Israel is just getting started, but can a weakened Iran respond?
Explosion seen in the Iranian city of Ilam. Credit: @QudsNen/X
Israel's warplanes were in the air barely two hours after Donald Trump, the US president, had laid out the case for continuing talks with Iran at the weekend.
'We remain committed to a Diplomatic Resolution to the Iran Nuclear Issue,' he posted on his Truth Social site. 'My entire Administration has been directed to negotiate with Iran.'
Had Benjamin Netanyahu, the headstrong prime minister of Israel, not got the memo? Or was he sending a clear signal to Washington that he was not going to take orders from anyone.
As ever in the Middle East's quagmire of religious strife and decades of power struggles, it was all a lot more complicated than that.
The Americans had been forewarned that Israel had run out of patience with Iran and its deadly pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Just a day earlier, the State Department had announced it was reducing its diplomatic footprint in Baghdad and other regional facilities, Mr Trump warning the Middle East 'could be a dangerous place'.
The US president was asked directly whether Israeli strikes were imminent.
'Well, I don't want to say imminent,' he told reporters in the East Room of the White House, 'but it looks like it's something that could very well happen'.
Strikes, he said, could upset delicately poised negotiations. Or, maybe, he mused, it 'might help it actually'.
So when explosions echoed across Iran early on Friday morning, Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu were settling into rather familiar roles.
The American president had spent the day as good cop – talking up the idea of a negotiated settlement and trying to keep his people in the region from becoming targets. However, while officials said negotiators were on their way to Oman for a sixth round of talks on Sunday – he was happy to let the Israeli prime minister play the bad cop, pulling the trigger.
'In my assessment, the timing of an Israeli strike on Iran reflects a convergence of interests between Trump and Netanyahu,' said Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official.
'From Trump's perspective, as long as the US is not directly militarily involved, there is an advantage to a situation in which Israel takes military action aimed at forcing the Iranian regime back to negotiations from a significantly weaker position.
'The one who will pay the price for this move is Israel.'
As he announced Operation Rising Lion to his nation, Mr Netanyahu set out the scale of the threat just a few hundred miles away.
For decades, the tyrants of Tehran have 'brazenly, openly called for Israel's destruction,' he said, describing how their weapons programme had produced enough highly enriched uranium for nine nuclear bombs.
The strikes, said Gabriel Noronha, president of POLARIS National Security and a former adviser to the State Department, were simply the first in maybe a week of attacks, starting with command and control centres, top leadership, and aerospace headquarters that would have launched drone and missile retaliation.
The question now is whether Iran will have the ability or the intent to strike US facilities or at any of the 40,000 military personnel in the Persian Gulf and the rest of the Middle East.
'They've threatened the US for a long time,' Mr Noronha said.
'The question is whether they will have the munitions and the capability to strike US bases or they say, 'We barely have enough to inflict damage on Israel. We're going to keep it at that.''
Either way, it is just the start.
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