#WTH Israel's strike on Iran

Phase one?

This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows damaged buildings at Iran's Parchin military base outside of Tehran, Oct. 27, 2024. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)

A few weeks ago I wrote that Iran is weak, it’s time to hit them. Here’s what I, like many people, recommended:

What should the Israelis do? What should the United States do? We should hit the regime as hard as possible. Take out their centrifuge cascades, their nuclear research facilities, their reprocessing facilities, their missile sites, their refineries, and everything else that keeps the regime going.

Guess what? The Israelis weighed advice from their military leaders, listened to repeated and frantic nagging from the Biden Administration and the European Union, ignored this guy, and sigh, ignored me too. But, truth be told, it’s hard to second guess the Israelis’ decisions. This is a war that they are fighting, and consequences that they will have to live with. We can be certain that had Netanyahu flouted the EU, and rebuffed whoever is running the United States right now, there would have been a heavy price to pay. Israel needs both American and European military support to continue to degrade and destroy Hamas and Hezbollah’s ability to re-enact October 7, and that is the immediate imperative.

We talked to our own Fred Kagan to get the lowdown on his and our Critical Threats Project team's assessment of Israel’s attack against Iran. Here’s their Iran team lead, Nicholas Carl’s assessment, including the three major targets Israel hit — Parchin, Khojir, and SHIG — respectively, all three critical elements of Iran’s missile program. They also took out a fancy-schmancy Russian S-300 surface-to-air system that, er, wasn’t working that day, someone left the instructions at home, it needed to reboot, something. (Apropos of this, I am planning a big piece on false assessments we have made about equipment like the S-300, which turns out not to be the BFD we keep insisting that it is.)

The attack comprised more than 100 aircraft (including F-35s), spy planes, and tankers. Four women were part of the Israeli Air Force squad that undertook the mission. The exact route they used has not been publicized, but the Israelis took out surface-to-air batteries in Syria and Iraq en route. They may have bypassed Jordan, which is now in Iran’s gunsights, and has been squeamish about its relationship with Israel for a few years now. (Note to CIA: It’s your job to manage Jordan, step it up.)

So was this a bust? Did the White House stop Israel from using the most propitious moment in recent history to take out the Iranian nuclear program? That depends. If the Israelis have a plan that involves a phased approach to taking out Fordow, the most critical element of Iran’s nuclear weapons chain, then the answer is that this was a good first step. Iranian delivery vehicles, which they share with their proxies (and with Russia) are critical to delivering systematic attacks on Israel. They will also likely be necessary should Iran ever wish to launch a nuclear weapon.

As many of us who have been watching Iran’s pathetic military performance this year expected, Israel came and went with total impunity. Despite some early warning (Israel told the U.S. and some of Iran’s Arab neighbors, who called up Khamenei and told him to go hide ASAP), the Iranians were almost entirely impotent. A few information operations and shots in the air designed to persuade the Iranian people that their leaders were not entirely feckless failed to persuade anyone. So yes, Iran is a toothless tiger, at least when it comes to repelling an incoming Israeli attack.

This means that if and when, and I underscore if, the Israelis choose to go in heavy and take out the key components of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the odds of Iran being able to repel them, inflict serious damage upon incoming aircraft or missiles, or in any way stop such an onslaught appear asymptotic with zero. (H/T Reuel.) Which is good news.

So what should we be thinking, and asking right now? We should be thinking about how the Iranians are reacting to the Israeli answer to their October attack. Are they saying to themselves, “We should totally stop attacking the Jews, trying to destroy Israel, and arming proxies to fight and die for our aims”? Or are they saying, “We need a better deterrent”? I’m betting on the latter. What is that deterrent? If you guessed “nuclear weapons,” go to the head of the class. Which is why we should be asking, “How serious are the Israelis about phase 2?”

I have no answer to this question. I know what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris think. I suspect I know what J.D. Vance, Mr. “Our interest, I think very much, is in not going to war with Iran, right?” thinks. I never know what Donald Trump thinks. And I have no idea where the Israelis are headed. But I do know one thing for sure: The Israelis have laid down red line after red line about the Iranian nuclear weapons program. They have allowed Iran to cross every single one. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. (Remember the “zone of immunity?” 🙄) And now Iran is on the brink of break-out.

Channeling Clint Eastwood, then, we must ask the Israelis if they feel lucky. Do they? Because otherwise, their future will rest on the whims of the beturbaned men of Tehran. And I, for one, would not want to rest my fate, and the fate of my people, on the goodwill of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

HIGHLIGHTS

Do you think Israel’s retaliatory strike against Iran was successful?

