On Tuesday 17 June we held an evening of prayer and solidarity with our friends, families, and community under fire in Israel. The evening was a chance for us to be together, online as well as in person, with a briefing on the situation by Middle East expert Dr Toby Greene, and with prayers and learning led by Rabbi Wittenberg, Rabbi Adam and two Rabbis in Israel.
This was Dr Toby Green’s briefing on the Israel-Iran conflict
How did we get here?
Seen in the wider perspective, what Israel has done is not really a great surprise. More than 20 years ago Iranian opposition groups exposed that Iran was building massive secret nuclear facilities that were intended to give it the ability to produce nuclear weapons.
For most of the time since then, Israeli policy makers have been debating openly whether Israel should take direct military action. There has been a broad consensus on the threat but not what to do about it. The threat is not just the possibility that Iran may use the weapon, but that having access to those weapons enhances Iran’s strategic power and deterrence; that there is a risk of proliferation to Iranian proxies or allies; and that it could trigger a regional nuclear arms race including Saudi Arabia and others.
The debate in Israel surrounding direct military action has been about whether Israel has the capability to do sufficient damage; about the potential cost including of retaliation by Iran or its proxies including Hezbollah; about the risk that taking this action my lead Israel into a multifront war without international backing; and that it might lead Iran to be even more motivated to actually build a bomb. There has also been the question of whether other approaches are smarter: using covert action to slow Iran down (which Israel has done) and trying to get the US and other international actors to deal with the problem through diplomacy or military action.
For Netanyahu, dealing with this issue has been a personal obsession. A couple of times he tried to launch military action but was blocked either by the opposition of senior Israeli military figures, or not having majority support in his cabinet, or by US pressure.
So why did this finally happen now?
First, Iran has got closer than ever to the ability to build a bomb. Iran signed the JCPOA in 2015, that traded sanctions relief for temporary restrictions on Iran’s nuclear programme. Netanyahu hated that deal, and so did Trump. After Trump became president, he left the deal causing it to collapse. He then imposed “maximum pressure” through sanctions. But that did not stop Iran. It led Iran to abandon all restrictions and accelerate the development of the materials and capabilities needed for nuclear weapons, especially the high enrichment of Uranium. Much of that was happening in the open as reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But also, according to Israel, there is new intelligence pointing to activities in secret towards weaponization. Further evidence is provided by unprecedented public statements by Iranian politicians in support of nuclear weapons, suggesting that Iran was more decided on actually going ahead with building a bomb, because of the damage done to its allies in the last eighteen months.
Whilst Iran has held negotiations with the US over the last two months, they did not seem likely to produce results.
Iran had reached the point of being able to produce enough weapons grade uranium for a bomb within days; a crude test device within months; and a fully functional warhead for a missile according to most estimates within around 18 months, or according to Netanyahu as little as a year.
Second, Israel’s ability to strike Iran is greater now than ever before. Israel has already degraded the threats of Hamas and Hezbollah, and already damaged Iranian air defenses in an attack at the end of 2024. Netanyahu also apparently felt he had at least tacit support from Trump.
Third, Israeli decision makers’ threat perceptions changed. Post 7 October Israel is less willing to manage threats or deter threats. They are in a mode of proactively confronting threats.
Finally, we cannot entirely disconnect the decision from Netanyahu’s personal interests. He and his coalition are fighting for political survival and this may have impacted his decision making, though Israeli politicians across a broad spectrum in the opposition also support the decision, at least in public.
What is the IDF doing?
The IDF is working through a prepared script. It started with a surprise attack on air defenses, military commanders, nuclear scientists, missile bases and launchers, as well as air bases and some key nuclear sites (though so far not all the nuclear sites, because some are at the limit or beyond Israeli capabilities to destroy).
Netanyahu stresses that the IDF is also targeting Iranian attempt to massively expand its conventional missile capabilities, to stop Iran producing huge quantities of the kind of weapons we have seen strike Israel in recent days, which he says also represent an existential threat.
Israel is also to some extent striking infrastructure targets like energy infrastructure.
Iran of course has responded with missile attacks. Some appear to be aimed at specific targets and infrastructure. But many seem to be directed indiscriminately at civilian areas.
How will this develop militarily?
There are three or four possible scenarios. The first is a swift move towards a ceasefire in the next few days. There are some signs that Iran wants that, but there seems to be a small and diminishing chance of this as Israeli decision makers and military want more time to damage Iran, and the Iranian regime looks increasingly fragile.
A second scenario, that many Israeli mainstream security voices were advocating in recent days, is that Israel continues for a little longer (could be a week or more), but when it reaches the point where the costs outweigh benefits of continuing, seeks a ceasefire with the help of the US, that will involve Iranian concessions on its nuclear program. We don’t know what a ceasefire would look like yet, but we may start to hear proposals in the coming days.
A third possibility is US military intervention to deepen the damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities and possibly the regime itself. It seems Netanyahu hopes for that, and it seems that Trump may be warming to that possibility.
However, another possibility is the decision makers on all sides don’t know when to stop or how to stop, and the conflict rumbles on; with the risk of escalation by either side or an expansion of Israeli war aims. Israeli decision makers may want to increase pressure on the regime to accept their ceasefire demands or feel that the only way to get the desired result is to topple the regime itself.
On Iran’s side, we heard assessments after Israeli airstrikes in October that Iran had around 2000 missiles with limited capacity to build more. Some have been used and some destroyed, but we don’t know exactly how long Iran can continue firing. There are also risks that Iran may resort to using terrorists to attack targets around the world. There is a history of attacks by Iran or its proxies on Israeli or Jewish targets outside of Israel.
What kind of outcomes can we expect?
The risk of an unresolved conflict is heightened by the lack of clarity about the kind of political outcome Netanyahu’s government hopes to achieve. The conflict could have various possible outcomes.
One would be Iran being forced to accept a nuclear deal with the US that it would not accept before. Another would be the collapse the regime.
But there is a risk that neither of these will be the outcome, but rather the regime survives, even more determined to build nuclear weapons, and reconstitutes its capabilities within a short period in ways that are harder to detect and prevent.
There is also then the question of whether a ceasefire on the Iran front can be linked to a ceasefire on the Gaza front, including getting hostages out and more aid in. Some experienced Israeli commentators have advocated a linkage (and a successful campaign against Iran may make Hamas more flexible). But we still face the problem that the end of the Gaza war means the end of Netanyahu’s coalition. This has made Netanyahu very reluctant to end the war in Gaza. It’s an open question how the outcome of this Iran campaign changes his calculations. Israeli National Security Adviser Tzahi Hanegbi referred on Israeli television this evening to a new Israeli proposal made to Hamas with greater flexibility and said that Israel is waiting for a Hamas response.
So, an optimistic scenario for Israel is a deal that curtails the Iranian threat and leads to a Gaza ceasefire. A less hopeful outcome is that this conflict has no conclusive outcome, delays Iran only temporarily, and doesn’t change the equation in Gaza. We’ll have to wait and see.
