From a purely tactical standpoint, Israel’s multi-day military operation against Iran has been stunning in its execution. Much like Hezbollah was caught off-guard during the Mossad’s covert pager-attack last September, the Iranian security services found themselves flat-footed as Israeli intelligence agents infiltrated Iranian borders, smuggled parts for explosive-rigged quadcopter drones in suitcases and tracked down the locations of senior Iranian military figures. Many of Iran’s senior officers—Islamic Revolutionary Guard chief Hossein Salami, Iranian armed forces chief of staff Mohammad Bagheri and IRGC Air Force commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh, to name just a few—have been killed. Iran’s air defense network is in tatters, with the Israel Defense Forces claiming it enjoys air superiority over Tehran, the Iranian capital. And while Iran’s enrichment facility at Fordow hasn’t been breached, the above-ground section of the Natanz site is now destroyed according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quite pleased with how operations are going and is threatening even bigger strikes against Iran’s nuclear, military and economic targets. “We will hit every site, every target belonging to the ayatollahs’ regime—everything that they’ve experienced until now will be nothing compared to what they will feel,” he told the Israeli public on June 15.
These are certainly ominous words directed at the Iranians. But they are quite ominous to President Trump as well. Although the United States has assisted Israel with air defense by shooting down Iranian ballistic missiles and drones heading toward Israeli airspace, Trump is rightly choosing not to get involved with Israel’s offensive operations and at times is serving as a break on Israeli plans, most notably when Washington registered its disapproval of an Israeli plot to assassinate Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Indeed, the notoriously frenetic Trump has been relatively disciplined with his message: Iran shouldn’t think about targeting U.S. forces in the Middle East unless it wants to get a bloody nose, and the United States would prefer Israel and Iran to strike a peace than continue the war. As if to underscore the point, the State Department issued a directive this week to all U.S. embassies and consulates to reiterate to host governments that Washington “is not involved in Israel’s unilateral action against targets in Iran,” a reflection that Trump has no intention of thrusting the U.S. military into what would be its sixth war in the greater Middle East in nearly a quarter of a century.
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