FK: I think the strike actually was very successful and very important. As everybody's been reporting, the Israelis did a lot of damage to the Iranian air defense system, especially ripping up the Russian S-300 long range air defenses that people have really been worrying about what their impact would be on Israel's ability to strike Iran or our ability to strike Iran. And the Israelis just demonstrated, actually, they just solved that problem. And that's a big deal. And we've seen the reports, I'm sure you've seen them also, that has made the Iranians extremely nervous and feeling very vulnerable, as they should, because the Israelis have just demonstrated that they can basically strike with impunity. That's an important thing in itself. We can talk about how interesting it is in the context of what the Ukrainians have been doing to the S-300s and thinking about the cross theater implications of this strike.

What did the Israelis manage to destroy in the strike?

FK: The Israelis also apparently did a lot of damage to a critical facility that supports the Iranian missile program. And that is obviously important directly related to the Iranian missile attacks on Israel. It's also relevant potentially for Iran's ability to continue to export missiles to Russia. But beyond that, it's one of the reasons why I say we need to be clear about what we're talking about when we're talking about nuclear program. No, they didn't hit centrifuges. No, they didn't hit the enrichment. I've seen some reports, which I haven't been able to look into about whether they did or did not damage some potential weaponization research.

But a nuclear arsenal program involves three major components. It involves the ability to produce large quantities of highly enriched uranium. It involves the ability to turn them into a weapon. And it involves delivery systems. You have to have a way of delivering the systems. So as the Israelis have apparently just degraded the Iranians ability to field delivery systems, that is a blow to the Iranian nuclear weapons program. And it shouldn't be discounted.

What is the significance of Israel’s targeting of Iran’s Parchin Military Complex?

FK: Parchin is an expansive facility that has been linked to the Iranian nuclear program for a long time, it was the subject of International Atomic Energy Agency preoccupation for weaponization research that the Iranians had done. The IAEA found traces of uranium there, asked the Iranians for an explanation. Instead of giving an explanation, the Iranians bulldozed the building and replaced the soil, which is obviously what you would do if there was nothing to find. And so that facility is clearly linked to the nuclear program in a lot of interesting ways. It's a big facility and there's a lot of stuff going on there. And so it's a major signal.

How else did Israel’s strike degrade Iran’s nuclear capabilities?

FK: They also hit the SHIG, the Shahid Hemmat Industries Group, which was under U.S. sanctions for its involvement in the missile proliferation program and the nuclear program. And that is another major element of the collective overall Iranian nuclear arsenal effort. And again, this is a demonstration to the Iranians that the Israelis don't regard any of this stuff as off limits and that they can and will hit it. And that presumably the more the Iranians choose to continue shooting at Israel, the more of this stuff the Israelis will chew through.

And in combination with the destruction of the S-300 systems, it's also a demonstration that the Iranians have no ability to defend themselves from these strikes.

Will Iran be able to replace their air defense systems?

FK: I want to flag that the one thing that's probably not going to happen is that the Russians are going to be sending any replacement for the S-300 systems that the Israelis just destroyed.

DP: Why?

FK: Because they don't have a lot to send. Because they need them desperately to defend their forces that have invaded Ukraine. And the Ukrainians have shown their own ability to destroy these systems. And because of the much maligned sanctions that the U.S. and its international partners have imposed on Russia, the Russians cannot mass produce the critical components of these systems, especially the radars. So I would be very surprised if you see S-300 systems turning up in Iran again anytime soon.

And by the way, it's not clear what the point of that would be anyway, since the Israelis just displayed the ease with which they can actually destroy them. If you'll tolerate me doing this, I can zoom out for another minute and just say, we've all been possibly overestimating the efficacy of these Russian air defense systems and the challenges that they were going to pose to us.

Did Israel’s strike show that it can hit anywhere in Iran with impunity?

FK: To me, this strike validated what I have long thought, which was that the Israelis would be able to conduct airstrikes against Iran more or less as they chose in terms of flying, defeating the Iranian air defense systems, from which I have also concluded the Israelis are able to strike any particular above ground target without any question and destroy buried targets for which it's reasonable to, for which we either know or can conjecture that the Israelis can deal with. For example, like the facilities at Natanz, which are not buried very deeply.

The big question is always the Fordow enrichment facility. And here, as soon as you start talking with anybody who knows, they stop talking because stuff's all classified. Apparently, we have weapons that can penetrate that deeply. I've heard various things about whether we've shared them with the Israelis or not. I have no idea.

That's the issue. And this is, as people sometimes talk a little bit too cavalierly about taking out the Iranian nuclear program. At the heart of this, is can the Israelis destroy Fordow? If they know where all the stuff is that they need to hit, and if nothing is buried more deeply than Fordow, then yes, they can destroy the physical Iranian nuclear program. Now, I'm inclined to think that it's unlikely that the Iranians actually have an extensive program that the Israelis are unaware of, for the simple reason that the Israelis seem to have penetrated Iran in a way that is absolutely humiliating for every Iranian intelligence officer. So I would be surprised if the Israelis will be surprised by anything that they find in terms of the nuclear program, but I don't know whether they can destroy Fordow. And that's the big question.

