Israel had an even stronger case than ever that any limited attack would be insufficient to deter the Islamic Republic from a third attack.
There is no question that Israel’s attack on Iran was operationally successful and will impact Tehran’s ballistic missile capabilities and its decision of whether to attack Israel a third time in the near future.
But this short-term success masks the fact that Israel may have missed a golden opportunity to set back the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.
US pressure against attacking Iran’s nuclear program was extraordinary and the incentive of lending Israel the THAAD missile defense system, as well as keeping certain weapons flowing to Israel, were likely accompanied by thinly veiled or explicit threats by the Biden administration about weapons transfers if the situation got out of hand.
There also was no guarantee that an attack on Iran’s nuclear program would “permanently” stop Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s push for a nuclear weapon, and some believed it might even paradoxically incentivize him to try harder to cross the threshold to achieve “immunity” from future Israeli attacks.
Despite all those qualifications, this was by far the best opportunity Israel has had to date to set back Iran’s nuclear program, and it may have been the best opportunity it will ever have had.
Despite pressure from the US and EU to refrain from striking Iran or to limit any attack, Israel’s allies would have been more sympathetic to Israel’s desire to attack Iran’s nuclear program, especially after Khamenei ordered two direct massive attacks on Israel in April and again on October 1.
In fact, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu restrained his response to April’s Iran attack to a single significant but limited and surgical strike on one anti-aircraft S-300 missile system.
Given that following Israel’s limited response, Khamenei decided to attack again earlier this month, Israel had an even stronger case than ever that a limited attack would be insufficient to deter the Islamic Republic from a third attack.
Also, until now, the prevailing theory was that Tehran was a risk-averse rational actor who would not directly attack Israel with conventional weapons and certainly would not do so with nuclear ones.
After two massive attacks, including over 300 aerial threats in April and over 180 ballistic missiles on October 1, Netanyahu could argue that Khamenei has turned the corner and is capable of anything.
It is one thing to hold your fire and risk the possibility of Iran crossing the nuclear threshold when you think the bomb is just for deterrence. It is quite another when their aggression has crossed many new boundaries, and no one can say what lines they might not cross.
Another decades-long objection to striking Iran’s nuclear program was that it could lead the Islamic Republic to fire ballistic missiles at Israel, potentially killing thousands of Israelis and ravaging large portions of the country’s central regions.
This was in a time of considerable uncertainty about how the Arrow missile defense system would perform against ballistic missiles, given that until this year, it had been almost completely untested.
However, according to some US sources, between April and October and given a limited number of ballistic missile launchers, Khamenei may have already taken his best shot – twice.
Given that Israel has now exposed Iran’s ballistic missile weapons as insufficient to cause massive damage (in April there was close to zero damage, on October 1 there was far more damage but still nothing that slowed IDF operations) or deaths, Jerusalem could have been less worried about what Tehran would hit back with.
The next major risk of hitting Iran’s nuclear program was always related to its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.It was said that if the IDF attacked Iran’s nuclear program, Khamenei would order both proxies to rain hellfire down on Israel.
Back when Hezbollah had a 150,000 rocket juggernaut arsenal and Hamas had 15,000 or more, and it was believed that both proxies could overwhelm Israel’s air defenses with a mix of sheer quantity and long-range precision rockets, this could have meant thousands of dead Israelis on top of whatever harm Iran itself would do to Israel and even more destruction of critical national infrastructure.
Now, Hamas has been militarily defeated and essentially is no longer a rocket threat of almost any kind.
Hezbollah appears to have the capabilities to keep northern Israel under fire for months or longer and to periodically take shots at the Tel Aviv area, but since Israel started hammering it in mid-September, the Lebanese terror group seems to have lost the capability to do anything suddenly devastating to the Jewish state.
A massive strike on Iran’s nuclear program could set it back years.
Yes, Tehran could rebuild, and the nuclear science knowledge that Israel and the West problematically have allowed it to gain in recent years cannot be destroyed.
However, the experts’ claim that Israel couldn’t destroy Iran’s nuclear program due to its extensive spread and deep underground locations without the use of US bunker buster bombs is misleading.
For example, Israel does not need to completely destroy Iran’s underground Fordow nuclear facility; it can merely cause a cave-in so that the facility is damaged and inaccessible.
If Iran attempts to rebuild and appears to be approaching nuclear weapons once more within the next two years, Israel could launch another strike.
Relying on repeatedly striking Iran’s nuclear program is a highly problematic solution. But everything in the world that Israel lives in post-October 7, 2023, is far more problematic and unstable than it was before.
On the other hand, if Israel consistently demonstrates its willingness to use military force to neutralize nuclear threats, Khamenei may eventually come to the conclusion that pursuing nuclear weapons is not worth the trouble.
Instead, to date, the Islamic Republic has now gotten to go two rounds with Israel in shooting ballistic missiles and gotten to see two rounds of what Israeli strikes look like, which could help it prepare better to defend against future strikes – and all this comes without losing even a small piece of the nuclear program.
We can only hope that the more limited strikes will still be sufficient to deter Iran from trying to cross the nuclear threshold, but Israel may have lost the chance to confront the nuclear threat directly and avoid having to rely solely on “hope.”
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“Deterrence” is simply not sufficient. At best it will work for a while, until Iran can rebuild its arsenal. We must stop, permanently, the Iranian nuclear threat. We cannot live with an Iran perpetually on the edge of nuclear breakout.
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