Matthew Levitt is director of the Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of “Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God.”
The prequel to Israel’s recent strikes against Iran came last July, when Israel so degraded a decades-long threat from Lebanese Hezbollah that the group is now a shadow of its former self. Israel did not completely destroy Hezbollah then, and it is unlikely to completely destroy Iran’s nuclear program now.
But those are not the yardsticks by which the Israeli operations should be measured. A better question is whether Israel significantly set those malign projects back and created opportunities to further constrain Iran and Hezbollah’s militancy. If that is the measure, both operations should be deemed successes.
The operation against Hezbollah began after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and after over a year of Hezbollah firing near-daily rockets at Israel. Exploding pagers, followed by exploding radios, killed and maimed Hezbollah fighters. Targeted killings based on precise intelligence eliminated Hezbollah commanders, their bosses, and their deputies. Military strikes destroyed much of the group’s arsenal of rockets and forward-deployed weapons in underground bunkers along the Israeli border.
Israel is now carrying out a very similar campaign targeting Iran. Israeli intelligence operatives, Israeli commandos, and locally recruited agents built remotely controlled guided missile systems in central Iran that targeted Iranian weapons systems from within Iran at the outset of the Israeli attack. Israel smuggled in technologically modified vehicles, which targeted Iranian air defense positions to clear Iranian airspace for Israeli aircraft. As they did in Lebanon, Israeli forces eliminated senior Iranian military, security, and intelligence officials — including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders who were meeting in a bunker.
Israel has also disrupted Iran’s nuclear supply chain with strikes targeting nuclear facilities at Isfahan, Natanz, and Fordow. These strikes have done real damage, such as knocking out electricity to underground area where centrifuges used to enrich uranium are stored at Natanz and damaging the facility at Isfahan, which converts uranium into formats useful for enrichment, fuel, and even bomb components.
If the war were to end quickly, Iran could repair these facilities, likely within months. It is also believed to have secret parallel facilities housing a covert conversion program as well (after the International Atomic Energy Agency recently censured Iran for failing to answer questions about its undeclared nuclear program, Iran publicly pledged to set up a secret nuclear enrichment facility). Which is why the elimination of key nuclear scientists, and the know-how they possess, plays such a central role in the Israeli attack strategy. So far, at least 14 Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed, most importantly Fereydoon Abbasi, who was designated by the US Treasury Department and United Nations for his role in Iran’s uranium enrichment program.
Taken together, the Israelis have already achieved impressive tactical results. Israel has successfully disrupted the Iranian military and Revolutionary Guard’s command and control, and continues to target aerial defense capabilities and missile launch and production sites. Israel has effectively cleared the skies for further Israeli airstrikes — over the weekend Israel struck Iranian aircraft at Mashhad airport in eastern Iran, more than 1,400 miles from Israel, in what the Israel Defense Forces claims was its most distant strike ever — and expanded its targeting to include economic targets such as Iran’s oil and gas industry.
Israel degraded Iran’s ability to manufacture ballistic missiles in its counterstrike after Iran fired ballistic missiles at Israel in October, and destroyed more in the opening salvos of its recent attacks, meaning that Iran is depleting its limited arsenal of missiles every time it fires another one at Israel.
Israel claims it possess intelligence that even while negotiating with the United States, Iran was “advancing a secret plan” to fast-track technological advancement across all elements of its nuclear program. Iran had been working toward weaponizing its nuclear program for some time, the Israelis say, but even more so since the Hamas attack in 2023. (Notably, this assessment differs sharply from the conclusion reached in a March report from the US director of national intelligence that Iran “is not building a nuclear weapon”).
Israeli leaders say the attacks will continue to ensure that Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs are sufficiently disrupted, if not destroyed. Israeli officials clearly hope US officials will see the utility of taking advantage of the opportunity they have created to truly end Iran’s nuclear program by dropping a Massive Ordnance Penetrator on the heavily fortified Fordow nuclear facility built deep inside a mountain. So far, the Trump administration has been unwilling to take such action, or to lend Israel that bomb or the large bomber needed to drop it, but that could change if Iran attacks US military installations.
Short of that, Israel may have plans of its own to deal with Fordow. “We have more surprises coming up,” an Israeli intelligence official warned. The Iranians assert that last year, before the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, 120 Israeli air force commandos raided an Iranian missile factory deep in Syria, breached the underground facility, and destroyed it. Given the extent to which the entirety of Iran has become a “playground” for Israeli intelligence, and Israel’s deep intelligence penetration of Iran, such a ground operation at Fordow is not out of the question.
Finally, as the name Operation Rising Lion subtly implies, Israeli leaders hope that by eliminating leaders of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Quds Force, the military, and intelligence agencies, Iranians will see the Ayatollah’s Islamic Republic is not 10 feet tall. Waves of public protests have grown in size and determination since the 2009 Green Movement, and the Israeli attacks against Iranian security forces may provide Iranians the opportunity they need to reclaim their country. Indeed, opposition sources in Iran have already shared videos of anti-regime slogans heard in Tehran, which is likely the reason Iran has reportedly reached out to Qatar and Oman asking them to broker a cease-fire.
Events could quickly spill out of control if Iran decides to expand the war by attacking neighboring Gulf states or US bases in the region, either directly or through proxies. But such actions could accomplish the one thing Tehran most hopes to avoid: drawing the US military into the conflict.
Ultimately, even if the Israeli strikes fall short of eliminating Iran’s nuclear program, or fail to create space for Iranians to stand up to their oppressors, they will significantly set back Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Iran likely is realizing that if Israel feels the need to attack again, it will.
If nothing else, Operation Rising Lion underscores Israel’s post-Oct. 7 security doctrine: Israelis are no longer willing to hope for the best while enemies sworn to their destruction accumulate the weapons necessary to achieve that goal.
If Iran thought this doctrine was limited to its proxies, it now should know better.