Ilan Berman
In the early morning hours of June 13, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched Operation Rising Lion—a sustained campaign of airstrikes targeting Iran's nuclear program. That effort is still ongoing; Israeli officials have indicated that the strikes will come in multiple waves, over multiple days, as the country works to erode Iran's extensive nuclear enterprise and hobble any potential regime retaliation.
The current campaign is dramatic, but it can hardly be said to be a surprise. Israeli officials warned for years that a nuclearizing Iran was an existential threat to the Jewish state, and might require direct military action to mitigate. So, too, had Iran-watchers tracking the advancing state of the Islamic Republic's nuclear effort. (My first book on Iran, Tehran Rising, which dealt extensively with the probability of an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear program, was published two decades ago, in the summer of 2005.)
Nevertheless, the timing of Israel's strike was unexpected, coming amid efforts by the Trump administration to negotiate a more durable deal with the Iranian regime over its nuclear program. Conventional assumptions held that Israel will refrain from any action until those negotiations either failed altogether or concluded in unsatisfactory fashion—and that, if a deal with the Islamic Republic was struck, no Israeli military action would be forthcoming at all.
So what happened, precisely? While additional details will undoubtedly be disclosed in the coming days, we already know a substantial amount about what transpired, and why.
First, Israel's decision to strike was based on accumulated intelligence information that Iran had accelerated its efforts to develop a nuclear device in recent months, and as a result was now approaching the "point of no return" in terms of its ability to both enrich and to weaponize uranium.
Second, Israel's large-scale campaign—entailing the use of some 200 fighter aircraft—involved strikes on key nuclear sites, including the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, a research facility in Tabriz, and reactors in both Arak and Khondab. It also hit several defense-industrial nodes, including in Kermanshah and Isfahan.
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