Israel’s bold, pre-emptive move of striking at a range of targets in Iran, dubbed Operation Rising Lion, was triggered by the need to halt Tehran’s completion of its nuclear munitions programme. Over the last decade, Iran’s supreme leader has directed development of weapons from the uranium-fuelled civilian power facilities it already possesses.
As Iran also believes Israel has no right to exist, the target of this devilry would certainly be a first strike against Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Much of the related scientific work and storage is located in subterranean bunkers and mountain tunnels that will soon be inaccessible to even the most advanced bunker busters. Tehran was approaching the quantity of material needed to arm a flight of nine nuclear rockets.
Warned by its many spy networks operating with sympathisers throughout Iran, Israel felt it had to attack before the weapons programme culminated, and before Iran’s project was entirely located underground.
As Prime Minister Netanyahu explained (significantly in English, thus aimed at the wider world), the target set included those fanatical disciples of the Ayatollah, the senior leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), several generals and nuclear scientists who were conveniently in conference together, nuclear enrichment sites such as Natanz, and military air bases.
The air strikes, the largest against Iran for 40 years, were assisted by hundreds of drones pre-positioned by Israeli secret services, which overwhelmed Iran’s air defences. Tehran’s first counter strike by unmanned aircraft has already been launched and defeated.
Significantly, political figures such as the Supreme Leader himself were not targeted. This was Israel sending a message that their mission was limited to military and IRGC objectives and not aimed at Iran’s political leadership. The assassinations and damage to facilities will stymie Iran’s nuclear initiatives probably by several years, but not stop it altogether.
Israel felt emboldened to attack because most of Iran’s allies in the region, such as the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and other forces in Palestine, Syria and Iraq, who could hit Western targets, are at their lowest ebb, degraded by years of Israeli attacks. Such has never been the case before. And it certainly caught the Iranian regime off-guard.
History has shown us that pre-emptive assaults in a moment of peace rarely work. Britain last tried it 150 years ago after King Cetshwayo of the Zulus refused to submit to British rule and assembled a strong land force. London’s subsequent first strike invasion led to the famous defeat at Isandlwana in January 1879.
Japan’s pre-emptive attack on Peal Harbor of December 1941 did not destroy American naval power and resulted in “the awakening of a sleeping giant, filled with a terrible resolve”. Argentina’s pre-emptive seizure of the Falkland Islands in 1982 was too weak to prevent their recapture by a Royal Navy task force by 14 June 14 – 43 years ago tomorrow – which led to the downfall of the government which had ordered the illegal move.
Netanyahu is gambling on four outcomes. That he has neutralised enough of his opponent’s military forces and leadership to dissipate any conventional counter strikes; that he has removed enough of Iran’s nuclear threat to buy him breathing room; that his enemy’s allies elsewhere in the Middle East are also too weak to respond robustly; and ultimately, that President Trump will back him if anything untoward happens.
However, Israel’s kinetic adventure will have only delayed, not eliminated, Iranian aggression. Any complete cessation of this cycle of violence will be achieved by diplomacy, not war, a fact former US President Barack Obama recognised when he wrestled with the same issue in 2015. It resulted in the Nuclear Deal Framework, since unpicked by both Iran’s Supreme Leader and President Trump in 2018.
The war drums were already beating across the Middle East, as America ordered the evacuation of its embassies. Behind the scenes, Prime Minister Netanyahu would have sought US help, but with an upcoming American-Iranian conference mediated by Oman scheduled for Sunday, President Trump would have told Israel to delay or stop their proposed action.
The conclusion is that Trump is furious, partly as he sees an opportunity for a Nobel Peace Prize destroyed before his very eyes, and partly because Netanyahu went ahead without his endorsement. In the longer term, traditional US leverage over Israel has gone, hence a speedy White House statement that America was not involved.
Prime Minister Starmer, probably not privy to the impending action, has issued a statement calling for calm and de-escalation. This time, neither country assisted Israel, and want to be seen as neutral for fear of Iranian retaliation.
Thus, this action is unlikely to escalate or cause injury to UK interests in the region or at home. In the long run, Israel and Iran will have to be brought kicking and screaming to a conference table by third parties – which will probably only happen after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Benjamin Netanyahu and their political allies have ceased to govern their respective countries.
Peter Caddick-Adams is a historian, military commentator and author of, among others, Sand & Steel: A New History of D-Day (Cornerstone, £16.99)
