The Three Dramatic Consequences of Israel's Attack on Iran
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
'Battles are the principal milestones in secular history,' Winston Churchill observed in his magisterial biography of the Duke of Marlborough in 1936. 'Modern opinion resents this uninspiring truth … But great battles, won or lost, change the entire course of events, create new standards of values, new moods, new atmospheres, in armies and in nations, to which all must conform.' So it was then, and so it is today.
Iran's war with Israel is rooted in the Islamic Republic's inveterate hostility to the Jewish state. It has consisted of multiple campaigns, including terror attacks against Jewish communities abroad (Argentina in 1994, for example) and missile salvos aimed at Israel (including from Lebanon and Iran itself last year). But three great events—the smashing of Hezbollah, the Syrian revolution that overthrew the Iranian-aligned regime, and now a climactic battle waged by long-range strikes and Mossad hit teams in Tehran—are changing the Middle East. We are living through the kind of moment that Churchill described.
Israel's current campaign is built around two realities often missed by so-called realists: first, that the Iranian government is determined to acquire nuclear weapons and cannot be deterred, bought off, or persuaded to do otherwise, and second, that Israel reasonably believes itself to be facing an existential threat.
When I served as counselor of the State Department during the second Bush administration, I had, among other keepsakes on my desk, an Iranian banknote picked up in Dubai. When I held it up to the light, I could see the sign of an atom superimposed over a map of Iran, with its nucleus roughly over Natanz, site of the major Iranian centrifuge hall. The banknote was a symbol of the determination that successive American governments chose to ignore, preferring to negotiate with a regime whose bad faith and malevolence were plain for those willing to see. The Iranian regime was happy to delay and temporize, but its destination was clearly visible in the expanding overt and covert programs to enrich uranium, design warheads, and develop delivery systems.
Equally visible was Tehran's desire to destroy Israel. It takes a particular kind of idiocy or bad faith to disregard the speeches, propaganda, and shouts of 'death to Israel.' The Israeli lesson learned from the previous century—and, indeed, the Jewish one learned over a much longer span of time—is that if someone says they want to exterminate you, they mean it. And so Israel has acted in ways that have had three dramatic consequences.
The first is the emergence of a distinct mode of warfare, already apparent in some of Ukraine's operations in Russia, that combines special operations with precision long-range strikes. Special operations are nothing new—the British secret services of the time played a role in a nearly successful bomb plot against Napoleon. But the innovation is combining large-scale and systematic use of assassinations and sabotage with nearly simultaneously precision strikes. Similar techniques helped decapitate Hezbollah's leadership and devastate its middle ranks while smashing its arsenals, but Israel's campaign against Iran is on an altogether different scale.
This mode of warfare will not work everywhere, but in this case Israeli special operations helped neuter Iran's defenses and kill many of its senior leaders and nuclear scientists. The sobering lesson for the United States is that others can, at some point, do this to us more easily than we might be able to use these methods against a country like China. It is, in any event, part of the new face of war.
The second is the way that the wars that began with Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, have reshaped the Middle East. Iran's position had been drastically weakened through the loss of its proxy forces in Lebanon and Syria, and now this current round of attacks has the potential to jeopardize the Iranian regime itself.
The Iranian regime has delivered only misery and repression to its people. In return it was once offered religious and revolutionary zeal, which has been largely replaced by cynicism and hatred of the leadership. It had, and has now lost, imperial reach throughout the Middle East and beyond. The very last thing it offered was the prestige of its pursuit of nuclear weapons—weapons that Westerners may view with horror, but that others in the world (think India and Pakistan, for example) value quite differently. After losing all of these achievements to its own brutality and incompetence, as well as Israeli hit squads and fighter-bombers, all that the regime has left are its mechanisms of repression. Ultimately, those will not suffice to sustain it.
Israel (and for that matter the United States) does not overtly aim at overthrowing the regime; neither has the intention of invading the country in the manner of Iraq in 2003. But a form of regime change may come—possibly through public upheaval, or just as likely through the rise of some strongman, probably from the military or security services, who will take Iran in a different direction. Perhaps such a strongman will lead Iran to some dark new place. But he could also proceed along the lines of Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, denouncing and disposing of some of the current elite on charges of treachery, incompetence, and corruption to consolidate his power, and then acting as a dictatorial modernizer. That would be the first step on a much better path for Iran and the rest of the world.
