Israel seems ready to respond in a much more forceful and public way with Iran after Tehran launched its second massive missile attack on Israel this year, analysts and officials say.
After Israel invaded Lebanon to confront Iran’s strongest ally, Hezbollah, and Iran’s second massive missile attack on Israel in less than six months, Israel seems ready to strike Iran directly, in a much more forceful and public way than it ever has, and Iran has warned of massive retaliation if it does.
“We are in a different story right now,” said Yoel Guzansky, a former senior security official who oversaw Iran strategy on Israel’s National Security Council. “We have a consensus in Israel — among the military, the defense experts, analysts and politicians — that Israel should respond in force to Iran’s attack.”
To many Israelis, there is now little to lose: Iran’s efforts to strike the urban sprawl around Tel Aviv crossed a threshold that Tehran has never previously breached, even during its earlier missile attack in April, which targeted air bases but not civilian areas.
I wonder what the strategy here is, given that the USA also wants to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. Is the implication here that the USA will not enable an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities as long as Iran doesn’t actually try to build a bomb? How confident are Israel and the USA that Iran can’t build a bomb in secret? Is there a way Iran could retaliate against an attack on its nuclear facilities but not against an attack on other major targets?
The USA us probably confident, Israel just needs it as a existential threat.
Stuxnet and their targeted assassinations of Iran’s scientists seem to have made their efforts unfeasible for the foreseeable future. They have the enrichment cylinders, but they can’t keep both the infrastructure and research safe from constant attacks, which makes progress very difficult since it is very expensive both materially and in knowledge. They likely can’t break past 20% enrichment which is useless for a bomb.
For reference the technology was supposedly smuggled/provided by Pakistan, and they did it covertly in about 6-9 years, which also apparently upset Mossad because they thought Pakistan would get involved in the middle east.
I think the logic is that an attack on nuclear facilities would be – and would be perceived by Iran to be – more substantial. The US accepts that Israel is going to respond but is hoping that Iran won’t escalate after the Israeli retaliation because they don’t want war. They’d be less willing and, maybe, unable to back down after an attack on nuclear facilities.
A big part of it is that we can’t be certain they don’t already have nukes (or dirty bombs). And removing their nuclear capability is the kind of existential threat that leads to “Fuck it, we ball” levels of counterattacks.
Its comparable to using very measured responses against russian aggression.