Israel’s ability to attack and destroy Iran’s nuclear program has transformed in the last nine months and even more in the last few months.
Before April 19, 2024, an attack on Iran’s nuclear program was theoretically possible and how it could be done was described in detail in the book Target Tehran.
A short summary version of the details in the book was an overwhelming air force strike using Israel’s stealth capabilities to eliminate Iran’s advanced S-300 anti-aircraft radar systems, followed by additional waves of air strikes on several key nuclear program sites.
The book also discusses disabling Iran’s underground facility at Fordow – even without the US’s powerful bunker buster 30,000-pound weapon, by dropping a series of 5,000-pound or smaller weapons one after another in the same spot.
In recent months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took credit for the air force destroying Iran’s S-300 anti aircraft radar stems on April 19 and the rest of them on October 26.
This means that at any moment, Israel could launch an air strike on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, and that program is essentially, for now, still undefended in any real challenging way from such airstrikes.
Put differently, what a year ago would have been seen as a risky mission in and of itself, is now, if only looking at the military side of things, something that has already been partially done and with the remainder being very doable.
Also, Tehran had three main indirect ways to scare Israel off from attacking its nuclear program. If Jerusalem dared to carry out such a strike, it was promised a hellfire of missiles raining down on it from Hamas, Hezbollah, and powerful unusually dangerous ballistic missiles from Iran itself.
Hamas and Hezbollah, at least for now, are defanged and unable to help Iran.
The Islamic Republic itself has fired 300 ballistic missiles at Israel in two separate volleys on April 13-14 and October 1 and did not manage to harm Israelis or Israel’s airpower, despite striking some unmanned air bases.
With help from the US and having a first real test of the Arrow 2 and 3 missile defense system, Israel managed to shoot down the vast majority of the ayatollahs’ ballistic missile threats.
So even before the US election and last week, an attack on Iran’s nuclear program no longer carried anywhere near the same risks, regarding the operation itself or regarding the nightmarish response Tehran could be expected to turn against the Jewish state.
During the presidential election, Donald Trump publicly called on Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear sites and since he was elected as the incoming US president, both the Post and other media have reported that he continues to support such a strike if Iran does not back off from its nuclear advances in a serious way.
A number of reports have even suggested that he will finally give Israel a bunker buster capability to carry out the attack.
But even if he does not grant that capability – he did not in his first term despite strenuous repeated requests from Israel – his strong support for an attack relieves Israel of much of the diplomatic worries it had from carrying out such an attack against opposition by the Biden administration.
A new Trump administration can be counted on to provide Israel a defensive umbrella from Iranian ballistic missiles following such an attack whereas the Biden administration was a big question mark in such a scenario.
New possibility for eliminating Iran’s nuclear sites
Then last week suggested another new possibility for eliminating Iran’s nuclear sites.
Israeli officials on the record are smartly remaining completely silent about the possibility of doing to Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility what the IDF did to Iran’s underground Maysaf missile facility in Syria.
But one does not need to have access to classified information to see the clear parallels.
If the IDF could bring 120 special forces for three hours into Syria to destroy a sensitive Iranian facility which was the best defended part of Syria in both the air and on the ground after Damascus, why couldn’t Israel carry out an adapted version of such an operation at Fordow?
Suddenly, there is a public possibility that Israel could eliminate Iranian nuclear facilities either by airstrike or by special forces operation.
The truth is that even using the concept of the Maysaf operation should not be too unheard of.
Israel has taken public credit for covertly killing former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the heart of a highly secure Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility in Tehran in July 2024 and for seizing Iran’s nuclear secrets from a similarly high value facility in Tehran in 2018, and this is without getting into the several Iranian nuclear facilities which the Islamic Republic accused the Mossad of covertly blowing up during the 2020-2021 years.
In some ways, it could be argued that the unexpected IDF decision to make all of the details of Maysaf public to the world and to Iran was to be as “in your face” as possible to its adversaries like Iran about how many different ways the IDF can get to any strategic site, under or above ground.
All of this occurs after Reuters reported in November that Iran started building a “defensive tunnel” in the capital Tehran following strikes by Israel on October 26.
The last element is time.
A number of top Israeli officials, including former prime minister Naftali Bennett and former defense minister Avigdor Liberman, called for striking Iran’s nuclear facilities back in October or right now, in the limbo period between presidencies.
Since no such attack has happened, it appears clear, and sources have confirmed, that Israel prefers to first see what Trump’s preferred time frame and strategic handling of Iran looks like.
But all of the events since April 2024 up until and including last week’s disclosures of the Maysaf operation should leave no question: if Israel wants to attack Iran’s nuclear program it can do so, and has multiple ways it can do so.
Whether Iran has a month, several months, or a year or so to back down from the nuclear standoff in order to avoid an attack is probably the only remaining question in doubt.
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