Last night, Israel began a sweeping series of direct attacks against Iran. Although the smoke has yet to fully clear, CFR’s leading regional experts convened this morning to discuss what we know so far and what to expect moving forward.
What happened, and why now?
Talk of a potential strike by Israel on Iran has been around for years, decades even. So, why now? There are a number of plausible reasons. The expiration yesterday of President Donald Trump’s 60-day deadline for nuclear negotiations with the regime removed a potential objection from the U.S. that Israel was undermining his diplomatic initiative. In addition, the highly unusual censure from the International Atomic Energy Agency earlier this week that Iran had taken steps towards further concealing its nuclear enrichment activities and, potentially, accelerating its nuclear weapons program, was another action-forcing event.
More broadly, the rules of the game in the Middle East have fundamentally changed over the last couple of years. As Steven Cook and Elliott Abrams observed, in a post-October 7 world, Israel has enjoyed significant success in unilaterally exercising its military capabilities to destroy its two most proximate foes, Hamas and Hezbollah, and shattering Iran’s broader proxy network in the region. Iran proper was always going to be a harder target but, as Elliott noted, after a steady stream of surgical strikes, including October and April 2024 operations which destroyed much of Iran’s advanced air defense network, Israel may have decided they had a window of opportunity which could at some point close.
The Israelis took a bet on Trump. Having earlier opposed an attack, Trump ultimately called it “excellent.” As Elliott put it, “This is a little bit reminiscent to me of the 2007 Israeli attack on the Syrian nuclear reactor, because President Bush—George W. Bush said to them, we’re going to do diplomacy; we’re going to go IAEA, we’re going to go U.N., and the Israeli response was, no, no, no, no, that’s not good enough; we’re going to take it out. And Bush’s response was, OK, you do what you have to do.”
What does it mean for Iran? This was the single most devastating attack both on a series of targets, and on the legitimacy of the regime itself.
Just consider the preliminary battle damage assessment. Last night, Israel eliminated much of Iran’s military high command, including General Hossein Salami, Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC); General Mohammad Bagheri, Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces; Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh, Head of Revolutionary Guards’ Aerospace Force; and Ismail Ghaani, the Quds Force commander in charge of regional proxies. At least 20 other senior commanders were reportedly killed, along with two nuclear scientists, and a member of Iran’s nuclear negotiation team. While military leaders will be replaced, in the short term, these strikes could damage Iran’s ability to coordinate an effective military response and send remaining senior leaders deep underground. Israel also destroyed a variety of targets related to Iran’s drone and ballistic missile forces, as well as remaining air defense sites. Finally, the Natanz and Fordow nuclear enrichment sites were hit—though the extent of damage to these assets remains unclear.
It bears scrutinizing what Israel didn’t strike: Ayatollah Khamenei and other political leaders such as President Pezeshkian, as well as major economic targets such as Iran’s energy infrastructure. But that doesn’t mean those options are permanently off the table.
The Iranian Predicament
Iran faces a number of daunting strategic choices in the wake of Israel’s strikes. It has started to retaliate with missiles but, given the success of Israel’s attacks on its missile capabilities, it might find its options more limited than they were a year ago. And it looks like the U.S. military and a coalition of other countries in the region have once again come to repel Iranian missiles and drones. As for other forms of retaliation, as Henri Barkey notes, Iran could also “exact a price on Israel” using its remaining regional proxies—but those forces are a shadow of what they were before October 7. This is all to say, Iran’s ability to deliver a proportionate counterpunch is very much in doubt—and they appear weaker now than at any point in recent memory.
Then there is Iran’s nuclear dilemma. To the degree Iran maintains a fissile material stockpile and enrichment capabilities, do they make a mad dash for the bomb now or maintain the Ayatollah’s strategic doctrine of remaining just below the nuclear threshold? Iran is still a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, at least on paper, but the International Atomic Energy Agency has now reported that Iran was in breach of its non-proliferation obligations, failing to report details about its nuclear materials and activities. Does Iran pull out of the treaty altogether?
As for the legitimacy and stability of the Iranian regime itself, Steven observed, “I think that the Israelis are seeking to greatly weaken the regime, if not by use of its military force, to actually create the conditions in which it could be overthrown by the—by the Iranian people, of course.” Politically, there is no shortage of “compounding pressures” at home, including now strained civil-military relations and state-civil society relations. The combination of economic pressures, the failure to defend the country from attack, and the potential that the billions of dollars invested in its nuclear program might all of have been for naught raises questions from all sectors of Iranian society.
The stakes are high for the supreme leader. As Ray Takeyh commented, “the regime’s pathologies are too numerous to be chronicled on a single page. The bonds between state and society have been severed, have been severed long ago. Now, the question is, can society overwhelm the state even in its weakened condition?”
Israel’s Angle
We know Israel has signaled its plans to continue striking targets in Iran. We don’t know Israel’s tolerance for Iranian retaliation. They have vowed, in the Israeli press, to target Iranian oil infrastructure and even the Ayatollah himself in the event of a significant Iranian retaliation, especially against population centers. But this would mark a dramatic escalation, which would likely be opposed by the United States and countries in the region. The extent to which Iranian missiles, which have already begun to land in Tel Aviv, cause civilian and military casualties in Israel, will be key.
What does this mean for the United States?
The United States didn’t actively participate in Israel’s strikes against Iran, but President Trump made clear he would defend Israel from Iranian retaliation and urged Iran to come to the nuclear negotiating table in haste with a proposal that could satisfy the United States’ and Israel’s terms. As he wrote on Truth Social earlier today, “there has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.” We shouldn’t, however, expect the United States to become an active participant in an offensive against Iran, at least for now. As Elliott, President Trump’s former Special Representative for Iran noted, “the only thing, in my opinion, that gets us to attack Iran is if they kill Americans or try to. And I still don’t think they’re crazy enough to do that...I hope I’m right.”
What does this mean for the region?
It’s too soon to tell how exactly the current wave of Israeli strikes could transform the region, but one thing is clear: Israel’s actions have fundamentally reshaped the security landscape of the Middle East in the span of less than two years. As Ed Husain observed, we have witnessed “the end of multiple Iran-aligned regimes and proxies, and a coming together of U.S.-aligned powers, including gulf states, to uphold a security infrastructure in the region that the Iranian government wants to see destroyed. So, on balance, what the Israelis did last night consolidated a dominant American security infrastructure in the region.” A full-blown regional war is certainly possible, but with Iran’s retaliatory and defensive capabilities in doubt, it’s unclear if they would be able or inclined to start one.
Whether a new stable order forms or the “new rules” yield a more volatile situation remains to be seen. We’ll know a lot more in the coming weeks.
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