The Western world has reason, as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently said, to be grateful to Israel for doing the 'dirty work' of smashing Iran's nuclear program, because a nuclear-armed Iran would be a menace not just to Israel but to the wider Middle East and to the West. Which brings us to the third great shift in moods and atmospheres, the characteristically over-the-top, bellicose rhetoric of Donald Trump.
At first the American government hastened to distance itself from the Israeli attacks, in a swift and now rather embarrassing statement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But over time the president, communicating through explosive statements on Truth Social, began using the first-person plural in talking about the Israeli attacks, celebrating the American military hardware used in the attack, threatening worse to come, musing about killing the supreme leader of Iran, and clearly contemplating finishing the job of destroying the Iranian nuclear complex by sending B-2 bombers to deliver 15-ton GBU-57 penetrating bombs on the deeply subterranean Fordow facility.
This has aroused consternation among some of his core supporters, such as Tucker Carlson (dismissed by the president as 'kooky') and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and required the dispatch of Vice President J. D. Vance to quiet the protests of the isolationist, and in some cases borderline anti-Semitic, wing of the MAGA movement.
Trump's turnaround is less surprising when one considers his political gifts, among them a feral instinct for weakness. He is a politician who is willing to kick opponents when they are down, and enjoys doing just that. He senses, far better than most of his advisers and experts, just how weak Iran is. No doubt as well, he delights in the opportunity to punish the regime that plotted to assassinate him in 2024.
And he has aspirations to be not a warlord, much though he delights in military bluster and show, but a kind of peacemaker. He understands that a different kind of Iran—if not a democratic one, then a tamed dictatorship—would be open for deals, and he would gladly make them. He has engaged more with the Persian Gulf in recent years than with any other part of the world, and sees opportunities there. He believes that the price would be low, and although the Israelis have done the heavy lifting, he will get the credit from them and others for the finishing touches.
Trump has undoubtedly already authorized various forms of support to Israel's campaign. He may or may not order the dropping of GBU-57s on Fordow. But he has, in any case, supported actions that are doing far more than those of any of his predecessors to eliminate a threat that has already killed American soldiers and civilians as well as many others, and that would be infinitely worse if left unchecked. Much as it may pain his critics to admit it, in this matter he is acting, if not conventionally, then like a statesman of a distinctively Trumpian stamp.
Article originally published at The Atlantic
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
35 minutes ago
- New York Post
JD Vance boasts Trump will call in National Guard to quell riots ‘again if he has to' following appeals court victory
President Trump will not hesitate to send in the National Guard 'again' after an appeals court ruled the commander in chief can maintain control of thousands of troops he deployed to the City of Angeles in response to anti-ICE riots, Vice President JD Vance declared Friday. 'If you enforce your own laws and if you protect federal law enforcement, we're not going to send in the National Guard — because it's unnecessary,' Vance said during remarks outside a federal building in Los Angeles. 'But if you let violent rioters burn great American cities to the ground, then of course we're going to send federal law enforcement in to protect people.' 3 Vice President JD Vance visited Los Angeles on Friday, a city that has become the epicenter of anti-ICE riots in response to President Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration. The Sun 'The president's going to do it again if he has to, but hopefully it won't be necessary,' the vice president warned. Vance noted that the 'rioting has gotten a lot better' since Trump dispatched active-duty service members to LA, but he warned that local officials are 'worried that it's going to flare back up.' Los Angeles has become the epicenter of anti-ICE riots in response to Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration. Trump deployed troops to the City of Angeles to tamp down clashes between rioters and federal authorities seeking out criminal illegal migrants. The vice president toured a multi-agency federal joint operations center and an FBI mobile command center currently being used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials during his trip to Los Angeles. Vance was briefed by leaders of the 14 different agencies — including ICE, Department of Defense, Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Homeland Security, Los Angeles Police Department and California Highway Patrol — using the operations center to coordinate immigration enforcement actions in LA. 3 Vance told reporters outside a Los Angeles federal building that, 'If you enforce your own laws and if you protect federal law enforcement, we're not going to send in the National Guard — because it's unnecessary.' The veep also met with some of the 200 active-duty Marines deployed to the city and tasked with protecting federal property and federal personnel. They will be joined by an additional 500 Marines and 2,000 more Guardsmen, on top of the 2,000 National Guard troops already active in the city. US District Court Judge Charles Breyer had previously ruled that Trump likely exceeded his constitutional authority by dispatching the soldiers despite opposition from California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — marking the first deployment of a state National Guard by the president without the governor's permission since 1965. The San Francisco-based Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals, however, suggested in its ruling that Trump lawfully exercised his statutory authority in taking federal control of the guard, as the violence and chaos in Los Angeles warranted the administration's decision to do so. 3 Vance also said the rioting has calmed down a bit since President Trump sent the National Guard into the area. The Sun Trump called the decision a 'BIG WIN' in a post on Truth Social. The president has previously suggested that Los Angeles would be 'burning to the ground' if he hadn't sent in the Marines and National Guard to quell the anti-ICE riots. ICE has continued carrying out enforcement operations in LA despite the protests. During his brief remarks, Vance said that he wished Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) — who was thrown out of a Department of Homeland Security press conference last week and handcuffed after interrupting Secretary Kristi Noem — had been present, but he mixed up the senator's name. 'I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question, but unfortunately, I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn't the theater — and that's all it is.'
