Israel Strikes Iranian Nuclear Program
The war is on.
WaPo (“Israel strikes Iran, as Trump officials say no U.S. military support“):
Israel launched military strikes on Iran early Friday, potentially plunging the Middle East into a new round of violence and signaling the likely end for now of President Donald Trump’s hopes for a negotiated peace deal to halt Tehran’s nuclear development.
In a video statement early Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove” what he called a “clear and present danger to Israel’s very survival.” Iran, he said, could “produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time. It could be a year. It could be a few months.”
Netanyahu said that Israeli aircraft had “struck at the heart” of Iran’s nuclear enrichment and “nuclear weaponization” programs, including Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility in Natanz. “We targeted Iran’s leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb. We also struck at the heart of Iran’s ballistic missile program.”
Iranian media reported that Hossein Salami, commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, had been killed, along with Fereydoun Abbasi, the former head of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization. Unconfirmed reports said that those targeted included Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri and his deputy and other senior military officials.
Airstrikes were reported in several cities, including Tehran, where residential buildings were said to have been hit, including in a neighborhood said to house senior military officials. Video posted on media sites showed structures destroyed and in flames.
Iran state television said the Israeli attacks also struck sites in Khorramabad, in western Iran, home to a large missile base.
[…]
Should Iran retaliate, it was not immediately clear whether the U.S. would assist Israel’s defense, including shooting down Iranian drones and missiles as it did twice last year. “That’s up to the president,” said a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing operation.
NYT (“Israeli Strikes Wipe Out Iran’s Top Military Chain of Command“):
Israel launched a stunning series of strikes on Friday morning against Iran’s nuclear program and killed three of the nation’s security chiefs, in a remarkable coup of intelligence and military force that immediately decapitated Tehran’s chain of command, prompted threats of severe retaliation and raised fears of a wider conflict.
[…]
For years, Israel fought Iran’s proxy forces across the Middle East and more recently it has exchanged previous volleys of strikes with Iran. Yet Friday’s strikes were the first time it successfully hit Tehran’s nuclear facilities. Though the extent of the damage at the nuclear sites was not yet clear, the scale of the strikes astonished Iranians and Israelis alike.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that Israel “should anticipate a harsh punishment.” Later on Friday morning, the Israeli military announced that Iranian forces had fired about 100 drones at Israel, as Mr. Netanyahu vowed the fighting would last “as many days as it takes.” The Israeli military said it was working to intercept the Iranian attack, and there were no immediate indications of significant damage caused by the drones.
[…]
Rafael Grossi, the head of the U.N. nuclear agency, said that so far there are ”no elevated radiation levels” detected around the Natanz nuclear site. He also said there were no indications of attacks so far at two other major Iranian nuclear sites, the deep-underground enrichment center at Fordow or the Isfahan nuclear fuel site, where much early processing of nuclear fuel takes place. Isfahan is also suspected of being a core location for secret nuclear weapons research, American officials say.
[…]
Leaders of Israel’s major opposition parties — including bitter critics of Prime Minister Netanyahu — struck notes of unity over the attack on Iran. “Israel executed a first-rate strategic operation tonight. In this historic hour, we stand united behind the defense establishment, and I want to send strength to the political leadership,” wrote Benny Gantz, a major Netanyahu rival.
David Sanger, NYT (“Israel’s Ambition: Destroy the Heart of Iran’s Nuclear Program“):
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday evening that Israel had struck “Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz,” he was signaling the scope of his country’s ambitions in the largest strike it has ever aimed at Iran: It sought to destroy the beating heart of the Iranian nuclear program.
The Natanz facility is where Iran has produced the vast majority of its nuclear fuel — and, in the past three years, much of the near-bomb-grade fuel that has put the country on the threshold of building nuclear weapons.
There are no reports yet of whether Iran’s other major enrichment site, called Fordow, was targeted as well. It is a much harder target, buried deep under a mountain, deliberately designed to be out of Israel’s reach.
As a result, it may take days, or weeks, to answer one of the most critical questions surrounding the attack of Iran’s facilities: How long has Israel set back the Iranian nuclear program? If the program is delayed only a year or two, it may look as if Israel has taken a huge risk for a fairly short-term delay. And among those risks is not only the possibility of a long-lasting war, but also that Iran will withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, take its program underground, and race for a weapon — exactly the outcome Mr. Netanyahu was out to prevent.
Sanger then notes that several actions by Israel and/or the United States over the years, most notably the Stuxnet malware attack, caused temporary setbacks for the Iranian nuclear program that were quickly overcome.
[T]he centrifuges at Natanz continued to spin, until the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran forced the country to give up 97 percent of its fuel and slow the enrichment at Natanz to a crawl. That agreement also capped the level of enrichment to a level useful for generating nuclear power but not sufficient to make a bomb.
For three years, it seemed like the threat posed by Natanz had been contained. Most American officials believed that while the agreement had not terminated the program, it had contained it. The output of the Natanz plant was minimal.
But then President Trump pulled the United States out of the accord in 2018, calling the deal a disaster. And within a few years, Iran began revving up the facility, and putting new, far more efficient centrifuges in place. It increased enrichment levels to 60 percent purity — just shy of bomb grade. Experts said it would take only a few weeks to further raise the level to 90 percent, commonly used in atomic weapons.
