran, his best bet is to get the Iranians and Israelis to stop the war and bring Tehran back to the negotiating table. Without a deal, Iran’s frightened government seems more likely than not to sprint for nuclear weapons as conditions allow.

Why Trump might see a reason to join the conflict (Stephen Collinson, CNN)

If there is one lesson from the early 21st century, it’s that war objectives and analyses of the Middle East drawn up in Washington almost always turn out disastrously wrong. The idea that Iran’s brutal clerical regime could fall might be attractive. But the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the civil war in Syria show that Middle East nations can simply splinter when power vacuums open.

A US intervention would also widen deep strains in Trump’s political base and dismantle a core principle of his “America first” movement: that the United States should stay out of foreign quagmires after more than a decade of pain in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is only a few weeks, after all, since the president set out a new vision for the Middle East and American involvement.

“The so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built — and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,” Trump said in a major speech in Saudi Arabia in May. “A new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts and tired divisions of the past and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos; where it exports technology, not terrorism; and where people of different nations, religions and creeds are building cities together — not bombing each other out of existence.”

A new American war is utterly incompatible with such a vision. Still, hawks in Washington might argue that Trump has a unique opportunity to remove the major impediment to his vision by eradicating Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon or even contributing to the toppling of its theocratic leadership.

Presidents have often written in their memoirs about momentous and agonizing choices to deploy troops in foreign wars. Sometimes, however, a decision not to rush in even when it appears tempting requires as much courage.