Friday 13 June may prove to be a turning point in the history of the Middle East, with significant repercussions for global history. For the first time since the Islamists under Ruhollah Khomeini took power in Tehran—from whence they have exported Islamist doctrine, revolution, and terrorism around the world—a Western power, Israel, has attacked the Ayatollahs’ regime on their home turf and shaken it to the core. Israeli fighter-bombers continue to pound strategic sites, targeting Iran’s military and scientific elite with virtual impunity, humiliating the regime and instilling hope in the country’s urban masses, who despise and fear their theocratic masters. At the same time, Israel is completing the process of dismantling Iran’s proxy “ring of fire”—Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels, and the Assad regime in Syria—that has harassed Israel for decades. The continuing Israeli aerial assault is steadily demolishing Iran’s nuclear weapons project, installation after installation. Over the coming weeks, Israel may well devastate the country’s oil industry, which is the economic mainstay of the regime. Regime change in Tehran is definitely in the air—and the fact that they have significantly reinforced the police and security presence in Iran’s towns and cities is a clear indication that the regime fears for its life.

In the early hours of 13 June, 200 Israeli jets, accompanied by air-refuelling tankers, flew over a thousand miles to hit Iranian air-defence units, nuclear sites and scientists, as well as ballistic-missile and drone production and launch bases, military headquarters, and the leadership of the country’s armed forces. The Israeli leaders designated the attack “pre-emptive”—which is understandable given that, ever since they took power in 1979, Iran’s Islamist leaders have been repeatedly asserting that the destruction of the Jewish state is one of their major policy goals. In Tehran, there is even a public doomsday clock, counting down the days until 2040, when the current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, predicted that the Jewish state will expire. In light of this long-term Iranian objective, Israel regards that country’s nuclear project as an existential threat.

Iran retaliated with massive drone and ballistic missile barrages against Israel’s population centres. By the morning of 14 June, these attacks had claimed the lives of three elderly Israeli civilians and injured several dozen others. But almost all the incoming Iranian missiles were downed by Israel’s multi-layered anti-missile defences, assisted by American and Jordanian anti-missile units—just as they were during the previous Iranian missile barrages of April and October 2024. 

But this time around, Israel is treating the deadly exchanges with Iran as the start of a war of indefinite duration. All kindergartens, schools, and universities as well as many workplaces remain shut; the population has been advised to remain near either air-raid shelters or the reinforced-concrete safe rooms many Israelis have in their houses while the Israel Air Force (IAF) continues to pound targets in Iran. So far, no Israeli aircraft have been lost.

The Iranians may cave and agree to dismantle their nuclear project or, at least, return to the negotiating table with the United States with the aim of resolving the nuclear issue. America is demanding that the Iranians give up the 400 kilograms of enriched uranium they have stockpiled so far and agree to end all further enrichment. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been warning of the need to halt Iran’s march towards the Bomb for decades, but has always hesitated to send in the jets, deemed the current moment propitious for an attack—an attack that has become unavoidable given Iran’s rapid recent advances toward nuclear weaponry. Last Thursday, the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency—which has been no friend to Israel in the past—issued a dramatic report condemning Iran’s violations of its nuclear nonproliferation obligations and accusing the country of having amassed sufficient enriched uranium to be able to produce nine atomic bombs, after further enrichment and a weaponisation process.

The Israeli assault of 13 June appears to have been successful beyond expectations. Israeli intelligence has spent years penetrating and mapping Iran’s strategic installations and military-security personnel—apparently with great success. During Friday’s successive attack waves, the IAF appears to have seriously damaged Iran’s main enrichment facility at Natanz, with its tens of thousands of centrifuges, many of which were advanced models. Other nuclear facilities—including those in Tabriz, Parchin, Fordow, Isfahan, and Arak—have apparently been hit as well. Further strikes against the nuclear installations are expected.

In an operation that resembles Israel’s decapitation of the Hezbollah terrorist organisation in Lebanon last September–October, Israeli aircraft have carried out precision strikes, with the probable assistance of Mossad agents on the ground. These strikes have decapitated the Iranian army and Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), killing many key generals in their beds. The dead include Mohammad Bagheri, the army’s commander-in-chief, and his deputy, Gholamali Rashid; Hossein Salami, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC); Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the IRGC air force, who was in charge of Iran’s ballistic missile and drone systems and operations; Esmail Qaani, the commander of the elite IRGC Quds Force, responsible for exporting Islamism and orchestrating terrorism outside of Iran; Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to Khamenei; Fereydoon Abbasi, the head of Iran’s nuclear weapons project, and at least eight other senior nuclear scientists. The men were killed while at meetings in the IRGC’s Tehran HQ or in their apartments in northern Tehran. Israel has so far pointedly abstained from targeting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Masoud Pezeshkian, and other civilian political leaders, but it may end up doing so if Iran’s ballistic missile attacks or the terrorist attacks it is expected to launch exact a heavy toll in Israeli lives or in Jewish civilian lives outside Israel.

Until now, many observers assumed that, because it lacks large bombers and large deep-penetration bombs, the IAF was incapable of seriously damaging Iran’s dispersed nuclear sites. Over the coming days, bomb damage assessment (BDA) will be undertaken by Israel—and perhaps by the US—and may reveal whether the Israeli operation has crippled the Iranian nuclear project. Whatever the case, the blow to Iran’s Islamist regime has been severe and humiliating. Whether the Iranian population will now rally round the flag or exploit the attacks to pour out into the streets in protest against their totalitarian rulers has yet to be seen.

The Israeli attack on Iran is in line with a policy first announced in the 1980s: Israel will never allow neighbours intent on destroying it to acquire nuclear weapons. In accordance with this commitment, in 1981, under Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the IAF destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor outside Baghdad; in 2007, under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the IAF destroyed the North Korean-constructed Syrian nuclear reactor at Deir Zor.