Iran also made other moves that painted an even bigger target on Natanz. Over the past few months, international inspectors have concluded, Iran sped up its enrichment. On Thursday night — Friday morning in Israel — Mr. Netanyahu used its recent progress to argue that Iran now has enough fuel for nine weapons and that the country could “weaponize” that fuel within a year. That accords with what inspectors reported a week ago.
Tactically, the operation looks to have been brilliantly executed. Israel has done long-term damage to all of Iran’s regional proxies and has now taken the fight to Tehran. In so doing, it has demonstrated, yet again, that it is a far superior fighting force and can attack Iranian targets essentially at will. That has to be a hell of a psychic blow.
Strategically, though, I’m less sure how useful this operation will be. Like Sanger, I’m skeptical that this attack will end the program. Iran is a rich country with a huge cadre of scientists. If they want to acquire 80-year-old technology, they will. And the very fact that they’re so vulnerable to a conventional attack will likely increase their appetite for a nuclear deterrent.
Unless there’s a change of regime. A more pragmatic, secular government might realize just how many resources and lives have been lost in Iran’s failed and unnecessary efforts to destroy Israel. Iran is a rich country that has made itself poor.
I note that Israel does not appear, at least yet, to have gone after Khamanei. The IRGC seems to have been decapitated, I wonder if the regular army might see an opportunity to seize control in the name of saving the country.
@Michael Reynolds:
A theory of victory that depends on a deus ex machina usually isn’t the soundest.
The fact that the Iran government knew that this was coming (or at least strongly suspected) and still had high leadership taken out suggests to me that not only does Israel have huge on the ground intelligence capabilities but that Iran may have a large and active anti government underground aiding and abetting the Israelis. It’s religious authoritarian state may be rotten to the core.
@Michael Reynolds: The regime is increasingly unpopular, and the succession plan for the 86-year-old Khamenei is unclear. Conventional wisdom is that his son, Mojtaba, is the leading candidate, but he’s not a Grand Ayatollah. I certainly wouldn’t rule out a coup at some point. But @drj is right that hope isn’t a plan. And being attacked by Israel is likely to bolster the regime, at least in the short term.
Israel also appears to have directly targeted and killed a dozen Iranian senior scientists and engineers linked to the nuclear program.
It looks like the trigger and/or rationale and/or excuse was the IAEA declaration of non-compliance, which surely both Israel and the US knew was about to drop.
And the possibly predictable, but certainly reckless, Iranian response to IAEA by accusing it of political bias and political motivations, claiming both to be compliant and that they would in response open a new enrichment facility.
Ever there was a time for Iran to have foregone its addiction to performative defiance, it was yesterday.
@JohnSF:
And diplomats too. The NYT is reporting that the lead negotiator in the recent talks with the US was killed in the attack.
In other words, we wouldn’t be here if not for Trump’s unparalleled incompetence.
The one attempt to engage Iran in good faith negotiations with an actual quid pro quo was cancelled because nobody currently in power in America or Israel believed in giving Iran a thing. We have the dumbest, most racist people in charge of two countries who would heartbroken if Iran agreed to give up its nuclear ambitions in exchange for a tangible goal. And if Iran did somehow manage to nuke Tel Aviv, 75% of pro-Israel Americans would be praising God’s grace. If Netanyahu survived, he would be thrilled. Finally, the big red button they’ve all been dreaming about.
@JohnSF:
Back in March:
Also, Israel has been saying that Iran has been close to reaching the “point of no return” in developing a nuclear weapon since at least 2012 (quod non).
The simplest explanation is that Netanyahu saw an opportunity with Iran’s proxies having been fatally weakened for now.
Perhaps he is hoping that Iran, as part of its response, will attack US facilities or troops, which could directly draw in the US.
In any case, keeping the fighting going is Netanyahu’s best hope to not end up in jail.
@Daryl:
But so much winning…
The last couple of weeks admin sources have been proclaiming that a deal w/Iran was possible, what was interesting, is how much the possible deal resembled Obama’s.
@Sleeping Dog:
I had wondered about this but had not seen an actual analysis of it.
@Matt Bernius:
For arbitrary value of “diplomat”.
Ali Shamkhani was an IRG veteran who became commander of the navy.
Subsequently also formerly minister of the IRG, minister of defence, secretary of the national security council, and member of the amusingly named “Expediency Discernment Council”.
A player, in other words, not a mere messenger.
@James Joyner: @James Joyner:
Regime change can be chaotic, unpredictable, and dangerous. Not always or at least with little of that as possible.
I’ve had a little personal experience with coups. In December 1989 I was traveling to the Philippines when this took place. Dear wife was in Manila at the time too. For about a week it wasn’t a fun time for either of us.
Per ABC, the U.S. provided “exquisite” intelligence to Israel.
@Michael Reynolds: I would remind us all that regime change in Iraq didn’t exactly produce a happy and stable nation. We are yet to see what happens in Syria.
While I have fantasies about a more secular and moderate Iran, the removal of an Ayatollah does not guarantee anything.
Another point: this indicates once again that the much vaunted Russian S300 and S400 air defence systems don’t exactly behave as advertised.
Except, amusingly enough, when operated by Ukrainians.
Who may well have (Ukrainians being Ukrainians) heavily customised their s300’s electronics and code.
Also the latest dark humour in the Middle East:
“How can you be sure which Pasadrani is not a Mossad agent? They’re the ones who aren’t dead.”
@Daryl: It is hard not to see that the withdrawal from the JCPOA is at least a key variable in all of this.
