Israel, the US and Iran: the war has only just begun — part 2

What lies ahead, at best, is a long, simmering conflict spanning the entire region, in which Tel Aviv and Washington will continue to seek to weaken Iran’s regional allies and further isolate Tehran

Part 2 of a two-part article (link to part 1) by Roberto Iannuzzi, originally published in Italian on his Substack.

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Despite the long and meticulous preparation, and the logistical and intelligence support provided by the United States, the attack launched by Israel on June 13 against Iran failed to achieve its intended objectives.

As noted by Hesamoddin Ashna, former advisor to former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, at the end of the “12-day war” neither Israel nor Iran emerged victorious, and neither side feels defeated.

Far from being permanent, the ceasefire depends on each side’s ability “to rebuild offensive and defensive capabilities, economic strength and social cohesion as quickly as possible”.

Israel, in any case, did not achieve the result it had aimed for. The Netanyahu government had set its sights on something more ambitious than merely curbing Iran’s nuclear programme (and even that objective has largely failed, as we shall see).

The Israeli military leadership attempted a genuine regime change operation, or even the collapse of the Iranian state.

A sophisticated intelligence operation

Israeli strategists had planned an operation that combined air power with special operations conducted on Iranian soil by Israeli commandos and locally recruited agents. These forces deployed swarms of small drones to neutralise Iranian air defences and maximise the element of surprise.

The work of pre-positioning the drones on Iranian territory had, of course, begun months in advance, and strongly resembles Operation “Spider Web”, through which Ukraine struck multiple Russian military bases on June 1, damaging or destroying several of Moscow’s strategic bombers.

Given the similarity (in terms of the unprecedented use of drones) and the temporal proximity of the two operations — which both required lengthy planning — one cannot rule out some process of “osmosis” between the intelligence services of the two countries, mediated by Western intelligence agencies.

Both American and British intelligence maintain close ties with their Ukrainian and Israeli counterparts. London appears to have an explicit military cooperation agreement with Israel aimed at countering Iran.

“Decapitating” the Islamic Republic

In April, just a month after taking office, the new commander of the Israeli army, Eyal Zamir, determined that June would offer the best “window of opportunity” for the operation against Iran.

Alongside efforts to neutralise Iranian air defences, Israel had planned a true decapitation operation — not only targeting the scientific leadership of Iran’s nuclear programme, but also the country’s military (and political) leadership.

The campaign against nuclear scientists, dubbed “Operation Narnia”, resulted in the elimination of around fifteen of them (and in many cases, their families were exterminated along with them).

The operation targeting the military leadership, which the Israelis called “Operation Red Wedding” (after a scene from Game of Thrones), led to the killing of about ten high-ranking military officials, including the commander of the armed forces Mohammad Baqeri, the supreme commander of the Revolutionary Guard Hossein Salami and the commander of the aerospace forces of that same corps, Amir Ali Hajizadeh.

Ali Shamkhani, a trusted advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, initially believed to be dead, barely survived serious injuries caused by a bombing of his residence.

Israeli Defense Minister Katz stated that Khamenei himself would have been eliminated if Tel Aviv’s armed forces had had the opportunity — but it had proven impossible to locate him.

Katz’s remarks appear to contradict earlier statements by U.S. President Donald Trump.

On June 17, Trump had posted on Truth, his preferred social media platform:

We know exactly where the so-called “Supreme Leader” is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there — We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.

After the top Iranian military leaders had been killed, other generals reportedly received threatening phone calls demanding that they record video declarations of surrender, under threat that their children would be eliminated. None of them, however, gave in to the threats.

Further suggesting that Israel aimed to provoke a collapse of the Iranian state is the fact that paramilitary Basij forces and other internal security structures were targeted, along with the headquarters of state television and Evin prison, where leading dissidents are held (around seventy people, including detainees and visiting family members, were killed in the bombing).

In total, 28 Iranian provinces were struck by Israeli bombings, which targeted not only military sites but also civilian infrastructure, including fuel depots, warehouses, residential areas and hospitals — causing over a thousand casualties, according to a report by the organisation Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI), which is not affiliated with the government.

An unexpected reaction

This frontal assault by Israel, however, had the opposite effect of what the Netanyahu government had hoped for. The Islamic Republic not only withstood the blow, but displayed a unity that took both the Israelis and Americans by surprise.

Most Iranians did not perceive the Israeli action as an attack against the regime of the Islamic Republic, but as an attack against the Iranian nation.