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
A potential strike on Iran tests Trump's propensity to play to both sides
Since his first campaign for president 10 years ago, Trump has excelled at appearing to favor both sides of the same issue, allowing supporters to hear what they want to hear, whether he's talking about tariffs, TikTok, abortion, tax cuts, or more. But the prospect that the United States might join Israel in bombing Iran is testing his ability to embrace dueling positions with little to no political cost. Some of Trump's most ardent supporters — those who defended him during multiple investigations and ultimately returned him to the White House — are ripping one another to shreds over the idea and at times lashing out at Trump as well. Advertisement The war in Iran is exactly the kind of Middle East entanglement that Trump's anti-interventionist base believed he was bitterly opposed to, because he repeatedly said he was. But he is also the same president who, in his first term, authorized missile strikes in Syria, after its leadership used chemical weapons on citizens, and the assassination of a top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani — two actions he took pride in. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up To Trump, the contradictions are not actually contradictions. 'I think I'm the one that decides that,' he told The Atlantic recently in response to criticism from one of his most vocal anti-interventionist supporters, Tucker Carlson, who said the president's support for Israel's fight in Iran ran against his 'America First' message. Trump was propelled to victory in the Republican primary in 2016 as an outsider, in part because he forcefully condemned the invasion of Iraq, authorized by the last Republican president more than a decade before, and the seemingly endless war that followed. Yet he said the United States should have taken the country's oil, and ran radio ads saying he would 'bomb the hell' out of the Islamic State group. Advertisement He has said he wants to renew the tax cuts he put into effect in his first term, which saved some of the wealthiest earners millions, while also suggesting that congressional Republicans should implement a new tax on the wealthiest. He has said he supports businesses and also wants to deport the immigrant workforce that fuels parts of the economy. He wants to engage in mass deportation and also wants to sell visas for $5 million. He has celebrated the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as a point of pride while also condemning Republican governors who signed bills banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. He has both celebrated and criticized his own criminal justice reform bill of 2018. Despite the contradictions, Republicans for years have been united in support of Trump and what he says he wants, giving him a benefit of the doubt that few, if any, career politicians have ever received. Even when most elected Republicans held Trump at a distance after the deadly attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump still had a tight grip on Republican primary voters. Trump, a celebrity known to the electorate for decades, has obscured long-standing and unresolved foreign policy divisions within the party dating back to the aftermath of President George W. Bush's push to invade Iraq. Advertisement But as Trump decides whether to plunge the United States into the heart of the Israel-Iran conflict, his core supporters are splintering. Trump's announcement Thursday that he could take up to two weeks to decide did not sit well with some of his most hawkish supporters. On social media, Fox News host Mark Levin began a lengthy post by suggesting that the president was being pulled back from what he actually wants to do. 'LET TRUMP BE TRUMP!' Levin wrote. 'We got our answer. Iran says no unconditional surrender. Again. And again. And again. They cheat and lie and kill. They're TERRORISTS!' His anti-interventionist supporters, meanwhile, have been equally alarmed by what he might decide to do. 'Anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/MAGA,' Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, posted on social media over the weekend. Trump's advisers say that on the Israel-Iran conflict in particular, the president is dealing with a fast-moving, complicated situation that does not lend itself to simple, black-and-white solutions, despite the fact that he has consistently campaigned that way. 'President Trump considers the nuances of every issue but ultimately takes decisive action to directly benefit American families,' said Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson. 'The American people trust this president to make the right decisions,' she said, adding that he 'started the Make America Great Again movement because he represents a new leadership that puts Americans first.' But in 2025, Trump is not the only one who can command media attention. Carlson is no longer on Fox News, but he has a show that streams on the social platform X and is a leading voice among foreign policy 'restrainers' who have argued that Trump would be acting against his own movement should he strike Iran. Advertisement Steve Bannon, an adviser who was exiled from the White House in the first year of Trump's first term, has become one of the dominant voices among the MAGA faithful with his 'War Room' podcast, delivering the same message as Carlson. Yet Trump has found that many of his allies will ultimately come back to him, despite unhappiness with some of his decisions.
