Israel's war with Iran may last weeks, not days
When Israel and Iran clashed last year, they fought in short and contained bursts that usually ended within hours, and both sides looked for off-ramps that allowed tensions to ebb.
Since Israel started a new round of fighting on Friday, the two countries have said they will continue for as long as necessary, broadening the scope of their attacks and leading to much higher casualty counts in both countries. This time, the conflict appears set to last for at least a week, with both Israel and Iran ignoring routes toward de-confliction.
FORCED TALKS
Israel seems motivated to continue until the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment programme, either by force or renewed negotiations. Yet Iran has shown no sign of voluntarily ending enrichment, a process crucial to building a nuclear bomb, and Israel has no known ability to destroy a pivotal enrichment site that is buried deep underground.
'We're weeks rather than days away from this ending,' said Daniel B. Shapiro, who oversaw Middle Eastern affairs at the Pentagon until January.
'Israel will keep going until, one way or another, Iran no longer retains an enrichment capability,' added Shapiro, now a fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research group. 'It's now clear that if Israel leaves this unaddressed, its campaign will have failed.' Want to stay updated on what's happening in Iran and Israel? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we'll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
While Israel has easily struck Iran's main enrichment site at Natanz, central Iran, it lacks the American-made 'bunker-buster' bombs needed to destroy a smaller subterranean site dug deep into a mountain near Fordo, northern Iran. Israeli officials hope that their strikes on other targets — including Iran's top military commanders, nuclear scientists and its energy industry — will inflict enough pain to encourage Iran to willingly end operations at Fordo.
For now, Iran seems far from such a capitulation, even if Israel has shown increasing dominance in Iranian airspace, according to Sanam Vakil, who leads analysis of the Middle East at Chatham House, a London-based research group. Though Israel hopes to prompt its collapse, the Iranian government remains in full control of Iran and still has substantial stocks of ballistic missiles, even if Israel has limited its ability to fire some of them.
'I don't see any surrender coming from Tehran right now — there are no white flags being waved,' said Dr Vakil. 'It's very hard to see Iran walking back its enrichment rights while Iran's programme still looks operational and Iran is intact as a state,' she added. 'Their goal is to survive, to inflict damage and show their resilience.'
TRUMP's STAND
Much depends on how President Trump reacts. Unlike Israel, the US has the munitions and the aircraft to destroy Fordo. Analysts like Shapiro say that Trump could consider such an approach if Iran chooses to accelerate its efforts to build a nuclear bomb instead of reaching a compromise.
'That will create a critical decision point for Trump, about whether the United States should intervene,' Shapiro said.
It may also now be easier for Trump to intervene without serious security consequences, given that Israel's attacks have already degraded Iran's defensive abilities.
Others say that Trump is likelier to avoid direct confrontation with Iran unless the Iranian military shifts its attacks from Israel to US interests and personnel in the Middle East, narrowing Trump's room for manoeuvre. Since Friday, Iran has avoided providing such a pretext for US involvement.
The president's statements since Friday indicate that his current preference is to use Israel's military gains as leverage for renewed talks with Tehran.
Trump has overseen negotiations with Iran, hoping that Tehran would agree to end its enrichment programme without Israel's military intervention.
Those talks stumbled after Iran refused to back down. In comments over the weekend, Trump suggested that Iran, chastened by Israel's attacks, might finally make compromises that it had not previously considered. As a result, some analysts say that Trump could press Israel to end its attacks — when and if he judges that Iran has become more malleable.
'This will end when Trump decides to end it, which will probably happen when he thinks Iran is ready to compromise,' said Yoel Guzansky, an expert on Iran at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
IRAN U_TURN?
Such a U-turn has historical precedent, even if it feels unlikely for now, experts said. The Iranian leadership made a similarly unexpected compromise at the end of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, according to Meir Javedanfar, who teaches Iranian studies at Reichman University in Israel. After rejecting numerous offers to end the war, Ayatollah Khomeini eventually agreed to a deal after the costs of the war became too great, Dr Javedanfar said.
