As the dust settles from 12 days of war between Israel and Iran, the ayatollahs are defiant and have proclaimed victory. In their mind, they have downed Israeli F-35 stealth jets and captured Israeli pilots. They have turned Israeli cities to rubble. They have destroyed the largest U.S. airbase in the Middle East in retaliation for a US strike they claim caused minimal damage.
Dictators are loath to acknowledge defeat, for that is what makes them most vulnerable. Yet, it is hard to hide the truth. Even Egypt’s late dictator, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who presided over Egypt’s rout in the Six Day War, had to concede defeat. In his June 9, 1967, speech, he sought to shield the nation’s shame by insisting that the enemy was not alone, and it was outside forces that made the difference. A lie to soften the unbearable weight of defeat.
The ayatollahs, so far, have shown even less candor to a reality that is possibly even more crushing. In 12 days of war, Israel achieved air supremacy over Iranian skies and did not lose one aircraft or pilot. It eliminated dozens of senior Iranian officials, decapitating its military, security, and scientific leadership, including nuclear scientists. The elimination of knowledge and experience did not stop at personnel: Israel obliterated Iran’s nuclear archives, making sure that decades of accumulated expertise cannot now be retrieved.
Early damage assessments are still questioning whether Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities, especially regarding the US bombing raid, have been obliterated (President Donald Trump’s words), degraded, damaged, or lightly hurt. It will take time to know the extent of the damage, but it was not just about uranium enrichment.
Israel targeted every component of the nuclear weapons’ programme’s supply chain: along with the enrichment plants it blew up factories assembling centrifuges; a heavy water reactor; and a conversion plant where enriched uranium could be turned into metal – a core component of a nuclear weapon. Military research centres linked to the nuclear programme were also hit. And at the 11th hour, the U.S. air force came to finish the job, targeting three sites that were critical to Iran’s ability to produce nuclear fuel, and which Israel alone could not destroy. There were nearly 20,000 centrifuges installed in those facilities. It is likely they are gone for good now.
Israel also penetrated Iran’s security apparatus to such an extent that the regime’s defences malfunctioned. Dozens of its stalwarts were eliminated in their bedrooms – proving the unprecedented level of security breach and exposure Israel achieved against its enemy.
Israel’s accomplishments, even factoring in U.S. help, are remarkable and have caught the attention of every military in the world. The display of might, precision, and ingenuity that American and Israel-made weapons showed stands in stark contrast with the weapons systems that should have defended Iran’s most prized sites: all made in Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. All wiped out by Israeli made or American made and Israeli operated weapons system. The operation’s impact is reverberating well beyond the region.
Most importantly, perhaps, the operation broke two taboos. Israel could attack Iran’s nuclear programme with impunity and succeed. And America joined in, showing the world what its bunker buster precision weapons could deliver. The path to Iran remains open for now, and if its leaders were to seek to reconstitute their nuclear programme, America and Israel will likely strike again.
Success came at a price and military achievements do not guarantee political breakthroughs. Israel’s missile defense systems performed admirably and its air force, along with regional and Western allies, downed most of the incoming projectiles. Some, however, impacted urban, residential areas, murdering and wounding civilians. The casualty and damage suffered could have been worse. There was a clear asymmetry in the exchange: Iran could only murder civilians and destroy populated areas, without really making a dent to Israel’s war machine. Israel wiped the floor clean with Iran’s war machine, by contrast, causing a dramatic setback to the regime’s ability to inflict harm. Yet it is a vulnerability for Israel, which can hardly be sustained for prolonged periods.
More importantly, the ayatollahs are still there. Their immediate task will be to survive and to eradicate the network of spies that made its debacle possible. Expect a brutal wave of repression, which could even target senior officials in the upper echelons of the power structure and trigger an inside power struggle within the regime. A purge is on the way; it will be bloody. Whether this ultimately triggers a regime collapse remains to be seen. Nasser remained in power after 1967. The Argentinian junta who invaded the Falklands in 1982 fell after its defeat, paving the way for democracy. So did Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic, in 2000, barely a year after NATO’s Kosovo campaign against him. But Saddam Hussein survived the 1991 Desert Storm disaster, though not before drowning an uprising in blood, which allied armies declined, tragically, to support.
Turmoil, regardless of outcome, may delay Iran’s efforts to restore its erstwhile status, and much could go wrong. Its proxies sat the 12 Day War out, their status made vulnerable by the Israeli and U.S. onslaught against them that preceded Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear sites. Iran may try to boost them again, but its attempts so far have been frustrated. Israeli intelligence in Lebanon keeps yielding targeted hits against Hezbollah commanders, with little consequence for Jerusalem. Iran will also want to rebuild its nuclear programme.
Tehran will no doubt seek to leverage its threat to sever cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and will seek to squirrel away whatever materials are left in its inventory that it could use to jumpstart the programme. This creates both a challenge and an opportunity – Washington and its allies should seek negotiations with Tehran and offer a grand bargain: full transparency on what is left of the programme, dismantlement of its ballistic missile programme, a resolution to regional disputes and end of support for its deadly proxies, in exchange for reintegration of the regime in the regional structure.
It is doubtful that Iran’s leaders will accede to those conditions, certainly not immediately. It would be tantamount to admitting the defeat they so vehemently deny. Yet the facts speak for themselves.
In 12 days, Israel decapitated the regime’s leadership, destroyed its most prized assets, with full American backing, and little pushback from either the Gulf States or Iran’s main backers, China and Russia.
It is a new day in the Middle East. And the tide has turned favorably for Israel.
Emanuele Ottolenghi is a senior adviser to 240 Analytics, a Risk mitigation platform focused on identifying terrorist and terror finance networks.
