Wasn’t that hard to guess:

The IDF confirms it has launched an aerial campaign against Iran’s nuclear program. Dozens of targets across Iran related to the nuclear program and other military facilities are being struck by the Israeli Air Force, it says.

 “A short while ago, following the directive of the political echelon, the IDF launched a preemptive, precise, combined offensive based on high-quality intelligence to strike Iran’s nuclear program, and in response to the Iranian regime’s ongoing aggression against Israel.”

Ever heard of the ‘Pizza Index’? When shits about to hit the fan, and a long night is in store…they order a boat load of pizza. Here’s a live look at the pizza places around the Pentagon…that red bar is right now…the blue is normal busyness. Israel + Iran = 🍕

A few days ago the US announced that it was pulling Iraq embassy staff and dependents as well as the voluntary departure of military dependents from locations across the Middle East due to “Heightened security risks”.

It’s almost 8:30 at night now in Washington D.C, the “Pizza” post was published a little under twelve hours ago, and so….

Multiple reports of this now coming out. There are two questions here.

First is whether Israel has decided to finally take out Iran’s nuclear program or whether this is something else. Given that their last big strike took out Iran’s air defence systems I can’t imagine what else this could be. Late last year they also took out what was left of the Syrian military following Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsing. The IDF destroyed the air defense network of SAM missiles, ammunition dumps, communication networks, intelligence and logistics nodes, even defense-related factories, plus the entire Syrian Air Force and Navy, all of which had been abandoned anyway. As I said at the time:

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Israel now has a secure and unimpeded air corridor from Israel to Iran for the first time in its history. In the past, Israeli aircraft had to avoid Syrian fighter interceptors and surface-to-air missiles, while Syrian radar provided invaluable information to Iran about incoming Israeli attacks.

It should be noted that when Israel launched air attacks on Iran in late October, following the two huge missile attacks Iran had made on Israel in the previous two months, they did so successfully even with the Syrians in the way.

Now it’s just become easier and that’s in addition to that Israeli attack stripping Iran of almost all air defence systems, certainly the most dangerous ones in the form of Russian S-300 and S-400 SAM batteries. They also launched massive cyber-attacks on the Iranian government.

Iran is basically naked to Israel now.

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The IDF will never get a better shot at this. The only real question is whether they’ll try to take out the whole nuclear program or just some key parts of it?

Trump has certainly warned the Israelis off such an attack, claiming that progress was being made with the Iranians by his negotiator Witkoff, but I never believed that. Iran has played this game for forty years and are likely convinced they could run out the clock on yet another US President (eight before this, starting with Jimmy Carter in 1979 and including Trump’s first term).

Even with all the general buildup over the years1 there three key triggers for this attack.

  1. A new hidden nuclear site found in Iran (early May)
    The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) announced at a press conference in Washington that they had uncovered a previously undeclared 2,500-acre nuclear weapons development site about 55 miles southeast of Tehran near the city of Eyvanak. The anti-regime group announced that the “Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND)—a body controlled by Iran’s Ministry of Defense and the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]—has been pursuing tritium extraction to enhance nuclear weapons yields.”

    Enhance? Tritium certainly can do that, because it adds a fusion reaction component to an atomic bomb, but is thus also the key to a Hydrogen bomb.
  2. Iran purchased huge amounts of ammonium perchlorate from China. (early June)
    Fuel for hundreds of ballistic missiles.
  3. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) formally declared Iran to be in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years. They expressed particular concern regarding evidence of rapidly accelerating uranium enrichment activities (The 60 to 90% I wrote about here). Nineteen of 35 nations voted for the resolution declaring Iran non-compliant.  Iran’s response was to announce the construction of a new enrichment plant.

It was likely that last one that really pushed the Israelis. Iran made no bones that it would be pulling IAEA cameras and other monitoring equipment from the sites.

Second, is the US involved? A good chunk of their B2 Spirit bomber force has been sitting on Diego Garcia for a few weeks now, and the stealth materials of those older planes need a lot of care which can’t be supplied for long away from their bases in the USA.

UPDATE: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio:

Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region. Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense. President Trump and the Administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.

Then there’s this, which came after the Syrian strike and indicated that perhaps Israel was thinking not just of taking out Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but also the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in an attempt to enable the Iranian people to overthrow the regime, something Netanyahu has openly talked about even before this statement:

UPDATE: And so…

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  1. See also ↩︎

The Iran-Israel Cold War (June 2022)
The time that Obama, Biden and others thought they were buying in 2015 with the JCPOA was always an illusion. Iran always wanted an atomic bomb; just one of the tells was their ongoing ballistic missile program, which in the age of cruise missiles, JDAM warheads and drones is obsolete for delivering conventional explosives accurately – but still fine for a nuclear warhead.

Iran, Israel and Decisive Shock Battle (May 2024)
Israel fits all of the features of the Western societies described in “Carnage and Culture” and it should therefore apply the traditional Western military solution to Iran. Seeking decisive shock battle with the Iranian military (and only the military) seems to increasingly be the less risky option for Israel, 

The Rough Beast Slouches Toward Tel Aviv (June 2024)
According to a report from the IAEA, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, Iran has increased its stockpile of 60% enriched uranium from 121.5 kilograms to 142.1 kilograms in just the last few months.

Buckle Up (October 2024)
At one point she made it clear that she didn’t think of herself as Iranian but as Persian, which sparked an interesting debate at the table and it became obvious that she was proud of 3000 years of Persian history, upon which Islam was regarded as a recent and temporary blight, and she made it clear that many in her nation think the same.

Which is just one of the reasons why the following speech from Netanyahu is so interesting as he appeals several times to “the Persian peoples”. Last week in the UN he directed part of his speech to “the tyrants in Tehran”, warning them that there was nowhere in Iran that Israel could not reach.

Now THAT’S Demilitarisation! (December 2024)