Did Israel Miss a Golden Opportunity to Attack Iran’s Nuclear Program?

Yair Lapid, leader of the opposition in Israel, has said that in limiting its attack on Iran to weapons production and air defense sites, the IDF missed a “golden opportunity” to set back the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. And he is not alone. The analyst Yonah Jeremy Bob presents here the argument that — despite American opposition — the IDF ought to have hit Iran’s nuclear facilities.

There is no question that Israel’s attack on Iran was operationally successful and will impact Tehran’s ballistic missile capabilities and its decision of whether to attack Israel a third time in the near future.

But this short-term success masks the fact that Israel may have missed a golden opportunity to set back the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

This is not to say that it was a simple decision.

To attack or not to attack

US pressure against attacking Iran’s nuclear program was extraordinary and the incentive of lending Israel the THAAD missile defense system, as well as keeping certain weapons flowing to Israel, were likely accompanied by thinly veiled or explicit threats by the Biden administration about weapons transfers if the situation got out of hand.

There also was no guarantee that an attack on Iran’s nuclear program would “permanently” stop Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s push for a nuclear weapon, and some believed it might even paradoxically incentivize him to try harder to cross the threshold to achieve “immunity” from future Israeli attacks.

Despite all those qualifications, this was by far the best opportunity Israel has had to date to set back Iran’s nuclear program, and it may have been the best opportunity it will ever have had.

Despite the potential downsides, the largest downsides and risks were all suddenly and uniquely smaller now than they have been in over a decade, meaning in many ways this was the perfect time to roll the dice.

First, Jerusalem had more legitimacy to attack the nuclear program than at any other time in history.

Despite pressure from the US and EU to refrain from striking Iran or to limit any attack, Israel’s allies would have been more sympathetic to Israel’s desire to attack Iran’s nuclear program, especially after Khamenei ordered two direct massive attacks on Israel in April and again on October 1.

In fact, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu restrained his response to April’s Iran attack to a single significant but limited and surgical strike on one anti-aircraft S-300 missile system.

Given that following Israel’s limited response, Khamenei decided to attack again earlier this month, Israel had an even stronger case than ever that a limited attack would be insufficient to deter the Islamic Republic from a third attack….

We can only hope that the more limited strikes will still be sufficient to deter Iran from trying to cross the nuclear threshold, but Israel may have lost the chance to confront the nuclear threat directly and avoid having to rely solely on “hope.”

The devastation wrought both on Iran’s ballistic missile production and on its air defense system have shown Iran that the IAF can strike everywhere in the country at will, and this may make Iran more wary of proceeding with its nuclear program, lest the Israelis, having destroyed so much of Iran’s air defenses, including the four S-300 batteries that were meant to protect Tehran, proceed to destroy key elements of that nuclear program. But Yonah Jeremy Bob thinks that it more likely that Iran will continue its nuclear project. He argues that a “golden opportunity” was lost when Israel decided to accede to the demand of the Bidenites that there be no attack on Iran’s oil installations or — a much more worrisome concession — its nuclear facilities. After all, Israel could have justified an attack on Iran’s nuclear program by pointing to the two missile attacks by Iran on Israel on April 14 and October 1. And the IDF by this point has so degraded the military strength of Iran’s two proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, that Israel no longer need be held back from such an attack on Iranian nuclear installations for fear of how those proxies could respond.

Yonah Jeremy Bob regrets that Netanyahu yielded to Biden’s entreaties and promised not to attack Iran’s nuclear program. But that promise was not open-ended; it applied only to this attack. Should Iran now do anything to harm Israelis, that will be all the justification Israel will need to hit, as it failed to do this time, Iran’s nuclear facilities.