‘An immediate operational necessity’: Why Israel finally attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities

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

Why preemptive? 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.

As Israel well knows, Iran has missiles that can reach anywhere in the country.

And, said Netanyahu, Iran has been taking unprecedented steps toward “weaponization” — building the bomb.

In the assessment of Israel’s security establishment, the “nine bombs” figure may be an underestimation, the enrichment process may be even more advanced than the International Atomic Energy Agency has reported, and the weaponization process has featured advanced testing in recent days.

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.

While Netanyahu spoke of the imminent liberation of the Iranian people from tyranny, the goal is not to directly precipitate regime change. Indeed, the security establishment is talking only about thwarting the danger posed by Iran’s nuclear program, without bragging about completely destroying every aspect of the program.

Netanyahu also referred to Iran’s dramatically expanding ballistic missile program, with its plans to produce thousands upon thousands of missiles in the next few years.

Quite apart from the nuclear threat, those missiles would themselves constitute an existential danger, capable of overwhelming Israel’s military defenses, the security establishment has assessed.

“We can’t leave these threats for the next generation,” Netanyahu declared, “because if we don’t act now, there will not be another generation.”

Zamir put it more succinctly. The attack, he said, was “an immediate operational necessity” — an imperative, he said, “to remove the strategic threat and ensure our future.”

Both of them warned the public that complex and challenging days lay ahead, indicating that Israel could face widespread Iranian missile strikes, of a greater order than last year’s two rounds of Iranian drone and missile attacks.

Netanyahu praised US President Donald Trump for his “steadfast stance” — even as Trump has this week publicly urged Israel not to strike Iran and to give diplomacy a little more time.

As of this writing, the extent of Israel-US coordination is not definitively clear, though it is reported that Israel informed the Trump administration ahead of time. As of this writing, the US is not believed to be playing any direct role in the strike, even as it is known that US involvement would enable a considerably more devastating attack.

Nonetheless, the belief in the Israeli security establishment is that the US will be at Israel’s side, as and when needed.