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DAILY ALERT
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Special Edition Monday, June 16, 2025 | ||
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In-Depth Issues:
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
Israeli strikes targeting Iranian energy production facilities, manufacturing plants and aviation signaled a wider phase of the conflict Sunday, as Israeli planes pursued new targets deeper in Iran's cities. Tehran residents reported the heaviest wave of attacks yet, with explosions ringing out every half hour. Elsewhere Sunday, strikes hit airports, electronics manufacturing plants, police stations, and an airplane maintenance site. (Washington Post) Within 48 hours of the start of the war with Iran, Israel said it gained air superiority over the western part of the country, including Tehran. Israeli planes began dropping bombs from within Iranian skies instead of relying on expensive long-range missiles fired from a distance. War planners have known for decades that control over air is everything, if you can get it. U.S. Air Force Lt.-Gen. (ret.) David Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said, "In the case of the Russia-Ukraine war, you see what happens when neither side can achieve air superiority: stalemate and devolution to attrition-based warfare. In the case of the Israel-Iran war, it allows them unhindered freedom to attack where they possess air superiority over segments of Iran." The initial Israeli airstrikes were using the fifth-generation stealth F-35 aircraft, enhanced with Israeli modifications. Now that most of Iranian air defenses have been suppressed, older warplanes such as the F-15 and F-16 are joining the fight. Israel has also started dropping short-range JDAM and Spice guided bombs, which are cheaper and much more abundant than missiles, to devastating effect. (Wall Street Journal) Despite outward appearances of solid authoritarianism, the regime in Tehran faces widening discontent. There is widespread outrage at the corruption and self-enrichment of senior clerics and flag officers (and their families) in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and regular military. Untold billions of dollars were spent over decades to empower terrorist proxies (Hamas, Hizbullah and the Houthis), to prop up Bashar al-Assad's regime, and to undertake massive nuclear and missile projects that now lie in ashes. Significantly, since Israeli attacks began, there has been no spontaneous rush of Iranian nationalism, as pro-regime Western apologists long prophesied. The people of Iran know what is actually at stake. The writer served as White House national security adviser and U.S. ambassador to the UN. (Wall Street Journal) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Israel Air Force jets struck a building in Tehran on Sunday, killing the head of the Revolutionary Guards' intelligence organization and his deputy, as well as the head of the Quds Force's intelligence branch and his deputy. These senior officials played a central role in planning terrorist actions against Israel and the West. (Jerusalem Post) Hours after the IDF issued an unprecedented evacuation warning for Iranian civilians living near weapons factories in Tehran, widespread Israeli Air Force strikes were reported in the Iranian capital on Sunday afternoon. Additionally, some 80 targets in Tehran were hit overnight, according to the IDF. The targets included fuel depots, the Iranian Defense Ministry headquarters, the "headquarters of the SPND nuclear project," and other targets related to Iran's nuclear program. At the same time, car bomb blasts were reported. Reports said more nuclear scientists had been killed. Two sources in the Gulf told Reuters that at least 14 Iranian nuclear scientists had been killed in Israeli attacks since Friday. (Times of Israel) At least five people were killed early Monday in Iranian missile strikes on Israel, including three in Petach Tikva and one in Bnai Brak. At least two residential high-rise buildings sustain direct hits. Over 100 people were injured. A missile also fell in Haifa in the north. (Ynet News) Israeli intelligence assessments indicate that strikes against several hundred ballistic missiles and dozens of launchers have reduced Tehran's arsenal from 3,000 missiles to 2,000. Intelligence sources say these strikes significantly impair Iran's ability to conduct missile attacks at previously planned intensity and scope. Moreover, sources indicate that eliminating Iranian military leadership has created substantial difficulties for field commanders seeking operational guidance and instructions. (Israel Hayom) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
War with Iran With an audacious attack, which it called Operation Rising Lion, Israel inflicted enormous damage on Iranian pride, as well as the country's military and nuclear capability. Helped by a network of Mossad agents operating within Iran, Israel struck sites associated with the country's nuclear program, as well as airfields and missile bases. It claimed to have already achieved air superiority west of Tehran. Perhaps most extraordinary was the success of Israel's attacks in taking out key Iranian personnel. Iran represents an existential threat to the state of Israel, and indeed has been such since the Islamic revolution of 1979. Iran attacks Israel both directly and through its many proxies. Were Tehran to develop nuclear weapons, the scale of that threat would only grow. Iran is also a threat to the UK. Last month three alleged spies appeared in court, charged with targeting journalists working for the independent Iran International TV channel in London. The British security services have consistently warned that Iran is fomenting plots here. Israel has done the world a service by counteracting Iran's efforts to turn itself into a nuclear power. It has done so at considerable risk to itself and its citizens. We should stand shoulder to shoulder with it on Iran. (Sunday Times-UK) Critics of Israel's attack on Iranian nuclear and military targets might at least ask themselves whether Israel had any realistic alternative against an adversary that has repeatedly vowed to wipe it off the map. Iran has been deceiving the world for years while gathering the means to build multiple nuclear weapons. Hizbullah has been quiet since Israel's attack, a result of its swift decimation at Israeli hands last September. That, too, was denounced by Israel's critics as dangerously escalatory. But now it's paying dividends in the form of constricted Iranian retaliatory options and the end of the pro-Iranian regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. As for the prospect of Iran now racing toward a bomb, evidence suggests it was already doing so anyway. Israel's strike is a display of clarity and courage for which we may all one day be grateful. (New York Times) Rafael Mariano Grossi of Argentina has been director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since Dec. 2019. His reports made it increasingly clear that Iran's enormous expenditures on some of the largest nuclear installations in the world meant that it was after nuclear weapons as soon as possible. Grossi started warning everyone that Iran would soon become a nuclear power, one ruled by religious fanatics pursuing the Shi'a vendetta against the world's Sunnis for killing the last descendant of Muhammad at Karbala in 680 CE, and for whom the destruction of Israel is key to supremacy over the entire Middle East. The entire Israeli Defense Ministry leadership, alongside the Mossad, came to understand that their country would very soon be faced with a nuclear Iran that would come to dominate the entire Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. The writer is a contractual strategic consultant for the U.S. government. (UnHerd) The IDF has demonstrated outstanding performance in defending against simultaneous attacks by hundreds of ballistic missiles and UAV swarms. The destructive potential of Iranian ballistic missiles is immense. Most have warheads weighing 500 kg. or more. Since they travel along a trajectory above the atmosphere, due to their high velocity during descent they accumulate significant kinetic energy and upon impact generate blast waves and shockwaves that cause major damage in addition to the explosive payload. Israel's multilayered air defense systems are synchronized with a command and control system that determines the optimal interceptor and prioritizes targeting hostile threats with the highest potential to harm strategic assets or civilian population centers. The interception systems' success rate against hundreds of explosive-laden ballistic missiles stands at 95%. Moreover, Israel's air defense forces have demonstrated an ability to efficiently block the penetration of UAV swarms or individual drones. It is impossible to achieve a completely hermetic aerial defense against simultaneous barrages of UAVs and ballistic missiles. Indeed, the Iranian attacks have resulted in casualties and significant property damage. However, far greater destruction was prevented and many lives were saved thanks to the effectiveness of the defense systems and the public's adherence to Home Front Command guidelines. The writer is a senior researcher at INSS. (Institute for National Security Studies-Tel Aviv University) While the world debated the potentiality of an Iranian nuclear weapon, Israel acted on the certainty of it. Faced with this reality, Israel did not wait for disaster. It prevented one. And in doing so, it has not only defended its own people. It has bought time for the rest of us. Israel's intervention has saved the non-proliferation regime from collapse. Had Iran achieved nuclear breakout, a cascade of proliferation would have followed. Saudi Arabia has declared it would match Tehran "without delay." Egypt and Turkey would not be far behind. Israel's strike was not a regional destabilizer. It was a stabilizing act of necessity. Every IRGC scientist removed from the battlefield, every centrifuge dismantled, every underground tunnel collapsed, is a step back from the brink. The alternative was not peace. The alternative was the irreversible empowerment of a regime that has shown time and again that it cannot be trusted with even conventional weapons, let alone nuclear ones. The strike also sends a clear message to the West: there is still one nation willing to act when others equivocate. Israel did what needed to be done. In striking Iran's nuclear program, Israel has not launched a war. It has prevented one. The writer, executive director at the Forum for Foreign Relations, is an associate scholar at the Jerusalem Center. (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Just like that, the Iranian regime's two chief military autocrats are gone. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri - the military chief of staff - the man responsible for Iran's murderous, imperial foreign ventures, and Hossein Salami - leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards - the man charged with maintaining the diktats of the republic against its own freedom-dreaming citizens, are no more. Israel is now accused of "escalating" tensions. Why is it escalation when the Jewish state takes out a general of the Iranian regime but not when that general's allies kidnap a mother and her two babies for the "crime" of being Jews in the Holy Land? Show me one state on Earth that would tolerate the existence of a nearby regime that had sent its proxies to rape and murder your people and had sworn itself to your annihilation. War is awful, and sometimes necessary. We have a moral duty to answer the following question: are we on the side of a regime that sponsors the mass murder of Jews, the exportation of Islamist terror and the savage repression of