The Sword of Damocles over Iran
The destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities may be imminent—here’s why.
On the evening of 1 October, I was sitting in my living room watching television—instead of cowering in my home’s reinforced concrete “safe” room, as per government instructions—when I saw two streams of blazing projectiles pass by my window. They were five minutes apart, more or less horizontal, and moving southward slowly and in an orderly fashion. It later transpired that the projectiles—Iranian Fattah 1 and Kheibar Shekan ballistic missiles—were heading towards the southern Israel Air Force (IAF) base at Nevatim, and possibly also towards the nuclear plant at Dimona. They had not been intercepted—either because IDF radar operators projected that they would land harmlessly in empty fields or because Israel’s Arrow (Hetz) long-range anti-missile missiles had failed to hit them.
It later emerged that there had been failures in the interception system, and that Iranian missiles had landed in Nevatim and on another IAF base, at Tel Nof, in the centre of the country. Indeed, an Iranian missile apparently also landed near Gelilot, just north of Tel Aviv, close to the HQs of Mossad and of the IDF Intelligence Division’s 8200 electronic intelligence unit, which Tehran later claimed had been its target. All told, the missiles appear to have caused no serious damage and no Israelis were killed.
But it was a close call—which explains why the US is dispatching, and Israel is happy to receive, batteries of American THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) interceptors, similar to the Israeli Arrows but perhaps superior in some ways. It is militarily and politically significant that Washington is sending these batteries with their original US Army crews. The THAADs are designed to help Israel neutralise future Iranian ballistic missile attacks.
The expected arrival of the THAADs and their integration into the Israeli interceptor systems appears to partly account for Israel’s continuing delay in responding to the Iranian assault of 1 October—a response that Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, has publicly predicted will be “lethal, precise, and surprising.” Another reason for the delay may be the ongoing Israeli–American talks, and disagreements, about the nature of the Israeli response. Washington has more or less publicly “advised”—i.e. warned—Israel not to target Iran’s nuclear installations or oil production facilities. Attacking the former, the argument goes, would drive Iran into an open-ended, all-out war against Israel and perhaps endanger American interests in the Middle East, while attacking the latter might trigger an Iranian counter-strike, as Tehran has warned, against oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, thus ravaging global oil markets and causing a sharp increase in fuel prices that could negatively affect the Democrats’ chances in the forthcoming US elections.
But the upcoming elections themselves may be the major strategic cause of the delay in the Israeli retaliation. The Biden Administration has been loath to be sucked into another Middle Eastern war, given the bloody nose America received in the last two such wars—the “forever” wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—and Washington suspects that Israel is bent on drawing the United States, against its will, into a campaign to demolish the Iranian nuclear project, which Israel believes ultimately threatens its existence.
Benny Morris
Israel’s leaders understand the current American reluctance to see Israel attack Iran’s nuclear and oil installations. But Benjamin Netanyahu, and perhaps some of Israel’s military leaders, are thinking about the post-5 November situation in Washington. Netanyahu certainly favours a Trump victory on 5 November, partly because Trump and the Republicans can be expected to be less critical of Israel’s war-making in Gaza and Lebanon, which has resulted in many civilian Arab casualties, which the left-wing of the Democratic Party regards—or pretends to regard—as unwarranted and inhumane. But Netanyahu also knows that, whoever wins on 5 November, Biden will remain in power and call the shots in American–Israeli relations until 20 January 2025, when he steps down from the presidency. During the interim, 5 November–20 January, Israel will still need an American veto in the UN Security Council, where the country could potentially veto anti-Israeli sanctions, and Israel will still need, perhaps more than ever, continued American munitions supplies,—principally tank and artillery shells and missiles of various types. (The year-long war in Gaza and along the Israel–Lebanon border has sorely depleted IDF stockpiles. Last week, the Israeli Defence Ministry reportedly instituted measures to curtail shell usage in the ongoing ground campaigns against Hamas and Hezbollah.)
Hence, if Israel launches its retaliatory operation against Iran before the US elections, Israel must take American sensibilities into account. Israel may adopt a two-step strategy: hit some non-oil and non-nuclear Iranian sites in the coming days and, after Iran retaliates as it has promised it would, hit the oil and nuclear sites after 5 November. After that date, the US will have a new president-elect, and the fear that Israel’s actions could hurt Kamala Harris’s chances of being elected will no longer pertain. Indeed, both Israel and Biden might view the two and a half months after 5 November as a golden window of opportunity in which to destroy the Iranian nuclear project at last—something that Israel appears to believe it is incapable of doing without major American assistance.
