There is no question that Israel’s attack on Iran was operationally successful and will impact Tehran’s ballistic missile capabilities and its decision of whether to attack Israel a third time in the near future.
But this short-term success masks the fact that Israel may have missed a golden opportunity to set back the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.
This is not to say that it was a simple decision.
To attack or not to attack
US pressure against attacking Iran’s nuclear program was extraordinary and the incentive of lending Israel the THAAD missile defense system, as well as keeping certain weapons flowing to Israel, were likely accompanied by thinly veiled or explicit threats by the Biden administration about weapons transfers if the situation got out of hand.
There also was no guarantee that an attack on Iran’s nuclear program would “permanently” stop Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s push for a nuclear weapon, and some believed it might even paradoxically incentivize him to try harder to cross the threshold to achieve “immunity” from future Israeli attacks.
Despite all those qualifications, this was by far the best opportunity Israel has had to date to set back Iran’s nuclear program, and it may have been the best opportunity it will ever have had.
Despite the potential downsides, the largest downsides and risks were all suddenly and uniquely smaller now than they have been in over a decade, meaning in many ways this was the perfect time to roll the dice.
First, Jerusalem had more legitimacy to attack the nuclear program than at any other time in history.
Despite pressure from the US and EU to refrain from striking Iran or to limit any attack, Israel’s allies would have been more sympathetic to Israel’s desire to attack Iran’s nuclear program, especially after Khamenei ordered two direct massive attacks on Israel in April and again on October 1. In fact, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu restrained his response to April’s Iran attack to a single significant but limited and surgical strike on one anti-aircraft S-300 missile system.Given that following Israel’s limited response, Khamenei decided to attack again earlier this month, Israel had an even stronger case than ever that a limited attack would be insufficient to deter the Islamic Republic from a third attack.
Also, until now, the prevailing theory was that Tehran was a risk-averse rational actor who would not directly attack Israel with conventional weapons and certainly would not do so with nuclear ones. After two massive attacks, including over 300 aerial threats in April and over 180 ballistic missiles on October 1, Netanyahu could argue that Khamenei has turned the corner and is capable of anything.It is one thing to hold your fire and risk the possibility of Iran crossing the nuclear threshold when you think the bomb is just for deterrence. It is quite another when their aggression has crossed many new boundaries, and no one can say what lines they might not cross.
Another decades-long objection to striking Iran’s nuclear program was that it could lead the Islamic Republic to fire ballistic missiles at Israel, potentially killing thousands of Israelis and ravaging large portions of the country’s central regions. This was in a time of considerable uncertainty about how the Arrow missile defense system would perform against ballistic missiles, given that until this year, it had been almost completely untested. However, according to some US sources, between April and October and given a limited number of ballistic missile launchers, Khamenei may have already taken his best shot – twice.