Should Israel have targeted Iran’s nuclear program?

FK: Going back to are they going to hit the nuclear program? In my judgment, it is of limited utility to go after the nuclear program and try to destroy Iran's ability to make a nuclear weapon physically if you can't reliably destroy the key component of it, which is Fordow. So I don't know, I just don't know whether the Israelis think they can or cannot do that. If they don't, then they are well advised not to go after it partially, in my judgment.

Why do you think it was smart to avoid targeting the nuclear program?

FK: Basically because you're starting something that you can't finish and you're not striking a decisive blow, and it doesn't accomplish the core of the mission. If the mission is to destroy Iran's ability to feel the bomb, you need to be able to destroy Fordow. Otherwise, you haven't accomplished that. So you need to have an answer to that question.

Does Israel’s strike clear the way for larger attacked in the future?

FK: This is unquestionably a step, as you say, to clear out the obstacles in the way of a more significant strike. And it was meant to message that as well to the Iranians that they ought to think pretty hard about how far down this path they feel like going. I'm going to come back to the question of a regional war because we have a regional war. That's what's going on here. And I really do increasingly object to the whole framing of escalation. I've always objected to that, honestly. But when one state is using military force against another state, it's commonly called a war.

And I think there's a virtue to recognizing that there is a war going on in the Middle East, the most recent iteration of which was initiated by Hamas on October 7th. The Israelis are in the process, in my judgment, of doing something that's actually more important in many respects than going after the nuclear program right now. And that is having largely destroyed Hamas as a meaningful military threat to the South, at least for now. They're in the process of demolishing Hezbollah and demonstrating that Hezbollah is also a considerably weaker power than we have all long thought. And in that process of doing those two things, they're in the process of fundamentally transforming the security architecture in the Middle East to Israel's advantage and ours.

What is Chinese leadership learning from the wars between Russia and Ukraine and Iran and Israel?

FK: [The Coalition Defense of Taiwan team and the China team at ISW] very, very early on, picked up the various indications that Xi Jinping was having exactly the conversation with himself, and then with his senior leaders and with some soon-to-be ex-senior leaders, about is there any propellant in those missiles, and is anything going to fly if somebody pushes the button?

And coming to the conclusion that possibly not. And so he has conducted purges of his senior military, especially the rocket forces and others, and he clearly is worrying about the quality of his force. Look, that's bad for us, in a certain fundamental sense, because Putin made a very bad mistake. And what we're seeing is that Xi Jinping is determined to learn from that mistake. Now, he's operating in a system that almost requires lying and concealing bad news, which is exactly how Putin got into this mess also. And Xi Jinping is trying to do this against the backdrop of consolidating his own personal power to give him an influence over China that is more like Mao's than anything that we've seen in recent Chinese history. That is not conducive to people actually telling the truth about problems in their organizations. So he's concerned about this and trying to fix it, but he's also operating in a system that's going to make that very difficult.

I want to flag one thing though, one thing we know. The Chinese are very interested in learning lessons from the war in Ukraine to use against us and our partners in the Asia Pacific. And we just had yet another report from the ISW Russia team today about exercises going on in Belarus to help the PRC learn how to use drones the way the Russians are using them and the way the Ukrainians are using them, not the way we've been talking about them in the Asia Pacific. So let me take the opportunity to flag a soon-to-be forthcoming paper from the Institute for the Study of War, that I was privileged to oversee, by analyst Riley Bailey, which is going to be lessons for Taiwan from Ukraine, that makes the argument that I think we really need to internalize, that as our adversaries are looking very hard to learn how future wars will be fought by looking at Ukraine, we are not doing that enough.

Read the transcript here.

SHOWNOTES

Israeli Retaliatory Strikes on Iran (Nicholas Carl, Critical Threats Project, October 27, 2024)

How Israel Pulled Off Its Largest-Ever Strike on Iran (WSJ, October 26, 2024)

Israel strike crippled Iran's missile production, sources say (Barak Ravid, Axios, October 26, 2024)

Israel’s first open attack on Iran targets missile sites and apparently spares oil and nuclear ones (AP, October 26, 2024)

Iran’s Secret Warning to U.S. Allies: Don’t Help Israel, or You’re Next (WSJ, October 10, 2024)

Israel has exposed America’s cowardice towards Iran (Jason Brodsky, The Spectator, October 27, 2024)

Israel’s Opening Strike Against Iran (Editorial Board, WSJ, October 27, 2024)

Reaction to Israel’s Strike (Amb. Dennis Ross, X, October 26, 2024)