By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Israel’s Attack on Iran

When Israeli fighter jets roared off the runways on Friday night, on a thousand-mile run to Iran, they headed for two major sets of targets: the air defenses that protect Tehran, including Iran’s leadership, and the giant fuel mixers that make propellant for Iran’s missile fleet.

Israel’s military leaders, in calls with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and other senior American officials, had concluded that taking out the air defenses would make Iran’s leaders fearful that Tehran itself could not be defended. That feeling of vulnerability was already high, after Israel decimated the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah, Tehran’s proxy forces that could strike Israel, over the past month.

The surprise element for the Iranians was a set of strikes that hit a dozen or so fuel mixers, and took out the air defenses that protected several critical oil and petrochemical refineries, according to a senior U.S. official and two Israeli defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.

It seems incongruous to say that a damaging air raid by one Middle Eastern power against another might portend diminishing tensions in the region. Yet that could, and should, be the result of Israel’s attack on Iran over the weekend. As always, much will depend on how the United States uses its influence on Israel; and it is precisely the Biden administration’s management of this particular event that gives us grounds for cautious optimism.

A satellite image shows the Khojir rocket motor casting facility, near Tehran on Oct. 24. (2024 Planet Labs

The net effect is that Iran will have to struggle, possibly for many months, to resume ballistic missile-making — and, crucially, that its energy production and nuclear facilities stand intact but exposed to future Israeli attacks, should Iran provoke one by directly striking Israel again.

In short, Israel heeded President Joe Biden’s counsel not to destroy the Iranian regime’s core strategic assets, lest Tehran lash back with an attack on Saudi oil interests or U.S. troops. That could trigger a general war in the region at the height of a close and globally fateful U.S. election campaign. Mr. Biden reinforced those pleas with concrete shows of U.S. backing, such as the deployment of a defensive missile battery to Israel, and U.S. troops to operate it, and a B-2 strike on Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

 

 

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