The War with Iran

Melanie Phillips
Substack, Oct. 27, 2024
 
“Israel’s strategic aim, he said, had changed. It would no longer tolerate Iranian aggression either directly or through its proxies and would now hold the Iranian regime itself accountable.”
 
This morning, people have been trying to work out the significance of the Israeli strikes on Iran that were carried out in the early hours of yesterday.
Given that Israel didn’t strike Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities, oil terminals or members of the Iranian regime, in line with the enormous American pressure to limit such an attack, some people have leapt to the conclusion that although this was a tactical success it was a strategic failure in not striking a decisive blow against Tehran. 
Such an assessment is distinctly premature.
First, it’s important to register the scale of the achievement. Israel openly attacked Iran in a complex operation involving 100 fighter jets over a distance which presents significant challenges. Iran’s air defences were simply brushed aside and then crippled along with its missile and drone production capabilities. Iran has now been shown to be widely exposed to Israeli attack and its capacity for retaliation has been diminished.
Although Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has stated that the US didn’t dictate Israel’s targets, the Israel Air Force operated entirely within the red lines set down by the Biden administration. 
Yet Israel may have achieved what it needed to do at this stage, given a range of factors that have a direct bearing on the urgency of neutralising the threat from Tehran while minimising the likelihood of acute damage to Israeli lives in any possible Iranian response. 
The targets struck by the Israel Air Force were far from negligible. The New York Times, quoting three Iranian and three senior Israeli defence officials, reports that targets for the attack included defences at the Bandar Imam Khomeini petrochemical complex in Khuzestan Province, at the major economic port Bandar Imam Khomeini, and at the Abadan oil refinery. Air-defence systems were also struck in Ilam Province, at the Tange Bijar gas refinery.
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