Israel and Iran, five questions and answers to understand the attack and its scenarios
From the origins of the operation to the role of the US, what to expect from the offensive
4' min read
4' min read
Israel's attack on Iran has opened a new and even more traumatic chapter in the Middle East conflict, capable of diverting Tel Aviv's attentions from the Gaza offensive front to the confrontation with the Islamic Republic. Hostilities had already erupted intermittently in the almost two years of IDF assaults on Gaza and the indirect response of actors along the so-called Axis of Resistance, Tehran's network of anti-Israeli allies. Now a showdown is on the horizon with sharp repercussions on the Middle East region itself and perhaps beyond, given the threats already wielded by Iran over attacks on military bases in the EU perimeter.
When and how did the new offensive break out
?On the evening of 12-13 June, Israel launched an unprecedented attack on Iran, an offensive that had already been leaked in the days before but remained in the balance until its actual outbreak. Only on the eve of it, US President Donald Trump had declared that the attack 'could have happened', without making a definitive statement one way or the other. There was no need: the very night the attack was launched, dubbed Rising Lion, a biblical reference to Israeli might. The assault moved against three concatenated targets on the horizon of the IDF: uranium enrichment sites, missile production sites and the military leadership of the Islamic Republic.
The official intention of Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to stem a possible nuclear escalation by Iran, effectively bypassing the negotiations held in recent months between the US and Iran to restore the agreement signed by the two in 2015 and scrapped by Donald Trump in his first administration. In the first phase of the attack alone, some 200 Israeli fighter jets conducted targeted strikes against a hundred military and nuclear targets. Iran responded on 13 June with what Iranian media described as 'hundreds of missiles', triggering the wrath of the Israeli executive. Early reports speak of some 78 victims in Iran and 3 in Israel.
But why did Israel attack?
In a televised address, Netanyahu stated that the attack was to 'remove threats' to 'Israel's survival'. The PM claims that Iran has produced enough enriched uranium to build nine nuclear devices and is ready to use it against Tel Aviv. "Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time. It could be a year or a few months,' Netanyahu said.
The first outcome of the offensive was, in effect, to 'decapitate' the Iranian military leadership and some key men in Tehran's nuclear programme. The IDF claimed the killing of General Hossein Salami, head of the secretive Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's aide Ali Shamkhani, and Air Force Commander Ali Hajizadeh.