In other words, it is possible that while Israel has been putting up a show of delaying the retaliation against Iran for immediate, pragmatic reasons, in fact it is simply waiting until after 5 November, at which point it can go after whichever targets it believes are crucial to victory and to saving the country from eventual nuclear destruction by Iran, without fear of arousing Biden’s anger. Iran is said to be only a year or two away from producing nuclear bombs and has already accumulated large amounts of enriched uranium needed for nuclear weaponry. The thinking among some Israelis is that following 5 November, Biden may be more amenable to joining in an Israeli assault on Iran’s critical facilities and nuclear installations or at least might condone such an attack.
Armin Navabi
Outgoing American presidents are traditionally seen as lame ducks once the country has a new president-elect. But in Biden’s case, the opposite may hold true. He will remain President and Commander-in-Chief, with all his powers in hand, until 20 January—and his position will be reinforced by a Harris victory. Like all 21st-century American presidents—and like Netanyahu—Biden has repeatedly vowed that he will never allow Iran to attain nuclear weaponry; he knows that Islamist Iran is a mortal enemy of America—the “Great Satan” in Islamic Republic-speak—and of the West and its values ; and that a nuclear Iran would be only slightly less of a threat to America’s Middle Eastern Sunni allies than it would be to Israel—the “Little Satan.”
So, after 5 November, perhaps Netanyahu and Biden will make good on their promises. On the face of things, Iran has got itself into a dangerous position—and has been displaying its fear in multiple ways: hunting for a Mossad mole or moles among senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers; stashing its frail “supreme leader,” the 84-year-old Ali Khamenei, in a safe house; and periodically closing its air space to foreign flights.
And just how it got there is a study in a clever strategy gone radically awry. For the past twenty years, Iran has attacked and subverted its enemies through the agile use of catspaws or proxies. It used Hezbollah operatives to strike at Jewish and Israeli targets in Israel and abroad; it used Yemeni Houthi rebels to hit Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; and it employed Shi’ite militias to subvert Sunni governance and the American presence in Iraq. It probably also had a clandestine hand in arranging for the US defeat in Afghanistan. By using its proxies and by emitting continual bluster about its own prowess, Tehran’s leaders have prevented the victims of its terrorism and subversion from targeting Iran itself. It has always openly declared that its intention and goal is to destroy the Jewish state. But it has avoided supplying Israel with an excuse that would give it international legitimacy in striking at Iran directly. Instead, Iran has continued to defer the ultimate showdown with Israel, waiting for the day when it will have a nuclear arsenal that surpasses or at least equals Israel’s.
Over the years, Iran has subsidised Hezbollah to the tune of many billions of dollars and packed its arsenals with tens of thousands of rockets, some of them accurate and long-range, as a deterrent against a possible Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities—such an Israeli assault would be countered by massive rocketing of Tel Aviv. But since 8 October, and especially during the past month, Hezbollah’s power has been substantially downgraded by Israeli attacks on its leadership and rocket arsenal, and Iran has largely lost this deterrent against Israeli attack. Iran is probably rueing the fact that it—and Hezbollah, probably on its orders—failed to join Hamas’s assault on Israel on 7 October, and regretting having subsequently endorsed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s decision to mount a somewhat symbolic low-level rocketing of northern Israel in a show of solidarity with Hamas. The daily rocketing, together with the threat of a ground assault on Israel’s northern border settlements à la 7 October, certainly siphoned Israeli troops and air power away from Israel’s battle with Hamas. But it also resulted, in the end, in Israel’s savaging of Hezbollah, especially since the end of September.
According to a New York Times report of 13 October 2024, which cites Hamas documentation seized by the IDF in an abandoned tunnel under Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip some months ago, Hamas had intended to attack Israel in autumn 2022 but postponed its attack in an effort to rope in Iran and Hezbollah for a simultaneous, multi-front operation. But Iran declined, as did Hezbollah, no doubt on Tehran’s orders. So, in the end, Hamas went it alone on 7 October, without informing Iran or Nasrallah of the exact date of the attack. All that Iran subsequently did was allow Hezbollah to indulge in the low-level rocketing of northern Israel and its proxy militias in Syria and Iraq to occasionally lob ballistic missiles and drones at Eilat and Tel Aviv and unleashed the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who closed the Bab al Mandab Straits to Israeli and Western shipping with rockets, missiles, and drones. Iran itself steered clear of direct involvement in the war.
Until last April that is, when it couldn’t help itself, and launched some 400 rockets, cruise missiles, and drones at Israel from Iranian soil in retaliation for the targeted Israeli assassination in Damascus of the IRGC general in charge of operations in Syria and Lebanon. And, on 1 October—perhaps encouraged by Israel’s absurdly weak response to the April attack—Iran did the same thing again, launching some 200 ballistic missiles at IAF and Mossad bases following the Israeli assassinations of yet another IRGC general, and of Hamas’s political head, Ismail Haniyeh, and Nasrallah himself. And now Iran, still bereft of nuclear weapons, and largely bereft of the Hezbollah deterrent, is facing retaliation from Israel and possibly from America.
