Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran

Israel strikes again

It has been a long time coming. Israel launched preemptive attacks against Iran on Thursday afternoon, which would have been in the middle of the night in Tehran. The AP reports that the strikes hit both military and nuclear facilities and may have killed both top Revolutionary Guard officials and nuclear scientists. As I write this, another wave is reportedly underway.

It was just a matter of time before either the US or Israel hit Iran. I’m old enough to remember thinking that George W. Bush would probably attack before leaving office, especially with Barack Obama taking his place, but apparently Iraq filled his plate.

Photo credit: https://x.com/iraqschristians/status/1933329379956044019?s=61&t=X6XxCDIBmdrPHrSiKT5oaQ

That isn’t to say nothing was done. In 2014, a cyber attack on Iran’s nuclear program with the Stuxnet virus was believed to be the work of the US and Israel. The attack probably delayed development of a nuclear weapon by several years.

Both countries strongly oppose an Iranian bomb. Iran’s fingerprints are all over the Hamas’s October 6 attacks on Israel, and a proposed Israeli-Saudi peace deal was a motive. Iran launched a massive wave of cruise missiles against Israel in 2024, but was thwarted by a coordinated defense that included Israel and the US. There is little doubt that if the Iranians develop a nuclear weapon, they will use it.

An obvious question is why Israel would choose now to attack. The Trump Administration has been negotiating a new nuclear deal with Iran, and Israel has its hands full with Gaza. Part of the answer may be that talks were failing and Iran’s proxies have been weakened by the Gaza war.

There is likely to be a strong retaliation from Iran. That retaliation could come in the form of cruise missile and drone attacks, conventional attacks by Iran’s allies on Israel’s borders, and terrorist attacks.

The retaliation might be focused on the US as well. US military bases in the Middle East could be targeted. Back in 2020, Iran launched a cruise missile attack on a US airbase in Iraq to retaliate for the killing of a top Revolutionary Guards general. US embassies and soft targets could also be the focus of retaliation.

We won’t know how successful the Israeli strikes are for some time. We also won’t know immediately whether the initial strikes devolve into a larger war.

The fact that the two countries are a long way from each other is a good argument for a limited war. It would simply be too difficult for either side to launch a ground war, although we might see raids and missile launches by Hezbollah and Hamas (if there is enough left of Hamas to launch a raid).

In closing, let’s look back to 1981. On June 7 of that year, Israel launched a similar strike against another nuclear facility called Osirak. The attack destroyed a reactor that was about to go on line in another hostile country. Ten years later, the dictator of that country invaded neighboring Kuwait, kicking of two decades of conflict with the United States.

Israel took a lot of criticism for the Osirak strike on Iraq, but most of us would probably agree that it’s a good thing that Saddam Hussein never got nuclear weapons. The argument to keep them out of Iranian hands is much stronger.

I have serious problems with a lot of things that Israel has done, particularly when it comes to the Gaza war, but the bottom line is that an Iranian nuclear weapon is an existential threat to them along with being a serious threat to us.

For a long time, it has been obvious that there were no good options when it came to preventing Iran from obtaining that weapon. Thursday’s attacks were probably the least worst option.

TRUMP’S UNCONSTITUTIONAL ORDER A federal judge ruled that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to LA was “both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution” per CNN. The order to return control of the Guard to California has been paused until noon Friday, and the DOJ has already appealed.

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