To drag off probably the most bold and complicated assault within the lengthy historical past of antagonism between the Center East’s preeminent powers, covert Israeli brokers arrange a drone base deep inside Iranian territory. They recruited disaffected Iranians to assist their trigger. They smuggled weapons methods throughout enemy traces.
These are among the many espionage techniques that allowed Israel to conduct its shock assault on Iran final night time, concurrently eroding Tehran’s defenses and limiting its capability to retaliate as Israeli forces picked off senior commanders and struck delicate nuclear websites.
The operation, termed “Rising Lion,” alerts a brand new part in Israel’s efforts to remodel intensive intelligence gathering into decisive army campaigns meant to outmaneuver its enemies all through the Center East. Lately, Israel has used intelligence to assassinate prime Iranian army officers and nuclear scientists, in addition to the leaders of Iran-backed militias. Israel has additionally focused delicate areas inside Iran for air strikes.
The assaults begun this week, nevertheless, have been extra audacious each within the scope of the concentrating on and within the clear goal of arresting Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Among the many websites struck was the Natanz Nuclear Facility, the place Iran has generated most of its nuclear gasoline. Fordow, a facility buried underneath a mountain, presents a harder goal. A former U.S. intelligence official with experience within the Center East instructed us that Israel may have U.S. bunker-buster weapons to do extra lasting harm to further Iranian services. That makes Washington’s potential assist for what is anticipated to be a drawn-out marketing campaign all of the extra essential.
Israeli and different Western officers mentioned the marketing campaign was in its preliminary phases, and Tehran has vowed a vigorous response, which started after sundown right this moment when it fired dozens of missiles towards Israel—together with some that made it by means of the Iron Dome defensive defend. However present and former U.S. and Israeli officers and analysts instructed us that the blow already dealt to Iran within the early hours of the assault makes manifest Israel’s benefits.
Iran’s “Axis of Resistance”—a community of militias anticipated to affix in any warfare with Israel—is flat on its again, degraded by a collection of U.S.-enabled Israeli offensives over the previous 12 months and a half. Israel weakened Iran’s air-defense methods and missile-production services in a pair of strikes performed final April and October, whereas additionally revealing the boundaries of Iran’s offensive capabilities by warding off drones and missiles in a coordinated effort with Western companions.
As a former CIA station chief in Israel instructed us, the Mossad has “a very good community inside Iran, and so they have the assist of the U.S.” Iran, in the meantime, has proven that it possesses neither strategic foresight nor the technical means to fend off intricate operations, the previous station chief mentioned, pointing to the 2020 assassinations of Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s senior safety and intelligence commander, and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the nation’s prime nuclear scientist. “So as to add to it,” the previous senior intelligence officer mentioned, “Iran has few associates, so it’s exhausting for them to get provides in.”
Iran additionally has enemies inside: A former Israeli intelligence official instructed The Atlantic that Iranians against the regime make for a prepared recruiting pool, and indicated that Iranians working for Israel have been concerned in efforts to construct a drone base contained in the nation.
Israel’s operation drew on years of intelligence gathering towards senior Iranian commanders and scientists and relied on intensive cooperation between the Mossad and the Israeli army. It confirmed not simply technical prowess, homing in on key targets, but additionally creativity in executing covert motion that has been a trademark of Israel’s multipronged marketing campaign towards its enemies within the area. The Mossad launched video right this moment of Israeli operatives deploying precision strikes on air-defense methods from inside Iran. Safety officers briefed Israeli media on different facets of the secretive operation, together with the usage of automobiles to smuggle weapons methods into the nation.
In a press release late yesterday, within the early hours of the strikes, Secretary of State Marco Rubio mentioned that america was not concerned within the assault. However a former Israeli safety official instructed us that there’s “little doubt” that Israel had U.S. backing for its actions, even when Donald Trump and his advisers had labored to avert a strike. The previous official mentioned that the obvious incapability of the Iranians to mount a vigorous self-defense makes clear that there’s “much less Iranian capability than they wished us all to imagine.” Nonetheless, the previous official mentioned, Tehran will retaliate and “can do a lot harm over time.”
The central questions now are what position Trump intends to play, how severely Iran’s nuclear program is stalled, and whether or not negotiations could be resumed. “The Israelis are very tactically profitable,” Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow for Center East research on the Council on International Relations, instructed us. “However they typically confuse short-term success with long-term achieve.”
A major cause the Israelis have been decided to behave now, Takeyh mentioned, is that they knew that they had a restricted window for fulfillment and wanted to strike when Iran had decreased retaliatory capability by means of its proxies—amongst them Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hamas has been significantly diminished by almost two years of combating triggered by its October 7, 2023, assault on Israel. And Hezbollah has been depleted by a long-running battle with Israel, whose intelligence providers succeeded in penetrating the group so extensively that they have been in a position to remotely detonate the militia’s pagers and walkie-talkies final 12 months, killing or maiming scores of fighters.
Proxies nonetheless ready to reply militarily, analysts instructed us, embody the Houthis in Yemen and Shiite militias in Iraq. The Houthis are maybe the strongest element of the Iranian-backed axis. The Islamist faction energetic in northwestern Yemen has continued launching drones and missiles at Israel at the same time as Washington secured a cease-fire settlement with the group, whose assaults on ships within the Crimson Sea had snarled worldwide commerce.
U.S. officers instructed us that Israel feared Iran’s speedy efforts to enhance its retaliatory capacities, which added to their feeling that that they had a restricted window to behave. However the inclination for a army resolution additionally displays a long-held impulse of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Earlier than his second inauguration, in 2009, Netanyahu instructed Jeffrey Goldberg, now The Atlantic’s editor in chief, that he must act if then–President Barack Obama didn’t cease Iran’s nuclear program. Obama reached a cope with Iran over Netanyahu’s objections in 2015—a deal that Trump tore up three years later. Within the midst of Trump’s makes an attempt to safe a brand new settlement, Netanyahu has taken his long-promised motion.
“For the reason that daybreak of the nuclear age, we have now not had a fanatic regime which may put its zealotry above its self-interest,” Netanyahu mentioned in 2009. “Individuals say that they’ll behave like another nuclear energy. Can you’re taking the danger?”