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
Trump's heavy Iran choice: Letters to the Editor — June 21, 2025
The Issue: President Trump deliberation on whether to take military action against Iran's last nuke site. President Trump has raised concerns that a post-regime Iran might resemble Libya after Moammar Khadafy — fractured, chaotic and unstable ('Don fears Daffy decision,' June 20). But the comparison between Iran and Libya is deeply flawed. Advertisement Libya's Khadafy, though brutal, never possessed the strategic capabilities Iran now holds. Iran is already a regional power, capable of threatening Israel — and far beyond — through its ballistic-missile arsenal and emerging nuclear capabilities. Moreover, post-Khadafy Libya lacked a unifying opposition or a credible heir, which fueled its descent into civil war. Advertisement Iran is different. Exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi has emerged as a potential transitional figure, and reports suggest some elements within Iran's military are in quiet contact with his camp. Kim Ezra Shienbaum New Milford, Pa. Advertisement Iran has trained, armed, financed, encouraged and applauded terrorists who have killed American citizens. For almost half a century, Iran's leaders have preached 'Death to America.' There will never be a better opportunity to remove these leaders than now. This will go a long way to promoting peace in the Middle East. Advertisement The people in Iran, especially the women, will thank us. Joe Zeloof Hamilton, NJ Launching attacks on Iran, a nation of more than 90 million, risks an uncontrollable regional war with catastrophic consequences. It is not only immoral — it is insanity. Such escalation would bring mass suffering and global economic instability and further fuel anti-American sentiment. This is not America's war. It must not become one. Advertisement Congress must act now to prevent an unauthorized war and assert its constitutional war powers. We cannot bomb our way out of failed policies. More war will not bring peace or security — it will only deepen chaos. Say no to war with Iran. Advertisement Jagjit Singh Los Altos, Calif. Iran is not Libya. There is a large, oppressed population that is pro-Israel, pro-democracy and pro-United States. Advertisement We should not allow irrational fears of Iran turning into another Libya stop us from standing up for the oppressed Iranians. That would be like the allies in World War II not overthrowing the Nazis because of fear that Germany would descend into chaos. Iran was once a friendly country with a friendly regime that was overthrown by radical Muslims, who might have been stopped if it hadn't been for Carter administration pressure on the shah. We share in the responsibility that led to the regime change from a shah who loved his people and American values, to a regime that oppresses Iranians and hates the United States. Advertisement Gamaliel Isaac Manhattan This nation needs to pull in its swords overseas and attend to the war going on within our own country. It seems as if our government cannot get enough of spending our time and money to meddle in other nations' domestic affairs. Having been a part of these intrusions at one time, I can say most of our various expenditures have been most wasteful and negative. There is absolutely nothing heroic about 'loving war as long as we take few casualties.' This country of ours in now at war with itself and the opposing factions are becoming more polarized. We have enough on our hands right here. Michael G. Merhige Miami, Fla. After decades of failed global negotiations and agreements toward delaying and denying Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons, Israel has systematically and spectacularly attacked Iran's nuclear sites. However, destruction of the deeply buried Fordow uranium-enrichment site remains a serious challenge, likely resolvable only by American bunker buster bombs. Will America rise to this challenge? History surely will not be kind should this rarest of moments to finally eliminate this long overhanging threat not be firmly seized. Richard D. Wilkins Syracuse Want to weigh in on today's stories? Send your thoughts (along with your full name and city of residence) to letters@ Letters are subject to editing for clarity, length, accuracy, and style.