Long-term damage as the result of Trump’s lack of understanding of complex reality and general short-sightedness. The fact that he is currently pursuing a deal that would largely be a new version of the JCPOA is maddening in its irony.
@JohnSF:
Thanks for that additional context. I expected something like that was the case.
That also makes it even stranger that the lead negotiator Trump appointed was… a real estate mogul.
@Daryl:
Reportedly a deal was quite far along, with the last major sticking point being Iran’s ability to refine uranium in the country. This is a showstopping demand for Iran and the same one that Obama faced. The felonious TACO has a choice to either walk away or find a compromise, which is what Obama did. Allegedly a compromise could be had, allowing the felon to claim victory. Or at least it was till Israel attacked.
One shouldn’t discount that a factor in Bibi’s decision, is that he feared the felon would cut a deal with Iran. Bibi doesn’t see the US as an ally, but a sugar daddy.
@Matt Bernius:
Only if you fail to enter the “moron” coefficient in the equation.
😉
Everything indicates that every European government, and most especially Ukraine, consider Witkoff utterly useless, and completely out of his depth.
So, par for the course, in the current US administration
Just FYI when I write something like, unless there’s a change of regime, that’s not a prediction – I make my living spinning out plot. I look for the best story line.
Interesting analysis cropping up on the strikes: Natanz was hit hard, Fordoz (among others) was not.
Looks like quite a few targets were missile sites, air defence, comms etc, plus the “decapitation”.
IDF may be setting up for a a larger campaign with other targets over the next few days.
They key now is: does Iran have a plan for anti-US and anti-oil retaliation operations to be initiated automatically?
That’s what might bring in the US
And if the US does engage, it seems every possible target in Iran is now without effective defence.
@JohnSF:
Have you heard anything about flight path? I’m assuming Kurdish Iraq, via either Jordan or Syria. I’m assuming they aren’t taking the long way around.
@Steven L. Taylor:
An excellent example of regime change not going well.
@drj:
This.
Not to mention 20+ years of proof that regime change is 1) hard, 2) expensive in lives and blood, 3) expensive in monetary terms, 4) not even close to the panacea everyone believes it to be.
If we see the late 80s through early 90s collapse of the Soviet sphere of influence and the USSR itself as regime change, the record is spottier. Most formerly communist countries did well enough, though not without problems. What used to be Yugoslavia, not even under the USSR’s control, became a tragic meat grinder. and now several countries are backsliding to a different form of tyranny, one with better incomes.
the last might seem like snark, but it’s not. This goes back literally millennia. Keep the majority reasonably prosperous and entertained, and no one will revolt for abstractions such as liberty or democracy.
@Kathy:
Panacea is not the goal, threat reduction is. Regime change sucked in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, but the level of threat has been reduced. In the same vein, people keep insisting that all these attacks can accomplish is to delay development as if that’s a bad thing. Delay is the point. No one is pretending this ensures Iran doesn’t go nuclear in 2035 or 2045 or 2525 (if man is still alive).
This is a a good thing. No sane human being outside of Iran’s ruling circle can believe Iran should have the bomb. You know, it’s possible to disapprove of Israel’s actions in Gaza and still acknowledge the brilliance of the Hezbollah beeper attack, or the usefulness of this seemingly well-executed attack on Iran.
@Michael Reynolds:
Bullshit.
One has to assume that any time in the last twenty years, the US could easily have done what Israel is doing now.
Still, Bush, Obama, Trump 45, and Biden all didn’t think attacking Iran was worth it. If delay is indeed the point, why the restraint?
The much simpler answer is that Israel is behaving recklessly and operating without a credible theory of victory. (Besides “Hey, let’s see if Trump is crazy enough to tag along.”)
@Michael Reynolds:
Set up enough funding and researchers, and humanity can get along just fine with only woman*.
I’m not sure I’d call the rise, and eventual fall, of the Islamic State a threat reduction. As to Irak and Libya, Saddam and Gaddafi were a danger only to their own citizens. And after 20 tears, nothing prevents the Taliban from hosting the next decentralized radical Islamist terrorist network.
*Maybe even better?
@Michael Reynolds:
Nothing definitive; I’d assume mostly “northern track” over Syria and Iraq, for diplomatic reasons.
Turkey would not get in the way; too much downside, and Ankara loveth Tehran most slightly,
@Kathy:
Except a possible desire not to see B-52’a paying a visit again?
Plus the still widely unspoken fact that (factions of) the Pakistan ISI were key enablers of the Kabul “all-you-can-bomb” menu hospitality service.
And these days, the Taliban and Pakistan are not getting on at all well.
Incidentally, neither Iraq nor Libya were threats only to their own citizens.
Libyan fuckwittery over a prolonged period was a major reason why Europeans, even more than the US, had reason to say of Gaddafi: “Stone dead hath no fellow.”
While Saddam Hussein racked up a rther impressive killing record against two neighbours, and his known ambitions for Iraq dominanation over Syria where a major reason why Syria participated in the 1990 Coalition
@JohnSF:
I’m unfamiliar with Libya, but what did Saddam do between 1991 and 2003 that made him a regional threat? I’m not aware of much, past posturing and equivocating on WMDs he turned out not to posses.
@Kathy:
Between 1991 and 2003? Not much, on a regional level.
Iraq was in an entropic spiral, precisely because Saddam refused to abandon his fantasies.
And therefore continued to perform the defiance dance.
