Israeli strike against Iran: a limited attack but a potentially important signal

Israel struck a strategic city with carefully measured force, but argued it could strike a center of Iran's nuclear program.

For more than a decade, Israel has repeatedly carried out bombing and missile campaigns that would eliminate Iran's nuclear production capacity, much of which is based around of the city of Isfahan and the Natanz nuclear enrichment. complex 75 miles to the north.

That's not what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war cabinet chose to do before dawn Friday and during interviews with nuclear analysts and experts. said the decision was telling.

So was the silence that followed. Israel has said almost nothing about this limited strike, which appears to have done little damage in Iran. U.S. officials noted that the Iranian decision to downplay the explosions in Isfahan — and suggestions by Iranian officials that Israel may not have been responsible — was a clear effort by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to avoid further escalation.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">At the White House, officials asked the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence agencies to remain silent on the operation, hoping to facilitate Iran's efforts to calm tensions in the region.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">But in interviews, officials quickly added that they worried that relations between Israel and Iran were now in a very different place than they were just a week ago. The taboo prohibiting direct strikes on each other's territory was now lifted. If there is another cycle – a conflict over Iran's nuclear progress, or another Israeli strike against Iranian military officers – both sides might feel freer to launch directly against the other.

Mr. Netanyahu was under competing pressures: President Biden urged him to “achieve victory” after a largely ineffective air barrage launched by Iran last week, while hardliners in Israel urged him to retaliate hard to reestablish deterrence after the first. direct effort to strike Israel from Iranian territory in the 45 years following the Iranian revolution.

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