Iran has missiles, Israel has an air force and Trump… and then there’s Gaza (Yossi Alpher - June 23, 2025)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Q. How do you ‘distill’ the meaning of Israel’s ‘Rising Lion’ war with Iran at a time when it is still ongoing and metamorphosing almost by the hour?

A. First, we must recognize that Israel’s June 13 preemptive attack was a resounding military maneuver that will apparently have a profound effect on the Middle East and beyond. Whatever happens from here, this achievement cannot be erased. Israel’s demonstration of aerial and intelligence domination of Iran is unprecedented. So is Syrian and Iraqi passivity or neutrality when confronted with Israel’s massive overflights. Even the historic US B2 attack on Fordow could only take place after the Israel Air Force had cleared the skies over Iran.

A lot of the Israel Defense Force’s audacity in attacking Iran reflects and responds to Israel’s trauma from October 7, 2023. That is a topic for separate analysis. Here we attempt to ‘distill’ the meaning of the war by focusing on strategic underpinnings that continue to underlie and inform events. And by focusing on the dangers of overreach by Israel and/or the United States.

Q. Start with the strategic underpinnings . . . 

A. There are aspects of this war that fit classic definitions. 

This is a ‘war by choice’ for both Israel and the US. They are not responding to direct attack. They set the timing and took the initiative. Further, this is not a ground war: none of the belligerents has a common border with another, and none has landed troops on enemy territory. 

As this is an air war, it is hard to conceive of a direct military victory. By and large (and despite the boasts of air force commanders), wars are not ‘won’ from the air, but on the ground. On the other hand, Iran has been stripped of its air defenses and is today helpless against attack from the air.

While the US--unless attacked directly by Iran-- can cease its own war with Iran at any time, and may already have, Israel needs an exit strategy if it is going to wind down Iran’s missile and UAV attacks against its territory. While Prime Minister Netanyahu gets near-universal credit for daring and initiative in taking the war directly to Iran, he is also being criticized for starting a war with Iran, precisely without having an exit strategy.

Q. Isn’t Israel’s coordination with the US sufficient in this regard?

A. It is hard even to comment on this issue when we are dealing with President Trump, whose remarks on the war, as on all issues, are totally unpredictable and whose strategic insights are practically nonexistent. Yet in attacking Iran directly, Trump was prepared to take a major risk and go up against many of his advisers and much of his frequently declared MAGA and America First political philosophies. Can Israel under Netanyahu--himself a highly flawed leader--put its faith in this man and engineer an exit from Iran? 

On the other hand, I cannot recall an instance of US-Israel strategic and tactical coordination such as we have seen since June 13 and particularly on Saturday, June 21. Will that coordination prevail during the exit phase?

Meanwhile, Iranian missiles keep falling on Israel and doing genuine damage.

Q. Apropos those missile attacks, how is Israeli morale?

A. The best indicator is the fact that, despite everything, Israelis trapped abroad by the outbreak of war with Iran are going to extreme lengths, and expense, to find a way home and endure the war in bomb shelters.

Q. You give Netanyahu credit for daring and initiative in attacking Iran. But doesn’t the war serve his domestic and political agenda?

A. Definitely. Netanyahu’s trial is on hold. His coalition, under threat due to the Haredi conscription issue, is again stable. The political opposition--Lapid, Gantz--is rallying around the flag. 

But before we define the Iran war as a cynical maneuver, recall that Netanyahu is notoriously risk-shy. Like the IDF offensive in Gaza, which he hesitated to initiate after October 7, this war, too, however successful it looks in the short run, could degenerate into a violent stalemate and a humanitarian disaster.

Q. Let’s go back to basics. Was Israel justified in attacking Iran?

A. Look at Iranian intentions and capabilities. Iran has been threatening to destroy Israel for 40 years. For decades, the international community did nothing when one United Nations member repeatedly threatened to obliterate another. Iran clearly had belligerent intentions toward Israel. 

As for capabilities, in recent years Iran had a rapidly growing stockpile of fissile material, an expanding enrichment infrastructure, and a growing number of undeclared nuclear facilities. Leaving aside a variety of unverifiable ‘scare countdowns’ for Iran ‘getting the bomb,’ all these were indicators that Tehran was swiftly building an unstoppable weaponized nuclear capability. It was also rapidly expanding a missile arsenal easily capable of reaching Israel.

