How Israel Caught Iran Off-Guard
Tehran failed to anticipate a military strike that could spell the end of its governing regime.
By: Hilal Khashan
Ever since its establishment in 1948, Israel has been conscious of its precarious security situation, which is a result of its small geographic size and hostile regional environment.
In addition to building a competent defense force capable of fighting on multiple fronts, it has therefore invested in developing a first-rate intelligence community that seeks to eliminate its most significant security challenges.
The ongoing Israeli campaign against Iran, code-named Rising Lion, shows that Iran – which continuously brags about its technological achievements, cyber and military intelligence, and information analysis – failed not only to anticipate the Israeli offensive but also to prevent Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency from penetrating deep into the country.
Since the 1950s, the Iranians have assumed that the U.S. has a vested interest in maintaining Iran as a buffer between the West and the former Soviet Union.
This perception continued even after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
With China’s emergence as a global economic and military power, the Iranians believed that the U.S. still needed them to prevent Beijing from intruding into the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
Tehran has thus presented itself as a peacemaker while also supporting Arab Shiite militias to fight its subversive regional wars.
Since the 1980s, Iranian policy has aimed to avoid a direct military confrontation with Israel, believing a war on its territory could garner a humiliating result.
However, following the destruction of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance, the country finally found itself facing a direct fight with Israel.
This confrontation could have dire consequences not only for the survival of Iran’s Islamic regime but also for the country’s territorial integrity.
Israeli Intelligence
Israel’s attack on Iran last week in some ways resembled past Israeli operations that relied heavily on intelligence, espionage and disinformation.
In 1954, Israel organized a false flag operation targeting U.S. and British civilian interests in Egypt in what became known as the Lavon affair.
The aim of the ill-fated plot was to sway Britain against evacuating troops from the Suez Canal area and to undermine warming U.S.-Egypt relations.
In 1962, Israel launched Operation Damocles, aimed at obstructing the development of Egypt’s rocket program led by former Nazi German scientists.
Six of the scientists were eliminated and the others quit the program, leading to its dismantlement.
Just days before the start of the 1967 Six-Day War, the U.S. gave Israel the green light to launch the war despite agreeing to a visit by Egyptian Vice President Zakaria Mohieddin to Washington, ostensibly aimed at defusing the crisis and avoiding conflict.
U.S. State Department officials told Jordan’s King Hussein that Israel would start the war on June 5.
He informed Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who dismissed the warning.
Thus, Egyptian radars were off when the first wave of Israeli jets attacked Egyptian air bases.
Before Israel launched its campaign against Hezbollah last fall, it carried out Operation Grim Beeper, in which explosives concealed inside thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies owned by Hezbollah members were detonated.
Days later, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, along with many senior military commanders, was assassinated.
Nasrallah’s successor, Hashem Safieddine, was killed the following month, decimating Hezbollah’s entire political and military leadership before Israel’s advance into southern Lebanon.
A Lesson Not Learned
In the weeks leading up to Israel’s strike last week, indications were that it was unlikely to launch an attack on Iran without receiving a green light from Washington.
It appeared that President Donald Trump was unlikely to give sign off on a strike because a nuclear deal with Iran seemed close.
There had been much talk in Israel that the window for a preemptive strike against Iran was closing, and the Iranians believed a strike would not take place before their sixth round of negotiations with the U.S., set for June 15 in Muscat.
But the Israeli security establishment assessed that Iran was domestically weaker than ever.
Israel therefore prepared a comprehensive plan to attack Iranian nuclear sites and ballistic missile depots.
The plan was reportedly delayed due to objections from Trump, who wanted to give negotiations with Tehran a chance.
The Iranians believed that Trump would not authorize an Israeli operation.
U.S. officials said at the time that such a strike would create a rupture between the Netanyahu government and the Trump administration.
Trump himself said an Israeli strike on Iran was possible but not imminent.
These statements have since been deemed part of a disinformation campaign.
Privately, U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff warned senior Senate Republicans that Iran could launch a large-scale attack, resulting in massive casualties, if Israel bombed its nuclear facilities.
According to U.S. intelligence estimates, Iran possesses approximately 2,000 ballistic missiles capable of carrying 900-kilogram (2,000-pound) warheads.
To increase the element of surprise, Israeli media reported that military chief of staff Eyal Zamir and Air Force Commander Tomer Bar informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel alone cannot confront Iran if a direct war breaks out.
Israel made great efforts to keep planning for this attack secret and tightly controlled until its launch.
The session in which Israel’s security Cabinet approved the strike was said to have been about the war in Gaza.
The Trump administration has not officially expressed support for the operation, but its decision to withdraw nonessential U.S. personnel from the Gulf and Iraq and senior officials’ declarations in Washington about readiness to defend the U.S. and Israel have hinted at tacit support for Israel’s decision.
