Despite Israel’s claim that it was acting preemptively, the attacks constitute a classic preventive action, mounted against a gathering threat, rather than an imminent danger. The difference has legal and diplomatic implications, as preventive military attacks tend to be far more controversial, falling under the heading of wars of choice. Preemptive attacks are seen as a form of self-defense and tend to be accepted as necessary.
These are likely to be distinctions without meaningful differences for Israel, which has carried out such strikes (though more limited) against nascent Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs in the past. Moreover, acting against Iran plays well domestically:
It is one of the few issues that most Israelis – deeply divided over the war in Gaza, the role of the courts in their democracy, and the country’s secular-religious balance – can agree on.
Why Israel chose to conduct this operation now has yet to be satisfactorily explained. According to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, “In recent months,
Iran has taken steps that it has never taken before, steps to weaponize [its] enriched uranium.” But it will be important to see if the Israeli government had new intelligence or developed a new assessment of Iranian capabilities and intentions.
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