Confronted with Harris-Biden administration coercion, bribes and a Pentagon leak, Israel chose to geopolitically play it safe Friday.
Instead of conducting outright strikes on Iran’s nuclear-weapons facilities and oil and energy infrastructure, the IDF prepped the battlefield for its next kinetic round with Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei.
Strategic messaging to Iran was the opening goal. But the overall effect of Israel’s 100-plus aircraft assault was that it set conditions for Jerusalem’s next round.
The simplistic read is that Israel gave the Harris-Biden administration what it wanted ahead of next Tuesday’s election — and in the process, offered Khamenei an off-ramp to avoid a wider regional war.
Yet that isn’t the survival game the IDF has been playing since Oct. 7. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet are fully intent on eliminating Iran as an existential threat to Israel.
That means winning the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ seven-front war against Israel led by Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. It also means destroying Iran’s rapidly accelerating nuclear weapons and research program.
Now, as the fog of war lifts from last Friday night’s attack, it’s increasingly clear that it left Iran badly exposed to future missions that will do just that.
It also crippled Tehran’s ability to manufacture the kind of ballistic missiles Khamenei used to attack Israel earlier this month.
The IDF heavily concentrated on denuding Iran’s air defenses. “Fordow, Natanz, Isfahan and Khamenei’s other nuclear facilities and weaponization laboratories are 1730183167 undefended,” as Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies posted.
Key air-defense nodes were also struck, the Institute for the Study of War reported, at the Khomeini International Airport on the outskirts of Tehran, the Abadan oil refinery in southwestern Iran, and elsewhere.
Israel now has a window of opportunity to severely disrupt Iran’s nuclear-weapons program — and to cripple its oil-based economy.
In creating this strategic opening, the IDF cleared a 1,000-mile aerial highway from Tel Aviv to Tehran, clear across Syria and Iraq, destroying air defense systems and early radar warning sites all along that air corridor.
Despite the White House’s machinations, the IDF airstrikes on Friday were likely a beginning, not an end.
Israel is setting the conditions that will ultimately isolate the IRGC and Iran’s mullahs from the Iranian Army and people.
Defeating Iran’s integrated air-defense network during the four-hour “Day of Repentance” operation was Step 1. Step 2 is likely already in the making.
Strategic messaging via one-and-done responses will not bring this seven-front war to an end. Only a sustained Israeli air campaign can defeat the Islamic Republic of Iran and topple Khamenei’s regime and the IRGC.
Israel’s capacity to bring this about now is high. Not only did the IDF build an aerial highway to Iran, it also severely disrupted Tehran’s stand-off military capabilities — its drones and ballistic missiles.
Understandably, Khamenei is downplaying its effect, but the strategic kinetic risk to Iran is very real.
To create this new window of opportunity, the IDF severely disrupted Iran’s abilities to produce the kind of ballistic missiles that Tehran used to strike Israel in April and again this month.
Hitting the Parchin Military Complex did just that. It’s a highly secretive facility, but the IDF was nonetheless able to target and destroy 12 “planetary mixers used to produce solid fuel for long-range ballistic missiles,” according to the Jerusalem Post.
The ISW and other experts estimate it could take Iran six months to a year to rebuild its solid-rocket-fuel capacity.
Essentially, as an unnamed source told the newspaper Elaph, Israel destroyed the “backbone of Iran’s missile industry” — and in the process hindered the IRGC’s stand-off capabilities.
In this sense, Khamanei truly has become the modern-day emperor with no clothes. He and his regime of mullahs are badly exposed.
Tehran knows Israel’s military left hook is coming, regardless of the US election: Neither Israel nor Iran is likely to wait to climb up the escalation ladder.
Both have far too much to lose, especially as Iran’s nuclear breakout looms ever closer.
Jerusalem is operating boldly in a post-Oct. 7. world. The IDF, as evidenced by its ongoing decimation of Hamas and Hezbollah, is done playing forever wars with Iran — even if the Harris-Biden administration is not.
Now all roads lead to Tehran, including Israel’s newly built 1,000-mile air corridor spanning the Mideast.
Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer.