How tiny Israel brought Iran to its knees

Telegraph

5 hours ago

Much of its high command lies dead beneath the rubble. Its once-vaunted air defences have been swept aside with almost contemptuous ease. Its terrified civilians are fleeing the capital in their thousands, heedless of pleas to stand firm against the enemy.
Long regarded as a mighty power in the Middle East, feared and grudgingly respected by neighbours and rivals, Iran's aspirations for regional hegemony have been destroyed in just five days by a country with a 10th of its population and an 80th of its landmass.
In many ways, the opening salvos of a war more than a decade in the making have gone better than Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, could have hoped.
Eleven of Iran's generals have been killed, along with at least half a dozen top nuclear scientists. Israel has rapid air superiority, giving it broad freedom to strike Tehran and other key locations at will.
Undercover Mossad operatives have helped destroy more than 120 ballistic missile launchers, using off-the-shelf drones smuggled into the country in suitcases. More covert action is likely. 'We have a wide variety of tools up our sleeve,' an IDF spokesman said.
Far from projecting strength, Iran's ayatollahs have rarely looked weaker.
Even the triumphalist footage of missiles striking Israeli cities – broadcast endlessly on state television, which itself came under attack on Monday – has backfired.
It has reminded Iranians of what they lack: while Israelis receive air raid warnings, Iranians do not. So far, the only advance notice of incoming strikes has come not from Tehran but from Israel.
Little wonder, then, that some Israeli officials (though by no means all) believe it may only be a matter of time before fed-up Iranians turn on the mullahs.
The early days of Israel's campaign have more in common with its ruthlessly effective two-month operation to defang Hezbollah in Lebanon last year, than with its grinding war in Gaza.
Yet despite initial successes, such comparisons risk being both misleading and premature. Iran is not beaten yet.
Its ballistic missiles have already killed 24 people – more than Hezbollah managed during Operation Northern Arrows, as the Israel campaign was codenamed – and inflicted far greater damage.
A dangerous waiting game has begun. Israel is racing to deplete Iran's ballistic-missile stockpile before it runs low on the interceptors needed to stop them, while each side prays the other's resolve will falter first.
Israel's layered defences have brought down roughly 85 per cent of Iran's missiles, according to Giora Eiland, a retired IDF general and former head of Israel's National Security Council. But more have penetrated than expected – possibly due to improved propulsion systems making some warheads harder to detect in time.
Even so, Israel believes it is now gaining the upper hand. The IDF had estimated Iran's stockpile of 2,000 missiles before the war. Some 400 have already been launched and Israel's combination of overt and covert attacks on launch sites may have halved Iran's remaining firing capacity, according to an Israeli military official.
The reduced intensity of Iran's most recent barrages may point to mounting difficulties sustaining its earlier tempo – which was itself lower than Israel's worst-case projections.
'If we continue with more or less the same efficiency, we might reduce Iran's ability to launch missiles at Israel to a level that I would not call bearable, but which we would be able to confront,' said Gen Eiland. But he warned that such a goal was still weeks away.
Some analysts believe Iran may simply be conserving ammunition, anticipating a drawn-out conflict. Nor, they point out, has it yet deployed its most formidable missile, the Khorramshahr, capable of delivering a two-tonne warhead. Tehran may be betting that one mass-casualty strike could turn public opinion and force Mr Netanyahu to halt the war.
Iranian generals claim their most potent weapons are being held in reserve – possibly gambling that Israel's interceptors, whose quantity remains classified, will eventually run low.
'We haven't yet fully tapped into our strategic missile prowess,' said Gen Ahmad Vahidi, who was appointed acting head of Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on Friday after his predecessor was killed in an Israeli air strike.
'We shall deploy our modern warfare, including new-generation missiles, as and when we deem fit.'
Such claims may well be bravado.
Some Israeli officials are increasingly confident that the operation has so significantly degraded Iran's capabilities, they might now be able to persuade Donald Trump to authorise a US strike on the regime's nuclear facilities – and complete their mission.
They argue that Iran has relied on three main lines of defence. The first – its regional proxy network – has already been neutralised. Hezbollah, once its most powerful non-state ally, has been so crippled it has not even bothered to threaten rocket attacks.
The second – its ballistic-missile arsenal – is being steadily eroded. That, in turn, could open the way for the US to target Iran's third line of defence – its nuclear programme – with greater confidence that Tehran would be too weak to mount a serious retaliation.
Israel concedes it lacks the firepower to destroy Iran's deeply buried enrichment sites outright. Its aim is to delay Tehran's ability to build a nuclear bomb by two to three years, Gen Eiland says.
Only the US possesses the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs capable of blasting through half a mile of rock to strike the underground facility at Fordow – Iran's most important nuclear site.
Whether Mr Trump can be convinced is another matter. He has recently adopted a more hawkish tone on Iran, saying he is 'not much in the mood to negotiate'. But that remains a long way from agreeing to involve the US in precisely the kind of foreign war he pledged to avoid on the campaign trail.