THERE is no messing here – what’s going down between Israel and Iran really is a war even if, at this stage, there are no ground troops directly engaged, barring Mossad agents in-country.
Some media outlets are treating the attacks on both countries as a sort of tit-for-tat battle, leaving the likes of the Independent to characterise the fighting as ‘an exchange of fire’, as if this was a war being fought on conventional grounds.
Such a characterisation seems to be leading the fool Lammy to believe that he can intervene as a peacemaker, brokering a settlement between the warring parties which will bring the fighting to a close in the traditional manner.
This is to misread events. To get a better understanding, all one has to do is listen to what the Israelis were saying from the outset, except that very few media outlets seem to be listening properly or reporting what the Israelis are at pains to tell them.
It takes an obscure news agency and some others to convey the words of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokeswoman who spoke of ‘prolonged operations’, working to ‘an orderly and gradual plan’ against targets which, at that point, she could not reveal.
‘We have objectives for the war, and we will continue to operate in accordance with them until they are achieved,’ she said. ‘I repeat, we have well-defined goals and objectives for this operation. It is a phased operation.’
It didn’t take very long for it to emerge that the objective of that war was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear bomb-making capability – not just to buy time by delaying Iran’s efforts, but to destroy it completely.
For technical and operational reasons, as I explained yesterday, Israel’s job is not over until Iranian nuclear sites are smouldering ruins – The Conservative Woman that objective would require multiple attacks on a range of sites, which necessarily meant that there would be no immediate end to the attacks.
To pave the way for these sorties, the Iranian air defences had to be degraded and, since Iranian retaliation was to be expected, attack had to be mounted on Iran’s offensive missile systems and its drone capability. But these were parallel operations and never the main objective.
We saw journalists such the Telegraph’s David Blair cotton on to this pretty quickly, and more detail was later added by the US online news site Axios which ran a piece by Barak Ravid headed: ‘Israel’s mission hinges on destroying Iran’s hardest nuclear target’.
Of the multiple sites involved in Iran’s nuclear programme – which includes the Natanz facility – Ravid reckons that the toughest nut to crack is the Fordow uranium enrichment site, the fate of which could determine whether Israel’s attack proves a daring success or a mistake.
Ravid asserts that Israel will require unforeseen tactical ingenuity or US assistance to destroy Fordow, which is built into a mountain and deep underground. If the facility remains intact and accessible, a nuclear programme Israel is determined to ‘eliminate’ could actually accelerate.
Confirming the importance of the site, Ravid cites Yechiel Leiter, Israeli Ambassador to the US, who asserts that ‘the entire operation . . . really has to be completed with the elimination of Fordow . . . That’s why the Israeli government hopes the Trump administration ultimately decides to join Israel’s operation’.
Rehearsing some of the issues I dealt with in yesterday’s piece, Ravid states that Israel lacks the huge bunker-busters needed to destroy this facility and the strategic bombers to carry them. The US, he says, has both within flying distance of Iran.
We are told that an Israeli official claimed the US could still join the operation, and that President Trump had even suggested he’d do so if necessary in a conversation with prime minister Netanyahu in the days leading up to launch. But this apparently has been denied by a White House official who says exactly the opposite. The US currently has no intention of getting directly involved.
However, without mentioning the more powerful GBU-72A, Ravid does concede that some (unnamed) experts think Israel could try to replicate the effect of a massive bunker-buster by repeatedly bombing the same location – the so-called ‘drilling strategy’.
Even then, there is no obvious consensus as to which is the more challenging target. Associated Press has published a report suggesting that new construction at the Natanz facility has been buried so deep that it is likely beyond the range of a last-ditch US weapon designed to destroy such sites, the 30,000lb GBU-57 bomb, which can penetrate at least 60 metres (200ft) of earth before detonating.
Like Axios, though, AP does refer to the possibility of multiple bombs, stating that American military officials reportedly have discussed using two such bombs in succession to ensure a site is destroyed. Nevertheless, AP asserts, it is not clear that what it calls ‘a one-two punch’ would damage a facility as deep as the one at Natanz.
Thus, AP is ready to discount success, arguing that with such bombs potentially off the table, the US and its allies are left with fewer options to target the site. It is left to ‘diplomacy’ and if that fails, sabotage attacks may be the only alternative, recalling that Israel successfully infected the Natanz IT system with the Stuxnet virus, which caused the centrifuges to overspeed and destroy themselves.
It does not seem logical that Israel should embark on a high-risk operation that was already doomed to failure, even with US support. Nevertheless, it is germane to note that AP does not mention the GBU-72A bomb or refer to the success of the ‘drilling strategy’ against Hezbollah in Lebanon, where multiple bombs were used.
That said, so far there is not any great room for optimism. A report from the Washington Post, among others, suggests that both the Natanz and Fordow sites – although attacked by the IDF – have escaped significant damage.
Once again, the importance is underlined with Richard Nephew, a lead US negotiator with Iran under the Obama administration and now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, drafted in to comment on the situation.
‘Until I know that Fordow is gone and until I know where that . . . highly-enriched uranium is and know whether it’s usable, I consider us on the clock,’ he says. ‘That’s all that matters now.’
The same pessimism prevails with Kelsey Davenport, director for non-proliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, repeating that ‘Israel can damage key Iranian nuclear facilities, but Israel can’t destroy hardened sites like Fordow without US military assistance’.
The Washington Post recruits an Israeli, Tzachi Hanegbi, head of country’s National Security Council, to spread the pessimism. He acknowledges that Iran’s nuclear programme ‘cannot be destroyed through kinetic means.’
In an interview with Israeli Channel 12, he said ‘only the Americans can make that happen’ – not by supplying the ‘bunker-buster’ bomb but with the deal offered by President Trump in which Iran would voluntarily give up its nuclear programme in exchange for peace and lifted sanctions.
Again, this does not compute. One wonders whether deliberate misinformation is being aired, if for no other reason than to manage expectations.
For the moment, therefore, the game is wide open. Just about anything can happen, but very little of it might constitute good news.
This article appeared in Turbulent Times on June 15, 2025, and is republished by kind permission.