Despite the complex makeup of Iranian society and its multiple ethnic affiliations, Iranians share a strong sense of national identity shaped by the collective memory of numerous foreign interventions in the country.

Beyond ideological and social differences, they place hostility towards foreign — especially Western — aggressions above resentment towards their own government.

Opposition groups supported by the West — such as the Islamist-Marxist sect Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) or the monarchists loyal to Reza Pahlavi (son of the deposed Shah, and widely seen by Iranians as a puppet in the hands of the US and Israel) — have no real foothold within the country.

The state and military apparatuses, after the initial shock and despite the loss of top commanders, responded by quickly replacing those killed and demonstrating the resilience of a layered and institutionalised structure that does not rely on individual charismatic figures.

No defections occurred within these structures, no attempts at insurrection took place — instead, a marked consolidation was seen among the population.

Rain of Iranian missiles

Starting on the evening of June 13, the Iranian armed forces responded by launching waves of missiles and drones towards Israeli territory. The Iranian attacks increased in intensity over the following days, reaching a missile shield penetration rate of 16%, according to a Telegraph investigation based on satellite data.

This means that dozens of Iranian ballistic missiles struck Israeli territory, causing substantial damage — estimated at $3 billion, according to Bloomberg.

The Israeli daily Haaretz estimates that in Tel Aviv alone, 480 buildings were damaged, many of them severely.

Although the Israeli government imposed censorship on the strategic targets hit by Iran, the Telegraph investigation reports that at least five Israeli military bases across various parts of the country were struck.

Among them were a major airbase, an intelligence center and a logistics base.

Other targets hit, according to the British newspaper, included seven energy infrastructures (among them a refinery in Haifa), two buildings of the Weizmann Institute — one of the country’s leading research centres — and the Soroka University Medical Center.

Damage to residential areas resulted in 15,000 people being displaced.

The Telegraph also cites prominent Israeli journalist Raviv Drucker from Channel 13, who reported that many of the Iranian strikes on Israeli military bases were successful, but due to censorship the public was not informed.

[This] created a situation where people don’t realise how precise the Iranians were and how much damage they caused”, Drucker said.

Thanks to Israel’s dense network of bomb shelters, only 28 fatalities were recorded, but the Israeli economy was paralysed for twelve days.

In addition to the cost of damages and economic losses caused by the shutdown, one must also account for military expenditures related to the deployment of Israel’s complex missile defense system to intercept Iranian projectiles. According to Haaretz, those costs amounted to approximately $287 million per night.

Altogether, the war with Iran cost Israel several billion dollars — $12 billion, according to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. A massive sum for a conflict lasting just twelve days, especially considering that Israel’s defense budget for 2024 was $46.5 billion (already up 65% from the previous year).

Who helped Israel

It must be noted that Israel did not act alone — neither in its offensive against Iran nor in its defensive efforts.

During their missions over Iranian territory, Israeli fighter jets were refuelled mid-air, between Syria and Iraq, by American tanker aircraft.

And a coalition of regional and European countries (France and the United Kingdom) assisted the US in intercepting Iranian missiles and drones headed for Israel.

Washington, of course, contributed the most: to the two THAAD missile batteries already deployed on Israeli soil, it added five Aegis-equipped destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean.

According to estimates cited by Newsweek, the US expended between 15% and 20% of its THAAD interceptor stockpile to defend Israel from Iranian missiles, with total costs exceeding $800 million.

This massive deployment of forces did not prevent the Jewish state from suffering the damages mentioned earlier.

Finally, Tel Aviv had to request US assistance to strike Iranian nuclear sites with sufficiently powerful “bunker buster” bombs.

According to Israeli Defence Minister Katz, when Netanyahu’s government launched the attack on Iran, it had no certainty that Trump would come to its aid.

Among military experts, there was awareness that not even the most powerful American ordnance might be capable of destroying deeply buried Iranian installations such as the one at Fordow.

Israel therefore took a gamble.

In the end, American B-2 bombers dropped no fewer than fourteen GBU-57 MOPs on two Iranian nuclear sites (twelve on Fordow, two on Natanz). These are the most powerful conventional bombs in the world.

But according to the Wall Street Journal, the US has produced only about twenty of these bombs to date, meaning that the strike on Iranian facilities consumed 70% of its stockpile of that weapon type.

Shortly afterward, Trump imposed a ceasefire that was eventually accepted by both Israel and Iran.

The move by the American president was likely motivated not only by his reluctance to once again drag the US into a dangerous Middle Eastern war, but also by the fact that both Israel and the US had exhausted an excessive number of interceptors and were finding it increasingly difficult to stop Iranian missiles.

