Why Israel attacked Iran

President Donald Trump’s visit to Canada this week was an abbreviated one, and for understandable reasons. The president, having hardly settled into his accommodations at Kananaskis, Alberta, for the G7 meetings, was whisked away back to Washington on Monday to respond to the escalating Israel-Iran conflict.

The issue was front of mind for the remaining Western world leaders as well, who released a statement reinforcing their opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran and reiterating broader calls for peace and de-escalation in the Middle East, including a ceasefire in Gaza.

A lot has changed in a short amount of time to prompt these developments. Israel’s initial June 13 attack on Iran is not only remarkable in its own right, but it sheds light on the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East and the shifting, increasingly unsettled international context.

In scale and precision, it exceeded previous Israeli attacks on Iran. Initially, more than 200 aircraft were used, doing significant damage to nuclear facilities and supply chain points, along with air defences, command and control centres, and key figures in Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and military chain of command. Drones smuggled by the Mossad onto Iranian territory effectively targeted ballistic missile launchers.

Earlier that day, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had declared Iran in breach of the nuclear obligations ostensibly precluding the development of the nuclear weapons capability Israel has long feared. The IAEA noted the presence of high and growing amounts of enriched uranium that can readily be turned into weapons-grade material, obstruction of inspections, and upgrading of centrifuges at Iranian nuclear facilities.

After the censure, Iran announced it was going ahead with an additional enrichment facility and threatened to denounce the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which imposes the constraints it is obligated to observe. Iran was apparently set to be able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium at its Fordow enrichment site for a nuclear weapon in two to three days. Uranium particles have been found far from declared nuclear facilities, suggesting there are others, and Israeli intelligence had indications Iran was developing all the components for a nuclear weapon. All it would lack is the ballistic missiles to deliver it, which Russian cooperation in recent years may have put within reach.

This was a propitious moment to strike, but the window was narrow. The regional proxies Iran has used to attack Israel and deter an attack on itself with the threat of retaliation are gone (the Assad regime in Syria) or seriously weakened (Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen), and it no longer has a land corridor to Israel. Israel’s attacks of October 2024 had already degraded Iran’s air defences and production of key ballistic missile components, but rebuilding them would make any Israeli attack riskier, with Iran better able to retaliate.

Without its other means of projecting power, Iran had every incentive to redouble the pursuit of a nuclear capability and therefore the threat to Israel. The ongoing talks in Oman between Iran and the U.S. to revive the 2015 agreement restricting Iran’s nuclear program, which Trump abandoned in his first term, continue (though a meeting Sunday was cancelled), but the sanctions it imposed expire later this year, with little chance of international agreement to renew them.

What’s next?

The initial attack itself was a tactical success, the first wave targeting Iranian air defences, missile launchers, and command centres, limiting Iran’s capacity to retaliate with its principal remaining weapon and establishing the air superiority that allows Israel to survey and dominate Iranian airspace, striking where it wishes. Preliminary bomb damage assessments show the key nuclear facilities at Natanz and Isfahan have suffered significant damage above ground, including the power sources serving the underground centrifuge cascades, but these have not been struck directly. The Fordow facility, which is deeper underground and contains many advanced centrifuges, appears to have suffered minimal damage.

Israel’s strategic doctrine revolves around the ability to destroy any threat without assistance from others, but it has occasionally been observed in the breach. It has long been assumed Israel would be unlikely to attack Iran’s nuclear program without U.S. approval and probably cooperation, in part because the U.S. has key capabilities, the “bunker-buster” bombs that can penetrate deep underground to targets like Fordow’s centrifuge halls, as well as aircraft capable of carrying them, capabilities that have never been made available to Israel and which it has never developed.

So far, Israel has disrupted Iran’s nuclear supply chain, but has not done much to hit the core of the threat: enrichment capacity. Israel has attacked nuclear facilities before, in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007, ending nascent nuclear programs. But those were developed with, respectively, French and North Korean technology and expertise. Iran’s nuclear program now rests on indigenous technology and knowledge, which even targeted assassinations of key personnel cannot erase.

Israel and Iran are now engaged in daily air strikes on each other. Israel has attempted to persuade the U.S. to take part in further attacks on Iran, but whether they are successful in this endeavour is still an open question. The U.S. is currently mobilizing many military assets to give it the flexibility to join the fray if it so chooses.

It is a very fluid situation, but so far, U.S. participation has been limited to the use of Patriot and THAAD missile defence batteries, deployed under the Biden administration, in defending against Iranian missile attacks. However, Iran considers the U.S. partially responsible for Israel’s attacks, and should it attack U.S. personnel or bases, this would force Trump into the war, perhaps including the use of “bunker-busters” against Iranian nuclear sites. Trump himself has taken to praising Israel’s attack as welcome and pushing Iran back to the negotiating table, a face-saving change of position like his recent reversals on tariffs, where he is never blindsided or mistaken, but merely pursuing a well-concealed, subtle plan.

Without U.S. involvement, Israel alone can degrade and hamper Israel’s progress towards a nuclear weapon, but not fully remove the threat. However, regardless of whether the Americans join the attack, Israel has successfully derailed negotiations that were heading towards either a fatally flawed agreement or a dangerous delay that would have allowed Iran to continue its march towards a bomb. And it has demonstrated the will and the capability to attack Iran directly, on a large scale and with precision, up to locating and assassinating key personnel, even in defiance of the U.S. Its daily strikes are hitting key targets like Iran’s ministry of defence headquarters,  infrastructure in key areas like energy, and the military and security apparatus upon which the deeply unpopular regime relies to stay in power.

Its most promising goal is to so raise the costs to Iran of its current course that it seeks renewed negotiations leading to an agreement with reliable safeguards, though it is conceivable that the brittle regime will collapse, with unpredictable consequences. In the short term, Israeli actions bring instability, but may address a long-term threat the U.S. has failed to confront.

In the Middle East, as elsewhere, American hegemony brought stability, though at the high price of leaving fundamental problems unaddressed. Israel was guaranteed a degree of security but not allowed to definitively defeat its enemies. With the Trump administration’s abdication of global responsibilities, erratic behaviour, and penchant for reneging on commitments, those who might otherwise have relied on the U.S. and been constrained by it will chart their own course, even when it is risky, rather than acquiesce in the persistence and growth of existential threats Washington chooses to ignore.