Trump likely hoped that the strike would persuade Tehran to comply with his insistence that it dismantle its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Israel Strikes
When it became clear that Israel was about to attack, commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps air force met at a fortified underground site to coordinate a response.
Israel was aware of the emergency protocol and location of the site, and destroyed it.
They were among more than 20 Iranian commanders targeted in the opening attack on the military’s command and control.
Another primary target was Iranian air defense systems and radars that Israeli intelligence had identified.
The Israeli air force hit most of them in the initial strike, giving it freedom to operate in Iranian skies virtually unchallenged.
Subsequent strikes hit Iran’s nuclear facilities, ballistic missile plants and military infrastructure.
They targeted the hierarchy of decision-making and the IRGC.
Some 14 atomic scientists have been assassinated, indicating that the target was not the Iranian people or infrastructure but rather Iran’s nuclear program.
At the same time, Mossad was carrying out a series of covert sabotage operations deep inside Iran to destroy its air defenses and ballistic missile launchers.
The opening strike involved hundreds of Mossad agents both inside Iran and at headquarters, including a special unit of Iranian agents working for the Israeli intelligence agency.
In central Iran, Mossad commando units positioned guided weapons systems in open areas near Iranian surface-to-air missile launchers.
In another part of Iran, Mossad secretly deployed advanced weapons systems and technologies hidden in vehicles.
When the Israeli attack began, operatives launched them, destroying Iranian air defense targets.
Mossad also maintained a base for attack drones inside Iran, using drones smuggled in long before the operation to destroy ballistic missiles.
Iran’s Debacle
The Israelis insisted that any nuclear agreement include the complete dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure (including centrifuges and its heavy water reactor), a halt to the development of nuclear warheads and the complete removal of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile.
By attacking Iran, Netanyahu is trying to establish himself as a historical Israeli hero who has ensured the long-term existence of the Jewish state and permanently eliminated the two-state solution proposal.
His goal is to bring down the last remaining state obstructing normalization of relations with regional governments.
He desires to impose normalization on Israeli terms and to extend it to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
This requires undermining the Iranian regime.
He has even promised Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that he will return the Iranian province of East Azerbaijan to the mother country.
Neutralizing the fuel enrichment plant at Fordow is essential to dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, but the facility lies 90 meters underground.
Netanyahu wants to convince Trump to deploy U.S. heavy bombers in an attack on Fordow, since Israel does not have its own bombers.
Trump will likely eventually commit the U.S. Air Force to achieving this objective.
Iran views the demand that it halt its uranium enrichment activities and dismantle its nuclear program as a nonstarter.
If the ayatollahs were to acquiesce on this point, the regime would lose its political and strategic credibility and be on the verge of collapse.
In this case, a military confrontation, with all its disastrous consequences, would be far preferable.
For more than four decades, Iran has used its regional proxies to advance its geopolitical and geostrategic interests in the region.
However, now that it has lost its allies – particularly Hezbollah, the Assad regime in Syria and Shiite militias in the region – the Iranian regime finds itself at risk of collapse.
The ball is now in Tehran’s court.
Trump has called on the Iranian government to return to the negotiating table.
The Israeli attack placed Iran between two bitter paths.
It is unable to fulfill its supreme leader’s promise to launch a devastating response to Israel without support from China or Russia, which have informed Iranian leaders that they are unwilling to help.
The other option – its traditional approach of launching measured strikes that do not provoke the U.S. – will portray Iran as a weak state before its people and encourage them to turn against it when the war ends.
Iran chose to continue pursuing its traditional path.
It did not attack, for example, the Dimona nuclear reactor or Israel’s gas fields in the Mediterranean.
It has decided instead to deal with any internal unrest later, using the same repressive methods it previously employed.
Outlook for Iran
The U.S. does not seek to cripple Iran militarily or existentially but rather to disrupt its determination to dominate the region.
The American vision for the region rests on four pillars: Israel, Iran, the Gulf and Turkey.
Any disruption to these pillars would jeopardize U.S. interests in the Middle East and hinder its efforts to consolidate its presence and influence.
However, Iran suffers from fundamental shortcomings that have accumulated over nearly half a century.
Its economy is collapsing and the Iranian people are increasingly frustrated, resulting in accelerating demands for political change.
Amid the rapid transformations taking place in the region, Iran now faces greater and more complex challenges that threaten its internal stability, regional security and regime survival.
One of Israel’s goals is to topple the regime, believing that only this will free Israel from Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Israel’s military campaign has shown the Iranian people the extent of the regime’s frailty, which will encourage them to rebel against it.
The regime has not implemented political and economic reforms to ensure its survival; instead, it has relied primarily on its security apparatus for support.
Now that the security apparatus is severely deteriorating, the Iranian regime is on the verge of collapse.
0 comments:
Publicar un comentario