WASHINGTON — For more than a decade, Israel has repeatedly carried out bombing and missile campaigns that would eliminate Iran’s nuclear production capacity, much of which is based around the city of Isfahan and the complex Natanz nuclear enrichment plant, 120 kilometers to the north.
This is not what the Prime Minister Benjamin NetanyahuThe war cabinet chose to do so at dawn Friday, and in interviews, analysts and nuclear experts said the move was telling.
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The silence that followed was also silent. Israel has said almost nothing about this limited strike, which appears to have done little damage in Iran. U.S. officials noted that the Iranian decision to downplay the explosions in Isfahan — and suggestions by Iranian officials that Israel may not have been responsible — was a clear effort by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to avoid a new escalation.
At the White House, officials asked the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence agencies to remain silent about the operation, hoping to facilitate Iran’s efforts to ease tensions in the region .
But in interviews, officials quickly added that they were concerned that relations between Israel and Iran were now in a different place than they were just a week ago. The taboo prohibiting direct strikes on each other’s territory was now lifted. If there were another cycle – a conflict over Iran’s nuclear advances, or another Israeli strike against Iranian military officers – both sides might feel freer to take direct action on the other.
Netanyahu was under competing pressures: President Joe Biden urged him to “achieve victory” after a largely ineffective air barrage launched by Iran last week, while hardliners in Israel urged him to retaliate harshly to re-establish deterrence after the first direct attack. effort to strike Israel from Iranian territory in the 45 years following the Iranian Revolution.
U.S. officials say they quickly realized they could not dissuade Netanyahu from making a visible response.
So the White House and Pentagon requested what amounted to what a senior U.S. official called a “signal, not a strike,” with minimal risk of casualties. But even if it is a minimalist option, its long-term effects on the Revolutionary Guards and the teams of scientists working on Iran’s nuclear program could be substantial. They could accelerate the move to install more nuclear facilities deep underground, or expand them to make it even harder for nuclear inspectors to understand where Iran does its most sensitive work.
And, U.S. officials fear, it could accelerate the confrontation over the nuclear program itself, which has become increasingly opaque to inspectors over the past two years.
The signal sent by the decision to strike a conventional military target in Isfahan was clear: Israel demonstrated that it could penetrate Isfahan’s air defense layers, many of which were arrayed around key sites such as the air defense conversion facility. Isfahan uranium.
The 25-year-old facility, relatively vulnerable to a strike, is Iran’s main production line for converting its large reserves of natural uranium into a gas – called UF6 – that can be fed into centrifuges to produce nuclear fuel, i.e. for the production of electricity, or for the production of electricity. nuclear weapons.
Israeli warplanes also fired missiles at Iran during the attack, suggesting more advanced firepower was involved than initial reports indicated.
It is unclear what types of missiles were used, where they were fired from, whether any were intercepted by Iranian defenses or where they landed. But just as drones launched under Iran’s nose sent a message about Israel’s capabilities, so did guided missiles from Israeli warplanes.
A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence assessments, said Friday that Israel informed the United States through multiple channels shortly before the attack. But contrary to Israel’s warning to the administration moments before its warplanes struck the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, Syria, on April 1, the official said this latest attack did not was not unexpected given all the warnings issued by Israel during the week.
“While there has been no official claim of responsibility for the nighttime attack on the Isfahan military base, the message is clear: Iran’s attempt to unilaterally shift the focus of the war in the region will not be met with silence and inaction,” said Dana Stroul, a former Pentagon Middle East policy official who now works at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “A state-on-state attack involving drones and missiles will provoke a response. »
“Yet last night’s strike was precise and limited,” Stroul added. “The message is that Iran’s air defenses are fully penetrable and that their forces cannot protect their military bases from external attacks. But the damage was limited. If Iranian leaders decide that further escalation is not worth the risk of a much more deadly and costly attack on their own territory, this cycle of escalation could close. »
Long-term effects are more difficult to predict. Vali Nasr, an Iran expert and former dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, recently noted that Iran would now likely be determined to move its weapons closer to “Israel” and could face new domestic pressures to openly pursue a nuclear weapon. deterrent.
Iran has excluded some inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the global nuclear watchdog, but not all. It enriched uranium to 60% purity, putting it just days or weeks away from bomb-grade quality. And at the height of the conflict with Israel last weekend, some senior commanders spoke publicly about whether Iran would reconsider its official position that it would never seek weapons.
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