WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST: ISRAEL LAUNCHES WAVES OF DEVASTATING STRIKES ON IRAN / THE ECONOMIST

War in the Middle East 

Israel launches waves of devastating strikes on Iran

Donald Trump warns the next attacks could be “even more brutal”

THE FIRST indication Israelis received that their country was at war with Iran was a siren a few minutes before 3am on June 13th, accompanied by an alert on their mobile phones. 

In Iranian cities, people were shaken awake by huge bomb blasts. 

For over two decades, Israeli leaders have spoken of the need to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, if necessary by force. 

Now they have launched a full-scale campaign on Iran that could last for days, without clear American backing, plunging the region into turmoil. 

The oil price surged by 13% in the hours after the first attacks. 

Huge uncertainty now looms over how Iran will retaliate, how resilient Iran’s regime is to a new war and whether America, having given its tacit backing to Israel, will be dragged into a conflict.

Israel launched at least six waves of air strikes in what it is calling Operation Rising Lion. 

More are expected in the next hours and days. 

The first, at around 3.30am Iran time, struck command-and-control centres, ballistic-missile bases and air-defence batteries. 

Israel claims to have hit installations of Iran’s nuclear programme and social media show footage of smoke rising from the uranium-enrichment plant near the city of Natanz. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN watchdog, confirms the plant was “among targets”. 

It said it was in contact with Iranian authorities over radiation levels.

Alongside this were strikes intended to decapitate Iran’s military leadership, with attacks on residential buildings in Tehran. 

The targets included the chiefs of staff of the Iranian army, air force and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), as well as the commander of the expeditionary Quds Force, according to Israeli sources. 

Hossein Salami, the head of the IRGC, Iran’s most important military official, was killed, according to Iranian state media. 

Nuclear scientists were targeted as well. 

Fereydoon Abbasi, who once led Iran’s atomic-energy agency, was killed. 

Some reports suggest that Ali Shamkhani, a national security adviser to Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who has oversight of the nuclear programme, was injured. 

That indicates Israel has struck parts of Iran’s political leadership, too, although Israeli officials insist that regime change is not an aim of the operation.

Israel claims it has struck now because Iran has crossed a dangerous nuclear threshold. 

An Israeli official says intelligence shows that Iran is rapidly advancing in the development and manufacture of components for nuclear weapons and that it had accumulated sufficient fissile material which would have allowed it to prepare “15 nuclear devices within days”. 

On June 12th the IAEA’s board of governors declared Iran to be in breach of its non-proliferation obligations, though that was largely over historical issues.

Israeli intelligence believes Iran was using the ongoing talks with America as a stalling mechanism while it rushes through a critical stage of weaponisation, although there is no clear evidence of this. 

Iran’s nuclear programme has “reached the point of no return”, said Eyal Zamir, the head of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). 

In a pre-recorded speech, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, pointed to the risk of a “nuclear holocaust”.

As recently as March, Tulsi Gabbard, America’s director of national intelligence, said that its intelligence agencies had concluded that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear-weapons programme that he suspended in 2003.”

What is America’s role? 

Israel says it notified the Trump administration and sources there say that while America took no part in the strikes, it gave undefined “support” to Israel. 

Immediately after the attacks Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, was equivocal, saying in a statement that Israel had taken “unilateral action” and that America was “not involved”. 

Iran, he warned, “should not target US interests or personnel”.

But hours later on June 13th President Donald Trump weighed in on social media, signalling perhaps that he had more advanced notice and offering some implicit support for the attacks. 

He said “I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal,” and boasted of the effectiveness of the American military equipment used by Israel in its strikes. 

He also made a threat and held out an olive branch: “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.”

American warplanes in Jordan are likely to have been used to shoot down Iranian drone attacks on Israel. 

America probably still has lines of communication open with Iran’s regime: before the attacks Steve Witkoff, America’s envoy, had been due to hold more talks with Iran on June 15th on its nuclear programme.

There was no immediate reaction from Gulf states, which had spent months urging Mr Trump to restrain Israel and strike a new deal with Iran. 

Many will be pleased to see their longtime foe bloodied. 

But they are nervous about retaliation: Bahrain hosts a major American naval base and Qatar has an American air base. 

Saudi Arabia condemned the “heinous attacks”.

What follows now is probably a sustained campaign by Israel. 

Its air force has around 300 manned fighter-jets and long-range attack drones, but only a limited number can attack simultaneously, as it only has a small number of the refuelling tankers needed to enable heavily laden aircraft to reach targets over a thousand miles from Israeli bases. 

Each wave consists of a few dozen aircraft.

The first wave would have consisted of stealthy F-35 bombers and aircraft carrying air-launched ballistic missiles to hit air-defence batteries and command centres, before waves of F-15 and F-16 jets carried out strikes from closer quarters. 

There are also reports of sabotage by Israeli agents working on the ground. 

In October Israel destroyed much of Iran’s air-defence capabilities, including batteries of Russian-made S-300 missiles. 

This was a retaliation to an earlier Iranian salvo of ballistic missiles against Israel, but it was also designed to pave the way for the much wider attack.

It is unclear how much damage Israel will inflict on Iran’s main nuclear sites, which are deeply buried. 

Experts have previously estimated that even America’s largest “bunker-buster” bomb, the GBU-57, which cannot be carried by Israeli warplanes, would need to be used many times on the same point. 

Israel might have targeted the entrances, tunnels and ventilation shafts of these facilities to put them out of action.

The huge scope of the attack nonetheless makes it almost certain that Iran will retaliate aggressively. 

Mr Khamenei, the supreme leader, promised a “harsh response”. 

The first such salvo could take place within hours, according to Israeli officials.

Last year Iran twice launched large missile barrages against Israel, each of which was repelled with the help of America and other countries. 

One of Iran’s options would be to repeat those salvos, possibly relying more heavily on ballistic missiles, which are harder to intercept, than on drones, which are slower. 

In the second round of strikes, in October, at least 20 Iranian missiles are thought to have made it through owing to a shortage of interceptors. 

Both countries have been working hard to replenish their missile stocks in anticipation of more fighting.

The damage Iran might inflict on Israel will depend in part on the effectiveness of Israel’s initial strikes against Iran’s ballistic missiles, and whether Iran now has enough left to overwhelm Israeli and American defensive batteries. 

However, America still has a large number of military platforms in the region, including ships and aircraft, in the aftermath of its own bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen. 

These would almost certainly be used to shield Israel from reprisals. 

Those, in turn, would probably lead Israel to strike Iran again, possibly against political, economic and infrastructure targets, of the kind that Israel has also attacked in Yemen in recent months. 

Iran would once have relied on Hizbullah, the Lebanese militant group, to have been the spearhead of its retaliation. 

But much of Hizbullah’s missile arsenal and its leadership was destroyed in strikes last year.

Iran could cross another Rubicon and target American embassies or military bases in the region, which are closer to Iran and would be easier to strike with greater accuracy. 

Or it could attack shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 21% of global oil supplies move, or even strike the Gulf states in order to disrupt the world economy. 

This is why the oil price has surged. 

But all of these options would draw America directly into the war, causing more severe damage to be inflicted on the deeply buried Iranian nuclear sites. 

It would also limit the number of missiles Iran can concentrate in an attempt to overwhelm Israel’s defences.

Israel’s strike on Iran has been many years in the making. 

The coming days will be a test of which country prepared for it better and whether Donald Trump’s America will be sucked into a conflict that it has long sought to avoid. 

Perhaps striking Iran’s nuclear programme will permanently remove a grave threat. 

But perhaps it will create an escalating conflict, and redouble the regime’s determination to gain a bomb.