Ironically, the US seems to have failed to appreciate how much the DESERT FOX bombing campaign of 1998 wrecked what was left of the regimes military-industrial infrastructure.
It’s unclear now how far Saddam believed his own bullshit, or how far his own own underlings folled him about how bad the situation really was.
It seems at least some of the mistaken apprehensions of the US were based on the questionable information being fed back to Saddam Hussein himself.
@Michael Reynolds:
“Delay is the point. No one is pretending this ensures Iran doesn’t go nuclear in 2035 or 2045 or 2525 (if man is still alive).”
@drj:
“Bullshit.
One has to assume that any time in the last twenty years, the US could easily have done what Israel is doing now.”
Moreover, Trump’s explicit rationale for abrogating Obama’s deal was precisely because it did not restrain what Iran could do when it ended in 10 years.
@JohnSF:
Me:
Paranoia and cynicism both whsiper in my ears:
Might Netanyahu be expecting exactly this?
Iran hits at US and oil targets, Trump jumps.
@drj:
I suspect US military analyst did NOT expect Iranian air defences to be so ineffective.
Secondly, the US has always wished to avoid the possible consequences of a confrontaion in the Gulf, especially the economic impact of an oil supply crisis.
Israel, otoh, is less bothered. Netanyahu, I suspect, could not care less.
And Trump, given his economic and strategi illiteracy, probably has difficulty grasping the downsides fore the US of inteeruption of hydrocarbons flows to third parties.
@JohnSF:
My point precisely. there was no need to regime change Irak in 2003, and the consequences, intended or not, increased the threat level regionally and globally.
It wasn’t just hubris, but ignorant hubris on the cheap.
@drj:
I’m not getting your point. Delay is precisely the point, unless someone is a fantasist expecting a utopia to break out. Delay, delay some more, delay again, push the date off again and again. It’s the human condition, you know, we delay death as long as possible. Sometimes delay goes on for so long it almost seems permanent, but time goes on and on and with enough time almost anything is possible.
But that leaves me still not understanding your point about previous US presidents. Israel and the US are not facing similar threats. Iran, with a handful of nukes, can destroy tiny and close-at-hand Israel. Iran poses no direct threat to the US. Different incentives.
Looks like the next wave of IDF strikes is underway.
President Trump says “we kew everything” about the attack.
Netanyahu also says US had advanced warning of its attack on Iran.
Question is, of course, is Trunp telling the truth, or trying to save face?
And exactly how “advanced” was the warning?
@JohnSF:
On the one hand we’re claiming we have clean hands, and on the other Trump is making a point of his 60 day deadline, talking about advance knowledge, and ensuring that Great Satan takes a share of Little Satan’s work. Trump sees a spotlight and has to jump in front of it, all the while protesting innocence.
Obviously Iran was never going to believe we were not a part of this, but I assumed Rubio was trying to give Iran cover for not feeling as if it had to attack US assets.
@Kathy:
Iraq is not more of a threat than it was under Saddam. It has far less capacity to develop chemical or biological weapons, and is occupied with internal conflicts. Saddam launched a godawful war against Iran and invaded Kuwait and at one point had a nuclear program. I’m not suggesting regime change there went well, but Iraq is clearly not the regional or global threat it was under Saddam.
@Michael Reynolds:
Trump is so predictably stupid.
Netanyahu (like Putin etc) can manipulate him so easily.
By saying this, instead of keeping his mouth shut, the possibility of Iranian (and third-party eg Houthi) “retaliatory” strikes against US and ally targets has just ramped.
And therefore the possible US direct engagement in strikes on Iran in response to those.
This is time for quiet but clear deterrence, not narcissitic performativeness.
And here was me thinking Germany and Russia in 1914 took the booby-prizes for blustering folly in a crisis. Kaiser Wilhelm II, I humbly apologise.
Well, I guess my prediction yesterday was accurate, but I did not think the attack would happen so soon. It seems Iran didn’t either, since they failed to take basic force protection measures regarding senior military leadership.
Now that the second day of operations is ongoing, I think we can make a few tentative judgments:
– This is not a regime change operation, as some have suggested in the comments. However, the ineffective defense and the crumbling of Iran’s entire program designed to destroy Israel will probably have many Iranians questioning why the regime has spent so much for so long to achieve so little.
– Iran’s ability to respond with counterattacks is even less than I imagined. I don’t think Iran has been able to fire a single ballistic missile, and the 100 drones (really long-range cruise missiles) predictably did nothing. Israel seems to have destroyed the missile systems that were ready before they could launch. The Houthis today fired a ballistic missile and hit a Palestinian area of Hebron, wounding three children.
– Similarly, Iran’s defense systems have been completely ineffective. Key targeting radars were killed with drone strikes, and military leadership and key nodes were decimated. I haven’t seen a single report of the Iranian Air Force doing anything, and, interestingly, Israel seems to be ignoring Iranian airfields as if they don’t consider the Iranian Air Force any kind of threat.
– Clearly, Israel has learned lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war in terms of using unorthodox strike platforms like drones launched from inside Iran, which were used to destroy air defense and missile systems.
It seems we’re at the point where Israel has complete air dominance over the relevant areas of Iranian airspace, and are even flying sorties during daytime. Remarkable.
The main military question now is how long Israel can sustain this level of effort and whether they have the ability to hit and destroy all the key components of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile enterprises. I’ve had my doubts about that for decades, but those doubts are beginning to fade. Time will tell.
