The targeting of Iran: inside the 20 June Guardian Weekly
Israel's massive attack on Iran which began last Friday caught many observers off guard, but the warning signals were there to see (the US suddenly evacuating diplomatic staff from its local embassies is rarely a good sign).
Applying the Iraq war playbook, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has claimed pre-emptive action was necessary because Tehran is on the brink of producing a nuclear weapon – intelligence it has not yet made public, and which appears to conflict with the assessments of both the US and the UN's nuclear watchdog.
Regional events also offer a guide. As Jason Burke outlines in our big story this week, Iran's so-called 'axis of resistance' – Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Assad regime in Syria and the Houthis in Yemen – has been diminished in a chain of events triggered by the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. Tehran, it seems, has never been in a weaker position.
Israel saw the perfect opportunity to further erode its longstanding regional foe. The question now is whether its goals end with halting Iran's nuclear programme, or removing Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei's regime altogether.
Either way the outlook is far from certain, particularly if the US pivots from its previous position of seeking talks with Iran to joining the military operation – a high-risk development with the potential to unleash lasting chaos.
Israel appears to think its intervention in Iran could rehabilitate the country's shredded international reputation, although that could be a stretch too far even for Netanyahu. But beyond hitting Iran's nuclear threat, it's hard to see any grand strategy. As our columnist Nesrine Malik notes this week: 'It's all looking very Gaza-like: escalation with no end; or regime change with no plan.'
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