'Khomeini made a 180-degree change,' he said. 'This is again what Israel is hoping for.' But history also suggests this may take time. The deal that ended the Iran-Iraq war took eight years to reach.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Observer
3 hours ago
- Observer
War escalates as Iran, Israel launch bitter strikes
TEL AVIV/DUBAI: Israel bombed nuclear targets in Iran on Thursday and Iranian missiles hit an Israeli hospital overnight, as the week-old air war escalated with no sign yet of an off-ramp. Following the strike which damaged the Soroka hospital in Israel's southern city of Beersheba, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tehran would pay the "full price". His Defence Minister Israel Katz said the military had been instructed to intensify strikes on strategic-related targets in Tehran in order to eliminate the threat to Israel and destabilise the Iranian regime. Netanyahu has said that Israel's military attacks could result in the toppling of Iran's leaders, and Israel would do whatever is necessary to remove the "existential threat" posed by Tehran. US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has kept the world guessing about whether Israel's superpower ally would join it in airstrikes. Israel said on Thursday it had struck Iran's Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites. A military spokesperson initially said it had also hit Bushehr, site of Iran's only functioning nuclear power plant, but a spokesperson later said this was a mistake to have said this. Earlier, Israel said it had hit another nuclear site near Arak overnight, where Iran was building a heavy-water reactor. Israeli emergency services work at the site of an Iranian missile attack, near Tel Aviv. — AFP Trump has veered from proposing a swift diplomatic end to the war to suggesting the United States might join it. On Wednesday he said nobody knows what he will do. A day earlier he mused on social media about killing Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, then demanded Iran's unconditional surrender. A week of Israeli air and missile strikes against its major rival has wiped out the top echelon of Iran's military command, damaged its nuclear capabilities and killed hundreds of people, while Iranian retaliatory strikes have killed at least two dozen civilians in Israel. Earlier, the Israeli military said it targeted the Khondab nuclear site near Iran's central city Arak overnight, including a partially-built heavy-water research reactor. Heavy-water reactors produce plutonium, which, like enriched uranium, can be used to make the core of an atom bomb. The UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, said it had information that the heavy-water research reactor had been hit, but did not contain radioactive material. It had no information that a separate plant there which makes heavy water had been hit. Arash, 33, a government employee in Tehran, said a building next to his home in Tehran's Shahrak-e Gharb neighbourhood had been destroyed in the strikes. "I saw at least three dead children and two women in that building. Is this how Netanyahu plans to 'liberate' Iranians? Stay away from our country," he told Reuters by telephone. Israel has issued evacuation orders for whole sections of Tehran, a city of 10 million. Thousands of residents have fled, jamming the highways out. Samira, 11, had moved in with her grandparents in the northwestern city of Urmia, her family having fled Tehran when a shopping centre near their house was struck. She said she hasn't been able to sleep at night. "I'm afraid Israel will hit our home and my mom will die. I'm too scared. I just want to go home,' she said by phone. A nurse carries medical supplies past a building with smoke billowing out, in southern Israel. — AFP Inside Israel, Iran's retaliatory missile strikes over the past week have been the first time in decades of shadow war that a significant number of Iranian projectiles have pierced defences and killed Israelis in their homes. The director general of the Israeli hospital that was damaged in Beersheba, Shlomi Kodesh, told reporters at the site that a missile strike had destroyed several wards and injured 40 people, mostly staff and patients. "We're trying to minimize the number of people at Soroka. At the moment, we don't know if buildings may collapse or if wards might collapse," he said. Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they were targeting Israeli military and intelligence headquarters located near the hospital. An Israeli military official denied there were military targets nearby and said the attack on a hospital was deliberate. Missiles also hit a residential building in Ramat Gan, east of Tel Aviv. — Reuters
Observer
3 hours ago
- Observer
Iran rules out nuclear talks amidst Israeli strikes
Iran said on Friday it would not discuss the future of its nuclear programme while under attack by Israel, as Europe tried to coax Tehran back into negotiations and the United States considers whether to get involved in the conflict. A week into its campaign, Israel said it had struck dozens of military targets overnight, including missile production sites, a research body involved in nuclear weapons development in Tehran and military facilities in western and central Iran. Emergency personnel work at an impact site following Iran's missile strike on Israel, amidst the Iran-Israel conflict, in Haifa, Israel. — Reuters Iran fired missiles at the southern Israeli city of Beersheba early on Friday and Israeli media said initial reports pointed to missile impacts in Tel Aviv, the Negev and Haifa after further attacks hours later. About 20 missiles were fired in the latest strikes, an Israeli military official said and at least two people were hurt, according to the Israeli ambulance service. Fars news agency quoted an Iranian military spokesman as saying the latest missile and drone attacks used long-range and ultra-heavy missiles that targeted military sites, defence industries and command and control centres. In a sign of increasing concern about any strikes on energy facilities in Iran or elsewhere in the Gulf that could affect supplies, Qatar held crisis talks this week with energy majors, an industry source and a diplomat in the region said. Doha was asking companies to raise governments' awareness of the risks to global gas supply in the US and Europe, they said. QatarEnergy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House said on Thursday President Donald Trump would decide on US involvement in the conflict in the next two weeks. