Why are Israel and Iran fighting now?
The two nations have launched assaults on each other for the fourth day, after Israel’s surprise attacks Friday on dozens of targets inside Iran, ranging from nuclear sites to nuclear scientists and many top leaders in the military’s chain of command.
For years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program his top priority, says The Associated Press.
Netanyahu started warning about the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran in the 1990s — even before his first term as prime minister at the end of the decade, says AP. He returned to office in 2009 and has served as prime minister almost continuously since then, “rarely missing an opportunity to portray the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat to Israel’s existence and menace to the world,” AP says.
The attack now has been made possible by factors including the weakening of Iranian-backed militant groups in Gaza and Lebanon and the reelection and support of President Trump, AP says.
One of the more overlooked factors is that the International Atomic Energy Agency voted on Thursday for the first time in twenty years that Iran was not in compliance with its nuclear nonproliferation obligations, says The Atlantic Council think tank.
Beyond Israel’s stated goal of destroying what it calls an existential threat from Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Netanyahu has a wider aim — regime change in Iran, says BBC News.
Under this scenario, Netanyahu might hope that the unprecedented strikes start a chain reaction leading to unrest that topples the Islamic Republic, BBC News says.
Netanyahu said in a statement on Friday that “The time has come for the Iranian people to unite around its flag and its historic legacy, by standing up for your freedom from the evil and oppressive regime.”
Many Iranians are unhappy with the state of the economy, the lack of freedom of speech, women’s rights, and minority rights, BBC News says.
Israel’s Mossad spy agency smuggled weapons into Iran before Friday’s strikes, establishing a base of operations from which it remotely launched explosive-laden drones and positioning short-range, precision weapons near critical surface-to-air missile systems. The multiyear preparation enabled what Israeli officials describe as a coordinated campaign targeting Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz, its nuclear scientists and military leaders, and parts of its ballistic missile program with “devastating precision,” says a separate analysis from The Atlantic Council.
The operation successfully eliminated Iran’s top military leadership, including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Hossein Salami, Chief of Staff Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, Emergency Forces Commander Gholam Rashid, and several nuclear scientists.
“This represents one of the most successful decapitation strikes in modern warfare, demonstrating how intelligence preparation can enable surgical targeting of command structures,” The Atlantic Council says.
In an article in The Atlantic last year, political scientist Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who served more than two years in an Iranian prison after being falsely convicted of espionage, wrote, “The incompetence and lack of professionalism of much of the Iranian intelligence apparatus stand in stark contrast to the efficiency of Israel’s.”
“Iranian security agencies have had little success in thwarting Israeli activities inside their country in part because authoritarian regimes prioritize loyalty over competence … In such a system, aptitude, skill, and even security training are much lower priorities. The least suitable people can attain high ranks, while better-qualified candidates who are deemed insufficiently ideologically committed miss out.”
Further, she wrote, “The population, including the Islamic Republic’s traditional religious constituency, broadly loathes the regime; even the most disinterested and self-serving opportunist is reluctant to gather information on its behalf.”