HoosierDaddy, on 12 June 2025 - 05:52 PM, said:
Can someone illuminate me on why this has heated up so quickly again?
Reading between the lines is Iran close to producing a viable nuclear weapon and Israel is having none of it? Not sure else why the US is withdrawing personnel.
Pessimist says... isn't this always the case? Is Netanyahu simply using Trump's presidency and free hand to do what he's always wanted to do?
The IAEA confirmed that Iran had enriched uranium to 60%, way more than the 5-7% it needs for civilian use and close to the 90% needed to produce a nuclear bomb. Individual uranium samles had been detected enriched to over 80%. This wasn't so much "breaching restrictions" as "smashing through them with a 100,000-ton monster truck". Enriching from 60% to 90% can be done in weeks, and Iran's current uranium stockpile would allow them to assemble 9-14 full bombs. The IAEA issued Iran with a warning, the first time it's ever done that. That was all the excuse Israel - and Netanyahu - needed.
It was also clear from Iran's desultory response last year that the threat of thousands of missiles launching from Iran simultaneously just didn't exist, and Israel has subsequently focused intelligence and satellite on identifying how many TELs (mobile launchers) Iran has. It doesn't matter if you have 8,000 - 10,000 missiles if you only have a few hundred launch vehicles, and Israel and the US for some time had suspected this was a weak link in the Iranian threat posture. Israel also believed that incoming missile fire from Iran would be augmented by strikes from Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen, creating a local saturation effect that could overwhelming Israeli air defences. With all of those supporting forces degraded, suppressed or destroyed, they no longer were a threat.
It's also worth noting that, unlike Gaza and Lebanon, the other states in the area not only do not have a problem with Israel attacking Iran, but are probably cheering them on in private (especially Saudi Arabia).
Israel saw a moment of opportunity and took it, and has apparently succeeded far more than it thought was possible. The key point was destroying the Subashi radar site which covered all of NW Iran (and Iran apparently has no backup for), and then destroying what was left of Iran's S-400 AA launchers (they didn't even see any of Israel's F-35s). With those gone, Israel's standard aircraft could operate over Iranian soil with complete freedom of action, which has allowed them to target individual TELs (many pre-identified by Israeli intelligence). That's stopping Iran getting a massive ballistic missile response off. They also decapitated the entire Iranian military command structure, which led to chaos and delays as emergency horse-trading and politicking went on (perhaps too much, some indications that the Ayatollah had to step in directly to resolve some impasses), during which time Israel took out many more TELs (including some disguised as delivery lorries.
Israel's original supposed strategy, to lightly damage some of the nuclear sites, suppress some AA batteries and then endure a counter-attack, seems to have shifted to destroying Iran's entire military infrastructure and completely dismantling the nuclear sites (though this is much easier said than done, Israel does not have deep-penetrating bunker busters). There's already talk that Israel planned a 2-4 day operation and is now talking about a two-week campaign.
Any hope that this might trigger the downfall of the Iranian regime appears to be premature at this time.
This post has been edited by Werthead: 13 June 2025 - 05:03 PM
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