Though limited, Israel’s highly successful attack leaves Iran more vulnerable than ever
With key air defenses disabled and Hezbollah weakened, Tehran knows the IAF could come back for more. That might prompt it to push for the bomb, and Israel to try to stop it
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
Israeli officials aren’t speaking much about the airstrikes in Iran on early Saturday morning, but that doesn’t detract from the significance of the operation.
It seems to have gone off exactly as planned, with no losses on the Israeli side. That in and of itself is a major accomplishment.
The risks inherent in operations 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) from Israeli airspace are daunting. A minor complication can turn into a life-and-death challenge.
The strikes were planned with the assumption that the fighter jets would be able to refuel near Iran. But if a small component in the refuel system malfunctioned, or a plane’s engine failed, a pilot would face a dangerous landing in likely enemy territory. Almost all the support and emergency capabilities the Israeli Air Force can bring to bear in operations over Gaza and Lebanon would be irrelevant so far from the country’s border.
As far as we know, however, no significant malfunctions took place, a testament not only to the skill of Israel’s pilots but also to the professionalism of IAF maintenance and support personnel.
Instead, Israel was able to get dozens of planes close enough to Iran to launch precision munitions at military targets in several waves.
Iran knew for weeks an attack was coming, and might even have been tipped off indirectly by Israel about the timing of the strikes. Yet it could do nothing to stop Israeli jets from carrying out their operation deliberately and systematically.
Now Iran — and its gas and nuclear facilities — are more vulnerable than ever. The regime’s most advanced anti-aircraft systems were destroyed, and replacing them — if their provider, Russia, is even willing or able to do so — will not happen immediately. Its air defenses, which were ineffective on Saturday, are now even less capable with batteries and radars destroyed.
On top of the disabling of its air defenses — systems in which Iran has poured significant investment — the Islamic Republic has also lost its chief deterrent against Israel. After weeks of devastating strikes against its leaders and Israeli ground troops operating in force in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah is able to fire a couple of hundred rockets at Israel a day, but that’s it. It has lost the ability to do anything to alter Israel’s decision-making about strikes on Iran. Longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed, and Israeli jets struck Iran directly, yet normal daily life goes on in most of Israel.
Iran’s “ballistic missile arsenal hasn’t yet managed to kill a single Israel despite giving it their best shot — twice,” said John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.
“A hundred Israeli jets are able to take a joy ride over Iranian targets for hours without Iran laying a finger on them. Now, Iran’s air defenses appear to have been laid waste and its ability to produce more ballistic missiles may have been crippled. The regime and its core assets haven’t been this exposed and vulnerable for decades.”
The Israeli strike may have been somewhat limited in terms of the actual damage it caused, but the message to frail Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is what matters: Israel can reach strategic sites in Iran and can hit what it wants, and Tehran cannot stop it.
This time it was military sites, but Iranian leaders have to be asking themselves how much more it would take for Israel to focus on targets with higher strategic value — oil facilities, symbols of the regime, and of course, the nuclear program.
And things could get even worse for Tehran. The Joe Biden/Kamala Harris White House has worked hard to limit Israel’s retaliation against Iran’s two missile attacks this year out of fear of escalation into a regional war that could suck in the US. Iran also faced no risk of Biden ordering a US strike on Iranian soil.
Much to Iran’s chagrin, there is a real chance Donald Trump could be back in power by January. The return of the unpredictable president who ordered the elimination of the notorious head of the IRGC’s Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, and who replaced the 2015 nuclear deal with a maximum pressure strategy, combined with Israel’s newly aggressive posture against the Iranian axis, is a dangerous scenario for Tehran.
That doesn’t mean Iran won’t respond to Saturday’s attack. It is sensitive to appearing weak in front of its restive population and its proxy network. And Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal is large and can cause damage to Israel even if most of what it fires gets intercepted by Israel and its allies. Israelis are in no mood to have massive Iranian attacks become something they have to get used to, even if the damage so far has been relatively small.
And there remains the ever-pressing question of Iran’s nuclear program. With pressure growing on the regime, and a growing sense of vulnerability, could this be the scenario that pushes Khamenei to order an all-out drive to build a nuclear weapon and present a powerful new deterrent against Israel and the US?
That is certainly possible. But after Saturday’s strike, it is also now more likely that Israel will feel it has the capacity — and the imperative — to cause meaningful damage to that program with a new series of attacks.
