For more than a decade, Israel has practiced bombing and missile operations again and again to destroy Iran’s nuclear production capabilities, most of which are based around the city of Isfahan and the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility 75 miles to the north.
That’s not what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wartime cabinet chose to do before dawn on Friday, a decision that analysts and nuclear experts said in interviews was telling.
So was the silence that followed. Israel said little about the limited attack, which appeared to cause little damage to Iran. U.S. officials pointed to Iran’s decision to downplay the Isfahan bombing, and suggestions from Iranian officials that Israel may not be responsible, as an apparent effort by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to avoid another round of escalation.
Inside the White House, officials asked the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence agencies to remain silent about the operation, hoping to defuse Iran’s efforts to calm tensions in the region.
But in interviews, officials were quick to add that they were concerned that relations between Israel and Iran were very different now than they were a week ago. The taboo against direct attacks on the other side’s territory was now gone. If another round of conflict emerges – triggered by Iran’s nuclear advances or another Israeli attack on Iranian military officers – both sides may feel freer to attack each other directly.
Mr Netanyahu faces competing pressures: President Joe Biden has urged him to “achieve victory” after Iranian airstrikes last week were largely ineffective, while Israeli hard-liners have urged him to hit back hard after Iranian airstrikes , to re-establish deterrence. This is the first direct attack on Israel from Iranian soil in the 45 years of the Iranian revolution.
U.S. officials said they quickly realized they would not be able to persuade Mr. Netanyahu to abandon an obvious response.
As a result, the White House and Pentagon are urging actions that amount to what one senior U.S. official called “signals, not strikes” to minimize casualties. While this is a minimalist choice, its long-term implications for the Revolutionary Guards and the team of scientists working on Iran’s nuclear program could be significant. They could speed up efforts to put more nuclear facilities deep underground or expand them to make it harder for nuclear inspectors to know where Iran is conducting its most sensitive work.
And U.S. officials worry it could accelerate a confrontation over the nuclear program itself, which has become increasingly opaque to inspectors over the past two years.
The decision to strike conventional military targets in Isfahan sends a clear signal: Israel has proven that it can penetrate Isfahan’s multi-layered air defenses, many of which are arrayed around key sites such as the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility.
The 25-year-old facility, which is relatively vulnerable to attack, is Iran’s main production line for converting its vast quantities of natural uranium into a gas called uranium hexafluoride, which can be fed into centrifuges to produce nuclear fuel that can be used to generate electricity or Used to generate electricity. nuclear weapon.
Israeli warplanes also fired missiles at Iran during the attack, suggesting the attack was more advanced than initial reports indicated.
It was unclear what type of missile was used, where it was launched from, whether it was intercepted by Iranian defenses or where it landed. But just as drones launched from under Iran’s noses send a message about Israel’s capabilities, so do guided missiles launched by Israeli warplanes.
A senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Friday that Israel notified the United States through multiple channels shortly before the attack. But unlike the warnings Israel sent to the government before warplanes struck the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus on April 1, the official said the latest attack was not unexpected given all the warnings Israel had issued this week.
“While there has been no official claim of responsibility for the nightly attack on the Isfahan military base, the message is clear: Iran will not respond to unilateral attempts to move war targets in the region with silence and inaction,” Dana Strauer ( Dana Stroul, a former senior Pentagon official on Middle East policy who now works at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “State-to-state attacks involving drones and missiles will be met with a response.”
“Yet last night’s strike was precise and limited,” Ms Strauer added. “The message is that Iran’s air defenses are fully penetrable and their forces cannot protect their military bases from external attacks. But the damage is limited. If Iran’s leaders decide it is not worth risking further escalation on their own soil risk more deadly and costly attacks, then this escalation cycle can end.”
Long-term effects are harder to predict. Wali Nasr, an Iran expert and former dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, recently noted that Iran may now be determined to move its weapons “closer to Israel” and may face new domestic pressure to go public. Seeking nuclear weapons. deterrence.
Iran has banned some, but not all, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world’s nuclear watchdog. It has enriched uranium to 60% purity, reaching bomb-grade quality in just days or weeks. At the height of last weekend’s conflict with Israel, some senior commanders publicly said Iran was reconsidering its official position that it would never seek weapons.
Julian E.Barnes Contributed reporting.