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said there was no room for negotiations with the US "until Israeli aggression stops". But he later arrived in Geneva for talks with European foreign ministers at which Europe hopes to establish a path back to diplomacy over Iran's nuclear programme. Before the meeting with France, Britain, Germany and the European Union's foreign policy chief, two diplomats said Araghchi would be told the US is still open to direct talks. But expectations for a breakthrough are low, diplomats say. A police officer inspects fragments of missile parts on the ground at an impact site following Iran's missile strike on Israel, in Beersheba, Israel. — Reuters A senior Iranian official said Iran was ready to discuss limitations on uranium enrichment but that any proposal for zero enrichment — not being able to enrich uranium at all — would be rejected, "especially now under Israel's strikes". Israel began attacking Iran last Friday, saying its longtime enemy was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran, which says its nuclear programme is only for peaceful purposes, retaliated with missile and drone strikes on Israel. Israel is widely assumed to possess nuclear weapons. It neither confirms nor denies this. Israeli air attacks have killed 639 people in Iran, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a US-based human rights organisation that tracks Iran. The dead include the military's top echelon and nuclear scientists. In Israel, 24 civilians have been killed in Iranian missile attacks, according to authorities. Israel's strikes on Iran's nuclear installations so far pose only limited risks of contamination, experts say. But they warn that any attack on the nuclear power station at Bushehr in Iran could cause a nuclear disaster. Israel says it is determined to destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities but that it wants to avoid any nuclear disaster. Before Friday's meeting in Geneva, Arghachi accused Israel of war crimes in an address to the UN Human Rights Council and said Israel's attacks had undermined plans for talks with US officials on June 15 to craft a "very promising" agreement on Iran's nuclear programme. Worshippers attend Friday prayers outside Jerusalem's Old City, as access to the Al Aqsa mosque is blocked, in Jerusalem. — Reuters Israel did not immediately respond to his remarks. Geneva is where an initial accord was struck in 2013 to curb Iran's nuclear programme in return for sanctions being lifted. A comprehensive deal followed in 2015. Trump pulled the US out of the agreement in 2018. A new series of talks between Iran and the US collapsed when Israel started attacking Iran's nuclear facilities and ballistic capabilities on June 12. Trump has alternated between threatening Tehran and urging it to resume nuclear talks. His special envoy to the region, Steve Witkoff, has spoken to Araghchi several times since last week, sources say. Western and regional officials say Israel is trying to shatter the government of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Katz said he had instructed the military to intensify attacks on "symbols of the regime" in the Iranian capital Tehran, aiming to destabilise it. — Reuters
Observer
3 hours ago
- Observer
Iran says will return to talks if Israel halts attacks
DUBAI/CALGARY, CANADA: US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi have spoken by phone several times since Israel began its strikes on Iran last week, in a bid to find a diplomatic end to the crisis, three diplomats said. According to the diplomats, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, Araqchi said Tehran would not return to negotiations unless Israel stopped the attacks, which began on June 13. They said the talks included a brief discussion of a US proposal given to Iran at the end of May that aims to create a regional consortium that would enrich uranium outside of Iran, an offer Tehran has so far rejected. US and Iranian officials did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the matter. This week's phone discussions were the most substantive direct talks since the two began negotiations in April. On those occasions, in Oman and Italy, the two men exchanged brief words when they encountered each other after indirect talks were held. A regional diplomat close to Tehran said Araqchi had told Witkoff that Tehran "could show flexibility in the nuclear issue" if Washington pressured Israel to end the war. A European diplomat said: "Araqchi told Witkoff Iran was ready to come back to nuclear talks, but it could not if Israel continued its bombing." Other than brief encounters after five rounds of indirect talks since April to discuss Iran's decades-old nuclear dispute, Araqchi and Witkoff had not previously held direct contacts. A second regional diplomat said "the (first) call was initiated by Washington, which also proposed a new offer" to overcome the deadlock over clashing red lines. US President Donald Trump wants Tehran to end uranium enrichment on its soil, while Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said Tehran's right to enrichment is non-negotiable. Trump has been keeping his cards close to his chest over whether he will order US forces to join Israel's bombing campaign that it says aims to destroy Iran's nuclear programme and ballistic capabilities. But Trump offered a glimmer of hope that diplomacy could resume, saying Iranian officials wanted to come to Washington for a meeting. European officials have been coordinating with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was also at the G7 summit. Britain, France and Germany, known as the E3 and party to a 2015 nuclear deal between world powers and Iran, held a ministerial call with Araqchi on Sunday. The three countries and the European Union are set to meet him in Geneva on Friday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei and an EU official said. Earlier in the week, both Rubio and Araqchi told the Europeans in separate talks about a possible diplomatic initiative, three diplomats said. Given the Israeli strikes and Trump's rhetoric, diplomats said Iran was in no position to hold public talks with the US, but that a meeting with the Europeans as a link to try and advance diplomacy was deemed more realistic for Tehran.
