Israel Cannot Invade Iran, But It Can Attempt An ‘Air Occupation'

Forbes

01-07-2025

Israeli Air Force F-15 fighter jets en route to Iran during Operation Rising Lion. (Israel Defense ... More Forces handout photo published on June 25, 2025)
Israel has expressed its intent to lock in the strategic gains it made over Iran during the recent June 13-24 'Twelve Day War' with Tehran, including air superiority. Doing so could entail Israel imposing an 'air occupation' on its arch-enemy, something almost unimaginable just a few weeks ago.
In a recent post on X, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that he had ordered the Israeli military to 'prepare an enforcement plan against Iran that includes maintaining Israel's air superiority, preventing nuclear advancement and missile production, and responding to Iran for supporting terror activity against Israel.'
'We will act regularly to thwart such threats,' he said.
While Katz did not use the term 'air occupation,' maintaining air superiority and preventing Iran from doing those things might inevitably require one.
Possible precedents for an Iran air occupation include Israel's aerial dominance over the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and the past U.S.-led no-fly zones covering large swathes of the airspace of Saddam Hussein's Iraq between 1991 and 2003. Still, none of these precedents were nearly as logistically challenging as a sustained, long-term Israeli air occupation of Iran could become.
The absence of 'any ground element' was observed early in the Twelve-Day War. Iran's most powerful militia proxy, Hezbollah in Israel's northern neighbor Lebanon, sat out the whole war, having endured a fatal bludgeoning by Israel in the September-November 2024 conflict. Aside from covert operatives launching short-range drones from within Iran to strike strategic targets, Israel also relied overwhelmingly on its airpower to hit strategic and leadership targets during the campaign.
Israel had already caused considerable damage to Iran's strategic air defenses in a four-hour campaign of airstrikes on October 26, 2024, using air-launched standoff missiles. The Twelve-Day War saw Israeli fighters penetrate deep inside Iranian airspace with little to no resistance, including non-stealthy fourth-generation fighters like F-16s. Israel did not lose any crewed aircraft and only a small number of drones.
The Israeli military had long categorized Iran as a third-circle enemy or threat in reference to the fact that it is an adversary located three borders away. It established the Strategy and Third-Circle Directorate in 2020 and later shuttered it in March 2025 in a move Iran's state-run media prematurely boasted had exposed 'Israel's inability to confront Iran's military and intelligence prowess.'
In reality, Israel overpowered Iran's military and outwitted its intelligence with stunning efficiency, demonstrating years, if not decades, of careful preparation in under two weeks. The chief of Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate, Shlomi Binder, wasn't exaggerating early in the war when he said the military was 'succeeding in turning Iran from some distant place, 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) away, into a military we know how to deal with as if it were in our first circle.'
'You've turned the third circle into the first circle,' he added.
Such statements and Katz's post-war declaration of intent to 'prepare an enforcement plan' and 'act regularly' against perceived threats signal that Israel intends to treat Iran as a first circle threat like Hamas and Hezbollah from now on.
Israel has long dominated the airspace over its first circle threats. While it withdrew all its troops and 9,000 settlers from Gaza in 2005, its subsequent air and naval blockade against the coastal enclave led critics to charge that it still occupied Gaza by other means.
Israel pulled its troops from the security zone it had occupied in South Lebanon for 18 years in 2000 and briefly fought Hezbollah again in the summer of 2006 in a war that ended after a brief and inconclusive ground incursion.
Israeli aircraft violated Lebanon's airspace 22,111 times between 2007 and 2022 inclusive, according to research released in 2022 by the Lebanese organization AirPressure.info.
'The combined duration of these flights amounts to 3,098 days,' the website noted at the time. 'That is 8.5 years of jets and drones continually occupying the sky.'
While the sounds of fighter jets and drones in Lebanese skies weren't uncommon in those interwar years, Israel didn't strike Hezbollah targets in Lebanon as it did Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza throughout the same period. That changed with the onset of the post-October 7, 2023, wars. In September 2024, the same month as the pager attack and assassination of Hezbollah's leader, Israel launched the most extensive campaign of airstrikes in the air force's history hitherto, destroying much of Hezbollah's strategic surface-to-surface missile stockpiles.
Even though Israel reached a ceasefire with Hezbollah in November 2024, it continuously strikes the group across Lebanon to this day. For example, on June 27, the air force struck a suspected underground Hezbollah military site in southern Lebanon's Nabatieh using bunker buster bombs and hit an apartment building, in the latter incident killing a woman and injuring 11 people.
A ceasefire officially ended the Twelve-Day War on June 24, and no known Israeli strikes on Iran or airspace violations have taken place since then. Of course, that could rapidly change if the Israeli military implements Katz's plan soon.
Historically, the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War may also offer some general precedent. Known as the Six-Day War, it also ended with a tenuous ceasefire after Israel's stunning series of victories and territorial conquests against its Arab neighbors. Within less than a month, the War of Attrition with Egypt began and lasted until August 1970. It was anything but a swift and decisive war.
Today, Israel has entered a much more direct and consequential war with Iran than the covert War Between the Wars it fought against Tehran and its allies and proxies throughout the region for over a decade. After all, Katz's 'enforcement plan' entails ensuring Iran cannot recover the means to adequately defend its airspace on top of 'regularly' acting preemptively against suspected missile and nuclear threats.
During the recent conflict, the Israeli Air Force demonstrated an impressive capability to reach targets deep inside Iran while relying on its aged Boeing 707 tankers for refueling its fighter jets. That operation doubtlessly pushed the air force to its limits while breaking some world records in the process. Continuously conducting such long-range air operations against Iran regularly, albeit on a smaller scale, would doubtlessly prove immensely challenging logistically and risky, especially if Israel ends up playing years of whack-a-mole with Iran's, presumably underground, missile and nuclear programs.
After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the United States enforced two no-fly zones covering vast swathes of northern and southern Iraq, patrolling them until the 2003 ground invasion that deposed Saddam Hussein's brutal regime. Those no-fly zones were invariably dubbed an air occupation of Iraq by U.S. Air Force officials throughout the 1990s. The U.S. carried out an average of 34,000 sorties each year to enforce them for over a decade. Despite this, those no-fly zones didn't compel Baghdad to fully comply with inspections of its suspected weapons of mass destruction program, nor prevent remnants of Iraq's air force and air defense from, albeit unsuccessfully, attempting to intercept air patrols. Only the 2003 invasion conclusively revealed that Iraq had indeed destroyed its WMD program.
The U.S. and its allies were in a much better position to enforce those no-fly zones in the 1990s than Israel with Iran. In those days, the U.S. Air Force could use strategic airbases in neighboring Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. Navy could deploy aircraft carriers and destroyers armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles within easy striking distance of Iraq. Israel presently has none of these options with Iran, and its air force must fly significantly further and cover vaster and more varied terrain. And, it should really go without saying that it cannot conduct a 2003-style invasion of Iran to conclusively ensure Tehran isn't clandestinely building or hiding nuclear weapons.
Consequently, Israel may find itself facing many similar, if not significantly greater, challenges and problems the U.S. did with Iraq in the 1990s if it does ultimately attempt an air occupation of Iran.