In Israeli (and American) eyes, Iran was an imminent threat. Lately, a conflict-shy American president, Trump, gave Iran 60 days to enter into constructive nuclear demilitarization negotiations. It did not. True, that same US president rashly threw away nuclear control arrangements negotiated by one of his predecessors. Still, here he was trying to renegotiate them, without Iranian cooperation. 

European mediation with Iran had just failed. International nuclear control institutions were condemning Iranian violations. Israel and the US had apparently reached a high level of operational coordination capability. Even allowing that additional diplomatic efforts with Iran may have been possible and advisable, all the stars were aligned from the Israeli and US standpoints.

Q. Yet everything could still go wrong. . . 

A. Absolutely. Iran could retaliate by attacking neighboring Arab oil producers and their production facilities. It could close the Hormuz Strait and ask its proxy, the Yemeni Houthis, to close Bab al-Mandeb, thus potentially throwing the global energy market into chaos. It could attack American forces in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE. It could unveil, whether bona fide or not, a ‘secret A-bomb plan’ to project the specter of nuclear escalation. It could unleash terror resources embedded worldwide. 

Iran could, in short, endeavor to drag the United States and/or Israel into its own version of a Vietnam- or Iraq-style war of attrition. Toward Israel specifically, Iran could keep firing missiles and UAVs until its reserves run out, then endeavor to build more.

Q. Israel has declared it wants to dismantle Iran’s military nuclear project. Here, it enjoys fairly broad support. But we also encounter Israeli threats, and some American threats, to kill Supreme Leader Khamenei. And we have seen Israel target Iranian nuclear scientists, generals, a broadcast station. Is this expanded target list-wise?

A. Some of the threats seem to be attempts to intimidate as a kind of reinforcement of nuclear demands. Some of the assassinations, e.g., of nuclear scientists, dovetail with attacks on nuclear installations as part and parcel of Israel’s broad strategic anti-nuclear objective. 

But some of the attacks, e.g., assassination of generals, make no sense--if only because Iran has no difficulty replacing the generals and their removal serves no obvious lasting anti-nuclear or anti-missile purpose. Indeed, these assassinations are reminiscent of IDF bragging about killing this or that Hamas battalion commander in Gaza, then killing his replacement, as if Hamas has no manpower reserves and this is an achievement worthy of trumpeting. 

Imagine an enemy obliterating the entire IDF general staff, some 20 generals, with one strike. There would be a new general staff within a day. Iran is almost certainly no different.

As for trying to assassinate Khamenei, and on a broader level trying to catalyze regime change, this is a mistake. Killing a legitimate sovereign leader of another country crosses a glaring red line in terms of international morality. Catalyzing regime change has rarely if ever succeeded for the US and never for Israel, e.g. in Lebanon in the 1980s and today in Gaza.

Q. Why is no one helping Iran?

A. Hezbollah, Iran’s southern Lebanon Shiite proxy, has been defeated by Israel and is licking its wounds. The Houthis have fired a missile or two, but nothing more. The rest of the Muslim world is Sunni, hence wary of Shiite Iran and its expansionist aims, or is mixed Sunni-Shiite (e.g., Pakistan, Afghanistan), hence anxious not to catalyze domestic tensions.

The most intriguing refusal to help Iran came Saturday from Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who noted laconically that “Israel is almost a Russian-speaking country today” (hence, by implication, presumably enjoys immunity). This did not stop Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi from traveling to Moscow this week to invoke the Iran-Russia “strategic partnership.” At the broadest regional and global level, disdain for Iran’s military needs at its time of (self-induced!) crisis may, over time, be understood as an indicator of the decline of Iran as a regional power--and/or the decline of the Islamic Republic regime.

Q. A word about the Gaza war?

A. Since the October 7 debacle, Israel has defeated Hezbollah and now inflicted a major defeat against Iran, patron and financial backer of all Israel’s Islamist enemies. Israel’s military achievements helped bring down an Iranian-proxy regime in Syria. But while the IDF has destroyed much of the Gaza Strip and decimated much of Hamas, Israel has not defeated Hamas and has not freed all the hostages it holds. Worse, it has allowed Jewish messianist thinking and beliefs to interfere with the war and its objectives. And it has inflicted extensive death and destruction on Gazans. 

Will its dramatic gains against Iran somehow impel Israel to keep trying militarily against Hamas despite repeated failure? Or will they give even the likes of Netanyahu the confidence and courage to end the Gaza War through diplomacy? Egypt, Qatar, and the Palestinian Authority, even Trump’s administration, are waiting to help.