A side note on Middle Eastern politics:
Iran has spent the last couple of decades trashing the Sunni/secular reformists and democrats in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and elsewhere, as “ISIS” and allying with Russia and Assad etc to crush them by whatever means seemed expedient.
It’s not going to much of a surprise if the majority of such people across the region show little desire to hasten to support the Mullahs now.
Short-termism is not solely an American affliction.
@JohnSF:
The warning was advanced enough to evacuate embassy staff and families. And Israel would have to tell the US at least some details of the operation for deconfliction and to avoid fratricide, as US assets and aircraft are regularly operating inside Iraqi and Syrian airspace.
@JohnSF:
Sounds like Colin Powell’s CV. Going after diplos is still a no-no.
Iran’s decision to play in this particular area has proven to have been unwise. I can understand a reason, almost every country around them has been invaded in the last several decades, and Pakistan has sort of demonstrated how having the capability can make a nation pretty much immune to reckless actions on the part of us. The Jolly Green Giant would not follow even Bin Laden into Pakistan, limiting us to quick special ops only. What the Iranians underestimated was the paranoia of government of Israel. Obviously using one on them would be suicide, but the Israelis currently running that nation aren’t rational actors. They should’ve noticed that.
@Andy:
Not just sorties: there are reports of IDF conducting air-refuelling in Iraqi airspace.
Which should be within the engagement range of Iranian S-400’s, and of the somewhat theoretical Iranian fighters (hollow laugh).
This must lead the Gulf Arabs to re-assess the capacity of Iran to strike there if they and the US are willing to respond decisively
otoh, a humiliated Iran/IRG may be even more likely to lash out at other targets of opportunity.
@Andy:
Still be interesting to know the exact timeline.
I suspect knowledge of the IAEA report and Israeli indicated response fits the embassy evacuation
One other party we can be pretty certain Israel did notify: Turkey.
I guess we will find out how much Israel has degraded Hezbollah’s abilities.
@dazedandconfused:
Accredited ambassdors are one thing; was Shamkhani legally a diplomatic envoy with any associated immunity?
Unclear.
And those rules tend to apply to diplomats operating outside their home countries.
Does such legal immunity extend to within the home country? No idea, frankly.
I do know the UK during attempted kills on Germans who were nominally “diplomats” in occupied Europe.
@Gustopher:
Hezbollah has already indicated they want to stay out.
@Michael Reynolds:
Sure, if we ignore all the Islamic State stuff, and the years of insurgencies, and the massive amounts of spilled blood and wasted treasure, it’s a good thing that regime change turned Iraq into as small a threat now as it was in 2003.
@JohnSF:
What if Iran has assembled one or three gun type U235 nukes, and one at least is on an inconspicuous cargo or leisure ship making its way to Tel Aviv?
I don’t take the suggestions seriously, nor has Iran shown any inclination to use their own as suicide bombers. But that’s one way to deliver a crude nuke to an enemy.
Of course, Israel has nukes of its own and the means to deliver them to the Mullah’s doorstep.
@JohnSF:
The wiki page on him doesn’t mention any diplomatic status. Seems he was pretty much forced out from any active service as was just something of an advisor. Why the Izzies felt they had to get him at all is a bit of a mystery at this point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Shamkhani
The part about him being chucked from power over an association with a British spy is interesting. Might be a guy who knew too much about some sources. Might have even been a source himself. A bit of a rogue, it seems.
@dazedandconfused:
The Israelis are no less rational than the Iranians. As I pointed out yesterday, this is/was an opportune time to strike, and it was rational to take that opportunity. No one should kid themselves that Iran, presented with a similar opportunity, wouldn’t do the same thing and worse, since Iran’s goals are explicitly genocidal.
And Iranian nukes aren’t just about the ability of Iran to commit seppuku via MAD – I agree they wouldn’t do that, but then it’s not my ass on the line. The idea that Iran getting nukes is no big deal because they aren’t crazy enough to kill themselves by nuking Israel and suffering retaliation is not much of an argument. And it’s perfectly rational to perhaps believe what your enemy says and means when they repeat for many decades the mantra that your country must be destroyed. We are supposed to take everything Trump says both seriously and literally, but not Iran? It is totally rational for Israel to take Iran’s words and deeds both literally and seriously and not want to take the risk that a nuclear Iran would pose.
Additionally, possessing nukes has all kinds of other strategic benefits, and for a country like Iran that has few real allies but centers the destruction of Israel as a core foreign policy goal, possessing them is quite useful as a tool to prevent or limit attacks on itself and its proxies, which gives it more freedom of action to pursue that goal. Let’s say Iran had nukes – it could have made Israel’s attack on Hezbollah a nuclear red line. That’s pretty likely considering Iran’s actual response to Israel wiping out Hezbollah was the two biggest ballistic missile attacks in history.
@Michael Reynolds:
That’s because you’re actively ignoring these three things:
1) Iran wasn’t actively working on a nuclear weapon according to the very latest US intelligence estimates.
2) Israel has now created significant incentives for Iran to change course. After all, conventional deterrence (ballistic missiles, regional proxies) has clearly failed.
3) Iran isn’t going to go away and isn’t going to forget.
In a more general sense, you are completely ignoring that military victories can be completely meaningless, even counterproductive in the long term.
Take this, for instance (from your first comment):
Do you even realize that it was Israel that made an enemy out of Iran, much more so than the other way around (ironically because of a series of military successes that lead to a political dead end)?
