With luggage, pets and a cup of strong coffee, Tel Aviv residents bombed out of their homes by Iran sat contemplating their role in international affairs with either a shrug or anger.
Their lives ruined, like so many ruined by Israel in Iran and Gaza, it’s the “what next” for the region that puts them centre stage.
Leor Eldan was sheltering under the stairs after sirens announced the approach of Iranian missiles fired after the US joined Israel’s war on Tehran.
“We heard big bombs. Terrible,” she said.
It’s often the small details that stick in the head – “the dishwasher door was open and everything inside was smashed”.
Donald Trump claims to have broken more than crockery in Iran. After the US fired 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles and dropped 14 bunker buster bombs on the Fordow nuclear site, the US president claimed to have “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capability.
This is an assessment he plucked out of his head. Fordow’s nuclear facilities are half a mile inside a mountain, and while conceivably vulnerable to the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, it will be days before the US can tell if its raid was successful.
But to people in Tel Aviv, where there is broad support for Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign to rid Iran of nuclear weapons and trigger regime change in the Islamic Republic, there is a growing fear that Israel is sliding into a forever war.
“I think it’s a stupid war,” said Ravita Yemeni. “I think every war is stupid. I think that we’re bullies, they’re bullies. Everybody’s crazy … We want to live in peace. The Iranians want to live in peace, and they [the world leaders] don’t let us. All the dictators rule the world now, and they don’t let us live in peace.”
Her apartment in north Tel Aviv had been “completely destroyed” – although there were no deaths in Iran’s latest bombardment of Israel.
Does she think that there is going to be more of this?
“Of course… we’re going to get it,” she replies. “The Americans are not going to get it. We’re going to get it.”
Israel’s leadership is delighted that the US has joined their war effort.
Netanyahu said that Trump’s “bold decision” to target “Iran’s nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history”.
He may well be right, but whether that is to the advantage of Israel or the US is unclear.
Iran has said that its Fordow facilities are intact.
Israeli military sources said that if the US stops its campaign at this point, then little will have been achieved. They want to see the “might” of the US unleashed across Iran in an effort to smash its security infrastructure and provoke regime change. Few military officers believe that it will bring long-term stability, though it will end Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.
“If Trump does not carry on, then things are going to get bad. Iran can hit us with 20 missiles a day for a long time to come. That will disrupt our economy and waken support for this campaign,” said a senior Israeli officer.
“There’s no guarantee that our violence will lead to the predictable political outcomes that we want,” the officer added.
Tel Aviv has not been this quiet since the Covid pandemic. Businesses and shops are shuttered, there are bans on gatherings of more than 30 people, hotels are operating shoestring services, and the entire population of the city never ventures more than a few seconds’ sprint from a bomb shelter.
Iran knows this. Tehran’s leadership knows that if it can keep the missiles flying, Israel may end its campaign before it has achieved its aims.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said it would continue its operations against the “Zionist regime” with “precision, intent, and force”.
Israel now hopes that the US will join its wider war to stop Iran’s retaliations and keep the momentum it needs to break the back of the Iranian security structures.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran condemns in the strongest terms the United States’s brutal military aggression against Iran’s peaceful nuclear facilities. It is an outrageous, grave and unprecedented violation of the fundamental principles of the charter of the United Nations and international law,” Abbas Araghchi said at a news conference in Istanbul on Sunday.
“The warmongering and lawless administration in Washington is solely and fully responsible for the dangerous consequences and far-reaching implications of its act of aggression,” he added and warned that Iran continued to defend itself “by all means necessary”.
Those means include threatening to strangle oil exports through the Straits of Hormuz – although that would also throttle its own fossil fuel sales. More likely are continued missile attacks on Israel and unconventional operations around the world against Israel and the US.
This would include sponsoring groups and encouraging lone-wolf attacks on Israelis, or Americans, their businesses, bars, airports and assets wherever they can be found.
A forever war can be fought on many fronts, not just in Tel Aviv and Tehran.
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