As American experts observed, had the conflict turned into a prolonged war of attrition, it would have entailed exorbitant costs and damage for Israel.

No objectives achieved

The outcome of the conflict is, all in all, disappointing for both Washington and Tel Aviv.

Israel did not achieve regime change in Iran — on the contrary, it triggered a rallying of the country around the government.

And despite the bombastic statements from Trump, as well as from other members of his administration and the Netanyahu government, Iran’s nuclear programme — though damaged — is far from destroyed.

The controversy that erupted in Washington, after an initial estimate by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) claimed that the Israeli-American bombing had delayed Iran’s nuclear programme by only a few months, eventually subsided when the Pentagon revised the delay to “two years”.

But that debate is misleading, as pointed out by American nuclear non-proliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis.

The key point is that while Tehran may need time to restore the infrastructure of its civilian nuclear programme, the process leading to the production of an atomic bomb is much more agile and rapid.

And Iran — bombed despite being a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and having allowed IAEA inspectors to monitor its nuclear sites — now has every incentive to develop a military nuclear programme in order to acquire a deterrent that would prevent future attacks.

As Lewis observed, the obstacle to producing a nuclear bomb for Iran has never been technical, but political. In other words, Tehran had so far chosen not to build a weapon. But the 12-day war may have changed the minds of the Iranian leadership.

Following the Israeli-American bombing, Iran ceased cooperation with the IAEA, whose inspectors have since left the country.

Moreover, over 400 kg of uranium enriched to 60% is now unaccounted for — no one knows where it is. All indications suggest that the Iranians removed this material from the Fordow and Natanz sites in anticipation of the airstrikes.

It is highly likely that Iran still possesses a sufficient number of centrifuges to continue enriching uranium, and it has at least two recently built fortified sites, in Natanz and Isfahan, which were not even bombed because they lie at depths unreachable even by the most powerful US bombs.

According to Lewis, Iran also has an underground facility outside Tehran (Shahid Boroujerdi) for converting uranium hexafluoride into metal — a process that may eventually be necessary for building a nuclear weapon.

This facility, never previously activated, could now be brought online.

All things considered, the 2015 agreement (JCPOA) had placed Iran’s nuclear programme under a strict monitoring regime for 15 years (and even after the deal’s expiration, the programme would have remained under IAEA oversight).

The June bombing delayed it by a few months at most (this is Lewis’s assessment as well) and led to the expulsion of IAEA inspectors from Iran. A result that, by any measure, must be considered a failure.

A conflict destined to continue

Moreover, although Tehran has expressed its willingness to reopen negotiations, it is clear that the chances of a successful deal are currently close to zero — both due to the deep mistrust the Iranian leadership harbours towards the Trump administration, and because the latter’s demand to dismantle all uranium enrichment infrastructure is unacceptable to Iran.

For Tel Aviv and Washington, however, if the nuclear programme cannot be eliminated through diplomacy, the perceived need to periodically strike Iran in order to turn back the clock on its programme will inevitably return.

The ultimate objective, in any case, is much broader.

As Israeli analyst Raz Zimmt has written, from Tel Aviv’s perspective “a long-term solution to the Iranian challenge to Israel’s security lies in regime change in Tehran”. In the meantime, Israel will continue its campaign against Iran “through diplomatic, economic, covert intelligence, and, at times, military means, in close coordination and cooperation with the United States”.

What lies ahead, at best, is a long, simmering conflict spanning the entire region, in which Tel Aviv and Washington will seek to weaken Iran’s regional allies and further isolate Tehran.

At worst, this confrontation could escalate into outbreaks similar to the recently concluded “12-day war”, but with far greater levels of danger — potentially destabilising the entire region.

As I pointed out in the first part of this article, we are in the midst of a campaign to reshape the Middle East — from the Palestinian Territories to Lebanon, Syria, the Gulf (through the Abraham Accords) and Iran.

A campaign led by Israel, with decisive support from the United States — a superpower in debt and in decline, seeking to escape its crisis through coercive economic measures (the trade war) and military actions.

The outcome of this campaign is far from certain. The Islamic Republic has shown internal resilience and significant military capabilities.

Iran and the broader Middle East — strategic from the standpoint of energy and Eurasian integration projects (from China’s Belt and Road Initiative to the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) between Russia and Iran) — are therefore poised to become one of the hottest and most dangerous theatres in the global battle to reshape the balance of power.

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope

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