So let’s go back a couple of decades.
In 1967 the PLO loses the Jordanian civil war and settles in Lebanon.
Lebanon was (and is, mostly) populated by three major groups: Maronites (i.e., Christians), Sunnis, and Shiites, with the latter historically getting the short end of the stick.
Shit hits the fan and in 1975 a civil war erupts in Lebanon, mostly along sectarian lines.
After settling in Lebanon, the PLO habitually attacks northern Israel.
In 1982, Israel invades Lebanon with the twin goals of a) getting the PLO out of southern Lebanon and b) ending the Lebanese civil war by installing a semi-fascist Maronite regime in Lebanon.
Israel’s Maronite proxies, actively supported by the IDF, committed a bunch of atrocities (including these) that not only targeted Palestinians, but also Shiites.
At the same time, the Islamic Republic of Iran, just a few years after the Islamic Revolution, surrounded by enemies, and in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, is in urgent need of legitimacy and allies. As a result, Iran becomes the champion of Lebanon’s Shiites – but only after the IDF has helped kill a couple of thousand Lebanese Shiites. Fun fact: Iran’s main proxy, Hezbollah did not even exist before 1982.
So now, Iran and Israel are at each other’s throats – which would not have happened if Israel hadn’t invaded Lebanon first and needlessly antagonized the local Shiites (by violently trying to make them second-class citizens in their own country).
Of course, militarily speaking, the IDF kicked ass in Lebanon. But did it help them in the long run? Was it worth the 40+ years of fighting Hezbollah – an enemy they created themselves?
Right now, Iran’s on the ropes and Hezbollah down for the count. But odds are this will not stay that way. And then what?
The JCPOA was far more promising for long-term stability than the current shit show.
@Kathy:
Given how penetrated by Israeli intelligence Iran has proven to be, that would be a rather large gamble.
And with little practical benefit even if it suceeded; it would merely result in the obliteration of Iran in exchange for nasty damage to, most likely, Haifa.
A nice scenario for Mike Reynolds, or another writer, but I’d bet a large sum against it even being planned, let alone being accomplished.
@dazedandconfused:
Yes, I looked at that, and some other stuff.
Also reports of being in disgrace for links to the drugs trade.
Which is amusing: as Syria has been for decades up to its neck in various drug production and smuggling ops, and more recently hooked up to the FSB linked Russian mafiya it’s also widely known that the IRG have also been drawn into that game.
Insofar as
And that tends to lead people involved to “wet their beaks”.
After all, why not?
It’s all for the greater good, is it not?
As to the asociate was a “British spy” thing: there we enter the “wilderness of mirrors”.
Maybe he was, maybe it was useful for a rival in the corruption biz to pin it on him.
Although it’s also a stone-cold certainty SIS does run ops in Iran; they are not our friends.
But intra-IRG politics and links to crime and corruption, and realted faction-fights over the loot, have become an utter snake-pit.
One of the main reasons the people of Iran generally detest the IRG elite.
Insofar as Shamkhani got on the wrong side of such dealings, he seems to have worked his passage back, probably by being conspicously “devoted” to Khamenei
@Andy: We must agree to differ in some areas. I saw Bibi’s speech on SKY last night. “Holocaust!” still looms large in his thinking. Being explainable doesn’t equate to rational. Considering the largest Jewish community in the ME for centuries was in Iran, and there are still some Iranian Jews, it is irrational to compare Iran to Nazi Germany, at least to me. The region has long viewed Israel as European colonialism. Genocidal? Not what I can label it.
IMO, drawing a nuclear red line on a border issue with Hezbollah would be highly unlikely, and it would still be suicidal. A hypothetical which subscribes to Cheney’s demented 1% doctrine. “We must have war, because if we don’t, we might have war!”??
Nevertheless I think it’s better for all if Iran does not have nukes, perhaps most of all for the Iranians. I agree that if it had to be done, this was the time.
@dazedandconfused:
I wonder; does Netanyahu himslf think that is the core issue?
Or is it more a rehetorical trope calculated to rally both Israeli and American opinion?
Otoh, as a person with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir in his cabinet, not to mention the other various religio-political groups in Israeli politics, Netanyahu is well acquainted with the role of irrationality in decision making.
Also, the Israeli experience is not solely conditioned by Nazi genocide; Zionism predated that by almost half a century, and was largely driven by the sub-genocidal brutalities of pogroms, and the institutional inequalities of Jews in Russia, and histories such as the “Great Expulsion”, etc.
Israelis are now in the majority descended from mizrahim, that is Middle Eastern Jews, who were not subjected to genocide, but were very much regarded as an “inferior” group, and largely expelled in the aftermath of the establishment of Israel in the 1940’s and 50’s.
The “European colonialism” line is a comforting one for others in the Middle East; it ceased to be true, if it ever was, quite a long time ago now.
“Nuclear shielded terror” as a tactic is hardly an impossibility.
It’s widely thought that was Pakistan’s goal regarding the Taliban sheltered Islamists: to have “implausibly deniable” groups who would attack India in Kashmir, but leave Pakistan free to deter an Indian counter with air-space denial backed up by nuclear weapons.
India still thinks this is what Pakistan is up to, albeit not now using the Taliban as “cut-outs”, hence the recent crisis.
Looks like the second round of Israeli strikes have included hitting Fordoz.
While an Iranian ballistic strike has hit Tel Aviv.
