Israel Seeks to Topple Third Domino as US Assaults Non-Proliferation

Ironic since it is (along with Russia) its chief beneficiary

Interception outside the atmosphere

Iran is firing missiles at Israel from its bases in the east of the country, but its missile bases in the west have been suppressed. Either because IDF strikes have damaged access points or because its aircraft are in the vicinity, firing at launchers when they pop out. This means that until Iranian air defense network recovers, or Israel can no longer maintain the same tempo of sorties, some one-half of Iran's missile stocks are not available to it.

This is the main reason Iran's initial retaliation has been underwhelming relative to expectations. While reports that Iran had the capability to a salvo of 1,000 missiles on the first day are probably too grand, over 500 would have been possible, and Israel forecast up to 4,000 dead on the first day. Instead, Iran mustered a maximum barrage of just 190 launches — fewer than the salvo of 240 it fired in the October 2024 limited strikes exchange.

This grand Israeli success in taking one half of Iranian missile bases out of the game at war's onset would not have been possible without the luxury of having full freedom of Syrian skies, including for air tankers and aerial refueling. This in turn was only made possible by the fall of the Syrian Baath government in December and Israel's subsequent prompt annihilation of all Syrian air and air defence assets. Syria's fall meanwhile had been made easier by the decimation of Hezbollah three months prior. So in a sense the Israelis have been falling dominoes one by one: first Hezbollah, then Syria, and now Iran. At the time of Assad's fall, especially Russia, but even Iran were rather cavalier about what this meant. With hindsight, I imagine they see it rather differently now — as a grand catastrophe.

Interestingly, Israel was able to immediately establish air dominance over Iran — something that has eluded the much larger Russian air force in Ukraine. Israel is able to fly over Iranian-held ground and hit strategic targets with inexpensive JDAM glide bombs. Russian aircraft meanwhile must release their bombs ahead of Ukrainian-held territory, and strategic targets in the far rear may only be impacted with one-use kamikaze weapons (jet-powered "cruise missiles" and propeller "drones").

The reason Israel has found success where Russia failed warrants more studying and research.

In December, we were similarly at a loss to understand how Syria could have folded and so quickly, a later report detailing the scale of Israeli cyber penetration of the Syrian armed forces lifted the fog from a great deal of that mystery. Perhaps a future detailing of the Israeli intelligence operations will help explain the apparent failure of Iranian air defenses so far.

Indeed, in its heavy reliance on surprise and infiltration, the Israeli onslaught looks a lot like Russia's 2022 foray into the Ukraine, but properly executed, with much more patient and rigorous planning and preparation — and thus accompanied with much more initial success.

Nonetheless, impressive military feats aside, the Israeli adventure is most reminiscent of Japan's Pearl Harbor or Germany's Operation Barbarossa — extraordinarily successful militarily in the immediate but extremely dubious and counterproductive strategically.

Iran first demonstrated the ability to enrich uranium to 20% way back in 2010. Because mastering the enrichment process to 20% is the difficult part — getting from there to 90% is relatively easy — this means that Iran has been a near-nuclear state for 15 years now. For 15 years now Tehran has had the mastery of the greater part of the nuclear puzzle, what kept it from constructing a bomb hasn't been the lack of know-how, but a conscious decision to sit on its latent nuclear capability. Irrespective of how much damage Iran sustains in the attack it's know-how will not go away. But what will change is that Tehran will have more reasons to build a bomb, or at least beef up its nuclear deterrent further short of one. Even should it take years or a decade to reconstruct, Netanyahu's attack risks bringing about precisely the scenario it was nominally launched to prevent.

Of course, the Israeli attack isn't really aimed at de-nuclearization through destruction (which can not be done), but at regime-change which just might accomplish it indirectly. Bombs falling on police headquarters and Netanyahu's calls to Iranians to rise up testify to that. And indeed, were the Tehran government to fall and be replaced with a pro-Western government, or if the country were to fracture into warring parts with only a weak government presiding over a frail or semi-failed state then that would be the end Iran's near-nuclear status. But just how likely is that? To proclaim an Iranian bomb a catastrophe for Israel and then launch an adventure that has an odd chance of ending with Iran’s dismemberment, but a much greater chance of leading to Iranian enrichment to 90% or a bomb is an irresponsible and irrational gamble.

So in reality, "Rising Lion" (lion is a symbol of the Pahlavi monarchists) isn't even really about regime change either. At its most basic it is Netanyahu's way of kicking the can down the road and buying himself more time in power, what comes after be damned.

The American role here is interesting. We have Iran which since 2003 has been a member of the nuclear non-proliferation architecture in good standing. And we have Israel which rejected the NPT, raced to the bomb in secrecy and has never declared it. Then we have this nuclear state outside the non-proliferation system attacking the non-nuclear state inside of it. Which prompts the US, one of the superpower guarantors of the NPT, which most benefits from it, to join in with the...attacker.

This is totally absurd. Clearly the nuclear rogue is Israel. In fact, the Israeli security paranoia is not tied to a potential Iranian nuclear bomb — which Iran had 15 years to build, but never did — but to any measure of Iranian nuclear deterrence. It is not a wise thing to nuke a near-nuclear country like Germany, Canada, Japan, or the Netherlands. While they do not possess an atomic weapon, they have the means of enriching the materials and constructing a bomb and paying you back in a year or two (or mere months in Japan's case). This is the club Iran wanted to be a part of and had indeed successfully joined.

This makes Israel's own nuclear weapons less valuable and more difficult to hold over Tehran's head. And herein lies the problem. Because Israeli hardline doctrine is not just that Israel should be the only nuclear-armed state in the region, but that no other regional power should possess any nuclear deterrent against those arms. (And this is why they're willing to risk causing an Iranian bomb, because the status quo is already unacceptable for them.)

Trump's performance in all of this has been beyond buffoonish. Having unilaterally torn up a deal that was very lopsided against Iran on the marching orders of the Adelsons in his first stint, he now came back to the table ostensibly wanting a deal after all. Naturally, any deal in 2025 would have to be at least a slight improvement for Iran over Obama's JCPOA. But this would be embarrassing to Trump and he insisted on the no-starter formula of "no enrichment" whispered to him by pro-Israeli hawks.

Mind you that under the NPT non-nuclear states commit to never build a nuclear weapon, but in return they are guaranteed the right to a full civilian nuclear program and even offered help with it — eg, granted experimental reactors for research and training, or offered the construction of nuclear power plants. (Nuclear state signatories meanwhile commit to work toward a gradual but full nuclear disarmament, but no one even talks about this anymore, much less holds them to it.) The JCPOA already constrained Iran's rights under the NPT, Trump's no enrichment formula would have made a total mockery of them. In other words, it wasn't just an assault on Iran, but on the non-proliferation grand bargain as such, and was dead in the water.

Of course, when Israel launched its attack it made sure to target the chief Iranian negotiator for assassination with the very first salvo, just to be on the safe side, and was reportedly successful. — A development Trump later smirked about on social media. It has now emerged the negotiator was heavily injured in his home but is alive:

'Ali Shamkhani, an advisor to Iran's supreme leader and representative at talks with the United States, was thought among the senior Iranian officials reportedly killed by Israeli attacks in the early hours of 13 June.

However, on Friday, state media in Iran carried a letter from Shamkhani addressed to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in which he stated he was, in fact, alive.

"I am alive and ready to sacrifice myself," read the letter.'