Since the first wave of Israel’s devastating demolition of Iran’s military and nuclear capabilities there has been much talk of the Middle East standing on the brink of all-out war. But where is it going to come from? Iran? Tehran will throw what is left of its ballistic missile stock in the rough direction of Israel sure, but on recent evidence, to absolutely no significant military or geo-political avail.
Israel’s Iron Dome is impressively well-named, and the number of Iranian missiles which can reach Israel will soon be zero. So Hezbollah then? The Houthis? Syria? Hamas? Iran’s ally Russia even? They’re all busted flushes, thanks largely to the breath-taking military competence of Israel.
Iran is clumsily trying to shoehorn Pakistan into this conflict saying Islamabad is threatening a nuclear strike on Tel Aviv. But this is not Pakistan’s war and that is never going to happen. And so Israel is doing what the entire world wanted, but had neither the wit nor the guts to do themselves - ensuring the mad mullahs in Tehran never get their hands on a nuclear missile.
Netanyahu may not have the biggest military in the world but he certainly has the most sophisticated. In the first attack wave 200 fighter jets and 100 drones blitzed Iran’s key military and nuclear sites.
And once again the world caught its collective breath as Israel’s devastatingly effective military used both terrible force majeure to blast nuclear sites and rapier like precision munitions to hit the very bedrooms of Iran’s key military players and nuclear scientists. It has been described as “one of the most audacious military operations ever attempted”. As well it may.
But in truth it is actually only the most audacious military operation since Israel’s last one - September last year when more than 3000 pagers and walkie-talkies carried by members of the terror group Hezbollah members exploded. Israel’s military intelligence, inventiveness and daring has no equal in modern times.
Every time a new detail is released about today’s attacks one’s mind is blown a little more. Israeli commandos built a secret drone base deep inside Iran. If it was a movie script you wouldn’t believe it. And it’s not like it came out of the blue. This attack has been on the cards for at least two decades. Washington and Tel Aviv even gave Tehran a heads-up about the actual date.
Donald Trump warned Iran in the on-going talks to scale back Tehran’s nuclear ambitions they had 60 days to comply. With uncharacteristic accuracy, the President said: “Two months ago I gave Iran a 60-day ultimatum to ‘make a deal.’ They should have done it! Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there.”
Iran knew it was coming. And they could have prevented it. But as recently as Thursday afternoon Iran’s President President Masoud Pezzekian Vowed to keep enriching uranium, adding chillingly that Iran must "burn or build". Hours later Iran was on fire.
Israel of course is currently making itself the scourge of the West’s hand-wringers because it is now winning a war on its own turf which was started by a dreadful cowardly attack on an Israeli music festival on October 7 2023, which claimed the lives of almost 1300 men, women and children and injured almost 5,000 more.
More than 250 hostages were taken - 53 of whom are still in captivity. That Hamas’ attack was a pogrom - and the bloodiest day in the history of the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Hamas, which of course is armed, paid-for and run by Iran, has a dialled-in commitment to eradicate the state of Israel. It is part of its so-called “Covenant”. So it is perhaps understandable that Israel did not wish to stand back and watch its existential enemy Iran flout international law and lie to the world while secretly building an arsenal of nuclear missiles.
It is internationally accepted that Iran was working at speed to build its first working nuclear bomb - and may have been only weeks away. And we know this because on Saturday the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency - whose inspectors have been repeatedly lied-to, turned away and tricked - told us they were. Of course today IAEA head Rafael Grossi said nuclear facilities "must never be attacked", while hand-wringers like Keir Starmer and Emmannuel Macron came out with the usual spineless witterings. As they will continue to do at today’s G7 summit, in Canada.
Because politically they feel they have to. But they all know Israel has done them and the world a favour. If the world had had the guts to stop Germany’s rearmament in the 1930s 85 million lives would have been saved as World War 2 would never have started. This is just a 21st century version of same. And the Israelis can see it even clearer than the rest of us. Seriously, if you think the world is on a knife-edge right now, imagine a world where the Mullah’s have their finger on the nuclear button.
Even Trump got it. With typical jaw-dropping crassness he told The Wall Street Journal that Israel’s attacks
on Iran were “great for the market” because it means Iran won’t have a nuclear weapon.
“I think ultimately, it would be great for the market because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. It will be great for the market — should be the greatest thing ever for the market. Iran won’t have a nuclear weapon that was a great threat to humanity.”
It’s that last bit that counts. Oh and this is not over of course - but Israel has had the cohones to do what no-one else in the world was prepared to do… to put an end to the terrifying prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon.