The crucial difference is, the Israeli strikes appear to be rather precisely targeted; the Iranian response seems to be simply lobbing more or less untargeted BM as per V-2.
Good for a headline, militarily irrelevant.
@JohnSF:
Much is made of delivery systems for nukes. A big assumption is that the people who would use one want to survive the delivery. Therefore the B-29 crews trained on a dive and turn and acceleration away from the blast and radiation area, and there were maneuvers for small jets carrying tactical nukes.
What if you don’t care whether you survive the nuke, so long as you set it off in the right place? Or just as long as you set it off? This multiplies delivery means. Customs don’t usually check for radioactive materials, and lots of countries have some kind of merchant marine or navy.
It wouldn’t work in a war, and far less so against an opponent with both nukes and reliable delivery means. But for terrorists? Get a 5 megaton warhead on a ship, sail to New York and blow it up with al hands. you don’t even need a very big ship.
@Kathy:
True enough, but you need to have pretty good security on your delivery teams, to ensure none of them have second thoughts about martyrdom and to ensure Mossad or CIA or SIS are not already inside your operation command chain, or NSA or GCHQ have not got ears growing out of your walls.
Also similar for the actual device fissionabales and mechanics.
Information leaks and lions and tigers and bears, oh my.
There are a lot of potential failure-modes in the plan.
And a gun-bomb is not going to be anywhere near 5 megatons.
That’s thermonuclear land, which is two to three levels up in technical development .
1: U235 “gun”
2: PU implosion
3: “crude” cryogenic thermonuclear
4: (and above) various more advanced stuff like solid state thermonukes, boosted fission, fission-fusion-fission, advanced multi-element implosion, variable-yeald, very high fissionable efficiency designs, enhanced radiation weapons, etc etc
The end result if the delivery plan actually worked, would be a “one off” device that caused horrific damage to a single target.
And in return the sponsor state gets stomped flat.
@JohnSF:
Think of it as a very remote possibility, kind of like the plot of Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears.
But, yes, a crude first generation nuke won’t get sloe to a tenth of a megaton, never mind five. But if you found a lost nuke and filtered you tritium…
@dazedandconfused:
Thanks for you comment. A couple of points to add to what John wrote above:
I think Iran’s call is for genocide and not merely an anti-colonial sentiment. They host holocaust denial symposiums, promote the kinds of gross anti-semitic images from the 1930s in art shows, and use language like calling Israel a cancer that must be eliminated. This extends to their proxies, and they cheered at the pogrom Hamas committed that started these dominoes falling in October 2023. I don’t think they are merely anti-colonialists, even extreme ones.
The irony is that Iran really shouldn’t care that much about Israel, much less focus their foreign policy and much of their domestic politics on destroying it. The two countries are distant enough that they have no material, commercial, territorial, or other disputes other than religion and ethnicity.
Secondly, Israel being a tiny country is a material factor. This is what we call lacking strategic depth. This makes them much more vulnerable to nuclear attack than a big country. This makes them much more vulnerable to a successful nuclear first strike.
If the US and Russia/USSR traded a few nukes, there would be devastation, but the countries could survive. The ability of each country to absorb a few strikes gave room for deescalation and pulling back from the edge of full nuclear exchange. We both had plans for “limited” nuclear exchanges.
A tiny country like Israel doesn’t have that luxury and there’s no such thing as a limited exchange. A couple of successful strikes (by whatever means), and the country is pretty much gone.
Consider that the US was willing to invade Cuba and risk war with the Soviets over the question of nukes in Cuba. That was considered so threatening and destabilizing as a potential first-strike threat that Kennedy couldn’t tolerate it. It’s not so different with Israel and Iran, except the lack of strategic depth makes Israel’s situation even worse.
We don’t know exactly where Iran would draw its red lines, but it would certainly draw them somewhere. I tend to think Iran would not have stayed silent on nuclear red lines as Israel destroyed its most important proxy, which it had been building for decades and poured billions into.
And just personally, I’ve long been against attacking Iran’s program even though I think I understand Israel’s position and the decision it made to attack. I think a strategy of playing for time was a better option, while working on moderating Iranian leadership. That’s why I supported the JPCOA, despite its flaws, even though it was a term-limited agreement (most provisions expire in 10 years). I thought it was stupid and irresponsible to get rid of it like Trump did. But that is water under the bridge.
@Kathy:
And if my aunt had wheels, she’d be a bicycle. 🙂
@Andy:
All of this.
The US was, for a variety of reasons, not prepared to go to war in the late 1940’s to maintain its atomic monopoly.
Despite such various persons as Curtis LeMay and Bertrand Russell being inclined to think it should.
That was partly, imo, because US vulnerability only slowly emerged.
Isreal would be massively vulnerable to a nuclear strike from the outset.
So, it has a very high incentive to avoid that possibility.
Also, the Iranian government has a demonstated record of staking out rather extreme positions for ideological, regime-bolstering, and regional policy, reasons.
The whole “Death to America!” stance was and is a CHOICE, not something inevitable, as was opting to lead the “rejectionist front”.
The US did not support the Shah to the last, nor did it invade Iran to overthrow the Islamic Revolution.
And, despite the campist mythology, Saddam Hussein was not a US “proxy” in the Iraq-Iran War.
So, Israel has reasons for extreme wariness about Iranian nuclear ambitions, on grounds of both strategic vulnerability and Iranian regime ideology.