women and homosexuals, or are we on the side of Israel? I know my answer. (Spiked-UK) IRGC Gen. Esmail Kowsari told Iran's Channel 3 on June 14, 2025: "I would like to extend my condolences or, rather, congratulate the dear [military leaders and nuclear scientists who were killed]...for their martyrdom. They were hoping for this for many years." (MEMRI-TV) A day after the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that the rogue state of Iran has enough enriched uranium to make nine nuclear bombs, Israel struck at the head of its military command and the heart of its weapons program. We should not forget that Tehran's mullahs loathe Western liberal values and scorn democracy, so if they managed to acquire nuclear weapons, the whole world would be at risk. Iran is an oppressive theocracy that hates the West, spies on Britain and has had a malign hand in every Middle Eastern conflict of the modern era. Israel's enemy is our enemy. Israel believes it has no option but to act pre-emptively. We should acknowledge and support it in that. This is a people who suffered the Holocaust. Why should they stand idly by while a new generation of antisemites plots their extermination? (Daily Mail-UK) The necessity of stopping Iran's march to a bomb is far more clear today than it was three years ago. During that time, Russia invaded Ukraine and Hamas massacred Israeli civilians. The first event taught that when a nuclear-armed nation engages in armed aggression, the rest of the world's options narrow considerably. Now, imagine Iran with even a modest nuclear arsenal. It could use its arsenal to be relentlessly aggressive. Its nuclear weapons would constrain Israel's ability to defend itself. At the same time, Israel is living with the reality since Oct. 7, 2023, that its enemies will directly target civilians, massacre them on video and celebrate their deaths. Is there a sovereign nation on the planet that would permit its chief adversary - the primary military backer of its terrorist enemies - to possess the ultimate weapon of mass destruction? (New York Times) Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) told Jewish Insider on Friday, "Iran tries to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran has created and spent billions of dollars to build those destructive proxies like Hamas or Hizbullah or the Houthis. Why can't we talk about that? Why can't we talk about the absolute imperative to keep Iran accountable for what they've done? That's exactly part of what Israel did last night." Fetterman called the opening salvos of the operation "absolutely spectacular," citing the "precision in targeting people. They eliminated the generals and those scientists in their beds at their building, and they didn't take out the whole building. It was just their specific apartments. I mean, that is truly remarkable....It's like Beepers 2.0....I am constantly blown away by the sophistication and their lethality." "I'm never going to negotiate with that regime. You can never trust them, and the only thing they're going to respond to, that they respect, are exactly the kind of things that [Israel] did last night....Any potential path for an enduring peace in the Middle East, these are the kind of steps that do that." (Jewish Insider) Muhmmad Sa'd Khairallah, an Egyptian writer and political analyst who resides in Sweden, wrote an article on the Saudi website Elaph titled "The Israeli Defense Forces - Mankind's Defense against the Forces of Darkness." "The precise strikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces [IDF] against Iranian military sites and facilities early Friday morning were the epitome of justice....With this legitimate act, Israel is not just defending itself but waging a campaign on behalf of the Free World against the Iran-led forces of darkness. Israel, in its humanity, repeatedly demonstrates that it does not target innocent Iranian civilians, but directs its strikes precisely at military commanders, nuclear facilities and military facilities, in order to save itself, the region and the world from an impending disaster." "Iran, on the other hand, deliberately targets civilians, and launches missiles at Israeli cities in order to cause casualties among innocent people. What a vast difference between values that protect human life and forces that can breathe only the scent of blood." "I end my article with a heartfelt expression of gratitude to the IDF, which has proven itself to be a moral army, deeply aware of the value of military honor, and has demonstrated that the ayatollahs' terror cannot go unpunished. Many thanks to Israel for defending itself [along with] the future of our children and grandchildren and the right of future generations to live in a humane Middle East where everyone lives in peace." (MEMRI) The U.S., Israel, and the entire world are safer if Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon. Israel's actions can help prevent that. Isolationists like to pretend that the American-Israeli friendship is a one-way street, through which Washington sends billions of dollars and receives nothing in return. Iran is the worst state sponsor of terror in the world. It poses a direct threat to Israel, but also to America and the rest of the West. If the Israeli strikes are successful, Israel will have done an incredible service to America. The benefit that America derives is in instances like these, in which we get to decapitate Iran's nuclear program without having to attack the nation ourselves directly. This is a worthwhile investment. America's partnership with Israel is not a charity case; it is an investment in a partnership that is paying dividends for our national security interests. (USA Today) Observations: What We Can Learn from Israel's Operation Against Iran - Maj. (ret.) John Spencer (X)
The writer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point. |
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