In the early hours of Friday morning, Israel launched a wave of attacks on Iran. This assault, dubbed “Operation Rising Lion”, targeted dozens of Iranian nuclear and military sites, including enrichment facilities at Natanz and missile installations in Tehran and Khorramabad.
The operation has been meticulously planned and, it seems, extraordinarily successful. It appears that the Natanz – Iran’s most important uranium enrichment site – has been badly damaged, with an underground section that houses “a multi-level enrichment hall housing centrifuges, electrical rooms, and other supporting infrastructure” destroyed.
This will not put an end to Iran’s quest and ability to process weapons grade materials, but it has set it back years.
Key members of Iran’s hierarchy were deliberately targeted and killed. These include Major General Hossein Salami, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Salami, was one of the most powerful men in Iran, in charge of its most powerful military arm – and one of the people closest to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Also confirmed dead are Major General Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, the commander of the IRGC air force, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh – along with the entire top echelon of air force officers.
The fact that Israeli intelligence knew where these individuals would be is telling, as is the fact that (according to one security official), the presence of all senior officers in the same location in an underground command centre was not a coincidence: “We did specific activities to help us understand things about them and then used that information to make them act in a specific way. We knew this would make them meet, but more importantly we knew how to keep them there.”
Mossad teams on the ground helped knock out what was left of Iran’s air defences after they were targeted last year, seemingly being able to rely on a secret explosive drone base had been built in Iran in anticipation of this operation. This was an attack, in other words, that has been a long time in the planning.
Iran’s Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, responded furiously, stating: “At dawn today, the Zionist regime committed a heinous crime on our beloved soil, revealing its evil nature more than ever by targeting residential areas with its wicked and bloodstained hands. The regime must await a severe punishment.”
The country’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, called the attack “a declaration of war”, and requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in New York, saying that Israel’s “outrageous actions represent not only a grave violation of Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity as a sovereign UN member state, but also constitute acts of aggression and war crimes”.
The attack is the latest chapter in the dramatic reshaping of the Middle East that has been unfolding since the horrific attacks of 7 October 2023. The implications of Israel’s strikes – which are ongoing – have implications for other parts of the world, and for the new world order that is being forged.
In the first instance, the assault on Iran will bring relief for Ukraine. Iran has been providing considerable military support for Russia since the invasion of February 2022, supplying munitions, artillery shells and drones – such as the Shahed and more advanced Mohajer-6 models. Last year it also reportedly supplied hundreds of surface-to-surface ballistic missiles for us against Ukraine. These shipments will now stop, as Iran cannot afford to be a supplier to others at a time of its own existential crisis.
There will be relief too for shipping through the Red Sea, where the same equation will apply to the Houthis – who have relied on Tehran for weapons as well as logistical support. As with Russia, it may take time to reduce stockpiles; but this will happen – loosening another block in the web of regional Iranian alliances that have been built up over decades and which has been unpicked since the 7 October attacks. The reports of the death in the strikes of the commander of the IRGC Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, who was in charge of Iran’s regional proxies, further weakens the defensive architecture that Tehran has spent much time and money to maintain.
Others too are directly impacted by what is happening. With oil prices soaring in the wake of the attacks, that has obvious implications both for households not only in India or China – the latter of which imports almost two million barrels of oil per day from Iran – but all around the world. That will inject inflationary pressures on the global economy, which will in turn postpone much hoped for interest rate cuts.
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Seen through a wider lens, the attacks on Iran also point to the return of inter-state warfare. It is worth reminding that just last month, India and Pakistan were involved in a confrontation that many feared would escalate into an all-out war between two nuclear powers. With Russia’s campaign against Ukraine ongoing, the US warning of an “imminent” threat to Taiwan from China, not to mention the challenges facing people in Syria and Afghanistan, then the belt of countries running from the eastern flank of Europe and the Mediterranean to the Pacific looks like the Faultline on which a new world is taking shape.
As for Iran and what happens next, it would seem that the leadership is now at a crossroads: negotiate some form of settlement that would include commitments on the nuclear programme and perhaps concessions on other issues too; or prepare for defiance, hostility and actions against those it holds responsible: Israel, of course, but also the US.
Although US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that “we are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region”, Iran has formed a different opinion, with foreign minister Araghchi retorting that “the aggressive actions of the Zionist regime against Iran could not have happened without the coordination and approval of the United States”. Therefore, he added, “the American government, as the main supporter of this regime, is also responsible for the dangerous consequences of these actions”.
Much depends then on what cards the leadership has, and how it chooses to play them. This has been an extraordinary day in the history of the Middle East, one that has global consequences.
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