Side note: India seems to have come very close to a decision for preventive war vs Pakistan re nuclear weapons in the 1980’s, and backed away largely because both the US and China warned them off, and the USSR indicated it would not support them.
If Iran was truly intent upon developing nukes then this was the right time to attack and maybe it makes sense. However, nukes arent that hard to make and we have been hearing from Israel since the 90s that Iran was 3-5 years away from developing nukes. Given that this is 80 y/o tech I think that was probably accurate, if Iran really wanted to make them. So, I find myself a bit dubious about Israel’s claims.
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1108/Imminent-Iran-nuclear-threat-A-timeline-of-warnings-since-1979/US-joins-the-warnings-1992-97
Steve
@JohnSF: ,Andy:
You are probably right that Bibi is playing to a certain audience, but to dismiss that as simply BS to be ignored raises the question of the rantings of some Iranians being ignorable, does it not? They play to certain crowds too. Bibi’s messianic complex has been well explored in Israeli media, notably by some of Israeli’s own intelligence officers. I think it’s real.
One of the reasons the early Zionists focused on the region is there had been no recent history of anything remotely resembling the pogroms the Jews had suffered in Europe there, and ancient Jewish communities were strung all across MENA. To cherry pick a few signs now as evidence of long antisemitism being the root cause doesn’t hold up well at all. Some antisemitic rhetoric and attitudes are bound to exist in the situation of Israel. They took people’s land and homes on the grounds of “We are Jewish and you are not”, and the Settlers are still doing that to this day.
We must agree to disagree on the issue of Israel being viewed as colonialism.
I did not say nuclear blackmail was impossible, just highly unlikely.
Israel’s vulnerability is a good point, the main reason I think the Iranian decision to play with nukes was unwise. Should have seen this coming.
@dazedandconfused:
I’ve never been able to make up my mind about Netanyahu.
Does he believe his spiel, or is he just playing out the lines?
Either way, I both dislike him on personal aesthetic basis, and think he’s been a disaster as a leader for Israel.
But a very lucky disaster: he has, more by accident than design, and due to the efforts of the IDF staff and Israelis special ops services he despises, and who despise him, wrecked the key Iranian bastion in Hezbollah, then seen the Syrians (and Turks) remove Syria from the board, then the IDF hammer the Iranian air defences.
His combination of self-interest and arrogance remains extremely dangerous, imo.
As to the history of Israel: the focus on Palestine was a bit of a default choice. Where else could be agreed upon?
In fact, there HAD been “pogroms” of sorts in the Ottoman domains, but the Ottomans tended to dislike them. Unlike the Russians. There were nothing even remotely like the Russian pogroms in Europe outside Russian territory, in the sense of “permitted terror” in the post 1600’s iirc.
The position of the mizrahi Jews changed abrubtly for the worse with the coincidence of the end of Turkish rule and the advent of Zionist settlement in Palestine.
The mizrahi became scapegoats, and fled to Isreal, and the formerly mostly European-Jewish Israeli population rapidly became outnumbered by ME/NA immigration in the period 1945-55.
And subsequently by their descendants.
Which helps, imo, to expalain the level of hostility to Arabs/Muslims in the Likud and similar mizrahi-rght in contemporary Israel.
Of course, the default of both western and non-western “anti-imperialists” has been to identify Israel as a “western colony”, ignoring both the demographic and cultural reality, and the obvious point that the Zionists were fighting a rather nasty guerilla war with the British to establish Israel.
One relative (younger cousin of a grandfather) ended up badly wounded by an Irgun operation, and several of his fellow squaddies got killed.
British colonialism my arse.
@steve:
Depends on the design type; Iran has been that distance away because of the likely time to isotopically separate uranium to weapons grade.
Once you have the U235, you can produce atomic weapons.
Modern-type nukes are a couple of steps further on.
But the indiactions were that Iran did not have much bomb-grade uranium.
BUT they were isotopically enriching WAY beyond requirements for reactors; they obvious conclusion being, building a stock of near-weapons grade uranium that would only require a few further cycles through the isotropic separation cascade to yield x amount of bomb material.
What sort of warheads could then be produced is another matter, dependant on other technical capabilities.
@JohnSF: Bibi’s messianic complex justifies for him nearly any act which serves Israel, so he has no compunction about lying. Right now you can bet the house his goal is to get the US involved in this war so we will dismantle Iran for Israel, as we dismantled Iraq.
https://www.c-span.org/clip/house-committee/user-clip-netanyahus-expert-testimony-on-iraq-in-2002/4529120
Bibi says to the US that with each invasion of a ME country it will get easier for the US. (Riiiiiight… ) and Iran is Bibi’s “3rd nation”. I think he is smart enough to know it would be far too risky for him to try, has an awful risk/reward ratio, but I would not put a false flag op against some US base in the area beneath the man.
@dazedandconfused:
I woulds not put a “false flag” past Netanyahu.
But imho it’s extremely unlikely.
Too much risk of leaks, and also (related) of the Isreali intel/special forces community simply refusing to carry out such a plan.
However, you are obviously correct that Netanyahu is trying to get the US directly engaged.
Israel needs the the B-1 and B-2 strike capability to ensure destruction of the deep sites.
The question is, will, the Iranian government, feeling backed into a corner, as its capacity for missile strikes on Israel drops off, play Netanyahus’ cards for him, by attacks in the Gulf or on US targets?
They are both frequently foolish enough, and may soon be desperate enough, to do something so stupid.