There are two distinct ways of looking at the broad Israeli attack on Iran, almost destined to escalate further in the coming days.
The first is to conclude that “Israel had to do what Israel had to do” to prevent Iran from further advancing on the development of a military nuclear capability. It was a pre-emptive strike, a euphoric prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared.
According to this explanation, Iran’s significant geopolitical weakening in 2024-2025 through the military degrading of Hezbollah, its prized regional proxy, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and successful Israeli attacks on Tehran’s air defence systems in October 2024, created an opportunity to strike and set back the nuclear programme.
Of course, that ignores the fact that Iran made progress, enhanced and modernised its uranium enrichment capabilities and stockpiled over 300kg of 60-per-cent-enriched uranium (90 per cent is required for military grade, but the leap from 60-90 per cent is not long), as a direct result of Donald Trump’s 2018 decision, encouraged intensively by Netanyahu, to unilaterally withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
In 2015, Netanyahu said there was a better deal – but never came up with one. Then, in 2018, he explained to Trump that maximum sanctions pressure on Iran would impel them to agree to such a “better deal”. The exact opposite happened.
The second analysis has to do with a combination of Netanyahu’s unhinged, messianic approach to Iran and his self-image after 7 October 2023.
Iran threatens not only Jewish civilisation, but the West – which makes Netanyahu not just the protector of Israel, his image initially bolstered after the 7 October Hamas attacks (and vastly diminished due to the death toll in Gaza since), but also the saviour of the West. This, he believes, is how he should go down in history.
The fact that he “Israelised” the Iranian threat is conveniently forgotten. He called for international cooperation… and when that produced an agreement, he was against it. Some, like him, may think of that as Churchillian. Others choose to evoke Nero Caesar.
It will take many days and weeks – depending how expansive and long the war will be – to accurately assess the extent of the damage that Israel has inflicted on Iran’s nuclear programme. Yet some aspects are already discernible in terms of the broader picture.
Iran’s biggest dilemma in the next few days will be the scale of their inevitable and expected retaliation: whether to limit it to an Iranian-Israeli war or to expand it and strike US targets in the Gulf.
Tehran views the US as complicit, despite American denials and explicit attempts to portray the attack as a unilateral Israeli action. It is doubtful Iran buys into that narrative. Notwithstanding, Iran would then risk an American military response, and that could lead to an attack on Saudi Arabian or Emirati oil terminals.
The likelihood of Iran making such an irrational decision like that is low, and so the threat of a region-wide escalation diminishes. But the dynamics of the war have not been set or delineated yet, and much of it depends on Tehran’s perceptions and interpretations of the trajectory of the war; if they convince themselves that the underlying objective is to precipitate regime change, then all supposedly “rational decisions” are subject to revision.
The US will also face a double dilemma in the next days.
First, it needs to do everything to avoid being dragged into a war the US should have no interest in being a part of, despite Trump branding the Israeli strikes on Tehran’s nuclear sites “excellent” and warning there is “more to come”. There are no tangible benefits to gain – quite the contrary.
Inside Washington, there has been a growing and irritating suspicion that spans several administrations – from Obama to Trump to Biden and back to Trump – that Netanyahu is trying to manipulate the US into attacking Iran. This attack did very little to assuage those anxieties, even though Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he and his team had known about Israel’s plans to attack Iran, a claim made only a day after he publicly urged Israel not to.
Many details on the US dimension of this are not yet known, but there already seems to be a war of competing narratives between Jerusalem and Washington. For despite Trump’s boasts of prior knowledge, it is said the US is privately unhappy with Netanyahu’s defiance and callous dismissal of American interests.
Arguably, Trump may be temporarily happy with Iran being a distraction to the Los Angeles stand-off, but may very well feel humiliated by Netanyahu’s total disregard for his requests. This does not reflect well on the president.
This leads to the second challenge the US will encounter: convincing and enticing Iran to return to negotiations despite the attack, implicitly clarifying that it has no intentions of generating “regime change”.
Trump will undoubtedly try to turn the war into an opportunity by pressing Iran to negotiate or face a more destructive and prolonged conflict, devastating its already fragile economy and oil revenues. To do that, Iran needs to cooperate, and it is premature to seriously assess this possibility at such an early stage.
This will be supported by Saudi Arabia, which has significant sway over Trump. However, the longer, more destructive and escalatory the war becomes, the harder it will be for the US to achieve either of those twin goals.
As for Israel, it will be facing the same fundamental problems it faced before.
Mr Netanyahu can brag all he wants about how he has changed the course of history and how he has saved the West and how he was the Winston Churchill to Iran’s Hitlerites – but ultimately, Israel’s greatest present and future challenge is what is happening in Gaza, not Iran.
Living in reckless denial over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be ameliorated by setting Iran’s nuclear programme back, however important that may be.
Alon Pinkas is a former Israeli consul general to the US and was a political adviser to two former prime ministers, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak
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