This war has been a long time coming. Now it’s here
Operation Rising Lion definitively brings to a close a 40-year period in which Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran were engaged in war by proxy and by means other than direct, conventional confrontation.
The goal of the destruction of Israel was written on banners during the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and this objective has formed a key element in the effort at regional domination in which the regime in Tehran has been engaged throughout its existence.
This goal was pursued in subsequent decades via three main processes: Tehran created or sponsored existing political-military organisations on Israel’s borders to wage a long war of attrition against the Jewish state. The Lebanese Hezbollah group, which fought a successful insurgency against Israel in south Lebanon in the 1985-2000 period, was the prototype of these groups, and the most successful of them. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, among the Palestinians, are also component parts of this project.
Alongside this effort, Iran has for at least a quarter century been engaged in a clandestine program intended to bring it a nuclear weapons capacity. This project has been very close to fruition for some time, with Tehran possessing sufficient enriched uranium to produce eight to 10 nuclear bombs within weeks, should it choose to do so.
Iran’s extensive ballistic missile and now drone program formed the third component in its effort to project power across the region. Tehran has the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the Middle East. Its deployed missile array includes the Shihab 3 system, with a range of up to 2000km, and a number of shorter range systems, including the medium range Fattah-1 system. The long proxy and clandestine war between Israel and Iran became more intense after October 7, 2023. Tehran attempted a partial mobilisation of its proxy forces in the period following Hamas’s surprise assault on Israel.
First Lebanese Hezbollah, then the Yemeni Houthis and the Iraqi Shia militias entered the arena, carrying out attacks on Israel and its allies. Finally, in April 2024, for the first time Iran itself carried out a direct attack on Israel using ballistic missiles and drones. Israel carried out a limited retaliation. A second attack came in October 2024, even as Israel’s war against Hamas and Hizballah raged. This time Israel’s response was much larger, crippling Iranian air defences. Iran promised retaliation.
But the momentum in this conflict has been with Israel for the last nine months. Hamas in Gaza has been decimated. Isolated groups of fighters continue to operate. But no ability for large-scale strikes on Israel remains. Hezbollah, too, suffered severe blows at Israel’s hands, and is a shadow of its former self. The Iraqi Shia militias chose to abandon the field. The Assad regime, enfeebled and isolated by the weakening of its allies, was devoured by its Sunni Islamist opponents in December 2024. The result: a window of opportunity emerged in which the Iranian regime looked particularly vulnerable, even as its maximalist goals and its closeness to nuclear capacity remained.
It therefore appears that with Iran and its allies temporarily weakened, Jerusalem has chosen to press forward its advantage, looking to severely and permanently weaken the regime in Tehran or, preferably, to bring about its fall. The result is that after four decades of feint and parry, stratagem and counter stratagem, the Jewish State of Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran now stand four square against one another in open war. It’s been a long time coming. Now it’s here.
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Whatever the pieties of liberal internationalism may hold, nuclear weapons do make a state much safer.
Islamic Republic’s ayatollahs are weaker than ever
The regime’s imperial projects have done nothing for Iran’s people. They have brought only devastation. Untold billions were spent over decades to empower terrorist proxies.