Ruminating on Operation Rising Lion
A few thoughts on the Israel-Iran war.
Note: I started writing this post on Friday evening, as Israel strike, but sat on things to wait for better information. This post should contain minimal information that is out-of-date, but apologies if so.
We are now three days into what appears to be the start of a major all-out war between Israel and Iran—a war fought primarily in the air, with fighters (Israel) and ballistic missiles (Iran). I want to use this post mostly to share a few big picture thoughts on a few themes pertaining to missile defense, the effects of these Israeli kinetic counter-proliferation strikes, and the long-running debate about the effects of Iran’s nuclear threshold status. If you want my normative views, I’ll provide them briefly: Israel’s decision to strike was a terrible error and will likely mark the inflection point that forces a political shift in Iran’s post-2003 approach on overt weaponization restraint. The United States should resist Israeli attempts to persuade involvement—particularly the temptation to deliver GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators to assist in the destruction of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant.
Anyway, let’s talk.
Missiles and Missile Defense. I’ve spent the better part of the last 10 years looking closely at the proliferation of missile capabilities and the resulting interest in missile defense technologies. It has been unsettling in recent years—particularly since February 2022—to have my bench of empirics on missile-centric warfare expand considerably. Sadly, Operation Rising Lion and its consequences provide more to look at in this regard.
First, as I observed over at BlueSky, it was pretty apparent a few hours into public reporting around the Israeli strikes that the Israel Air Force had taken care to tactically degrade Iran’s military command and control through targeted killings of key personnel and strikes on fixed targets. Mike Casey (who has a Substack that I often learn quite a bit from) has a good post that discusses this in greater detail and in the context of Israel’s remarkable Suppression of Enemy Air Defense campaign.
My initial hypothesis was that the degradation of Iranian C3 would have two important effects. First, it would ensure that retaliation probably would not be as prompt as Iran’s political leaders would have liked (which seems pretty clearly to have been the case). Second, I speculated that looser command and control could degrade Iran’s ability to dose damage and manage escalation, and the effectiveness of retaliation. The first of these points was quickly moot as the scope of Israel’s war aims appeared to be far greater; when your counterparty projects aims, as Jeffrey Lewis has persuasively argued and Netanyahu later confirmed, tantamount to regime change, your interest in managing escalation diminishes.
The second point, however, on military effectiveness appears to still have legs. To keep things brief, much about Iran’s use of ballistic missiles since Friday’s initial strikes differs with what I’d have expected to see, which would have been efforts to deliberately degrade known Israeli Arrow and David’s Sling launchers to “soften up” Israel’s otherwise impressive missile defense system-of-systems. Instead, we’ve seen what is likely a more emotionally gratifying and perhaps psychologically impactful—if less militarily effective—form of targeting, where Iran has peppered targets across Israel, to limited effectiveness. (We’ve all seen plenty of evidence of impacts from what appear to be Emad, Fattah, or Kheybarshekan ballistic missiles.)
I’ll leave it to analysts who look more closely at the IRGC Aerospace Force to track and comment on the Iranian concept of operations here. I’ll just also add that this remarkable bit of reporting from Farnaz Fassihi in the New York Times adds a bit of texture:
Ultimately, Mr. Khamenei ordered Iran’s military to fire on Israel. Initially, the plan was to launch up to 1,000 ballistic missiles on Israel to overwhelm its air defense and ensure maximum damage, according to two members of the Guards. But Israel’s strikes on missile bases had made it impossible to move missiles quickly from storage and place them on launchpads, they added.
The Counter-Proliferation Effect. Israel’s reliance on the military instrument has proved somewhat successful in other counter-proliferation contexts, but the totality of Iran’s program, knowledge, and what will likely now be national political will all but ensure that we will still live in a world with some version of the Iran nuclear problem. Don’t take it from me: take it from Tzachi Hanegbi, Israel’s national security adviser, who has noted that “Israeli strikes alone won’t be capable of entirely destroying Iran’s nuclear program.” Hangebi’s comment could be suggestive of greater optimism about nullifying the threat from Iran’s capabilities if the United States decides to hop on board the MOPs-to-Fordow plan (Israeli aircraft cannot usefully degrade the deeply buried FFEP).
I should note here, too, that I understand that deeper than reasons concern Netanyahu’s selfish interests in a war to assure his political survival, Israel has a strategic culture that sees great security benefits in relying on its tactical ingenuity to kick problems in its neighborhood a few months, years, or decades down the road. The United States—and many of the other players in the region and elsewhere, including in Europe, China, and Russia—have different interests. The diplomatic pathway to staying Iran’s hand from a nuclear weapon, for most of these players, has always looked more appealing.
It would be intellectually dishonest, I think, to not admit that Operation Rising Lion will have the effect of introducing setbacks should Iran take the political decision to purse the bomb. And, of course, should Iran make that decision (as I think they will), we won’t have the counterfactual where these strikes didn’t take place and diplomacy was still given a chance.
The Nuclear Threshold and Deterrence. I’ve toyed around in various forums with the idea that Iran was benefiting from some form of (admittedly weak) non-weaponized nuclear deterrence of the sort that we’ve seen manifest (in a somewhat stronger sense) in pre-1998 South Asia. Operation Rising Lion, I think, puts that hypothesis to rest in an important way. Threshold status failed to deter this Israeli attack and has now failed to offer intra-war deterrence (which, presumably, could be realized by a rapid sprint to weaponizing available nuclear material in a minimally viable nuclear explosive device—even if not reasonably deliverable).
What’s the lesson here for the next proliferator? Well, it’s probably to avoid fence-sitting on weaponization if you can avoid it. I’m sure Khamenei wishes he had an easily available way to rapid weaponization to manifest some deterrent effect that Iran’s non-nuclear forces appear to be unable to manifest.
That’s all I’ve got for now. I have some other thoughts that I’ll try to get back to: on Israel’s destruction of Iranian missile launchers, use of drones from within Iran (with echoes of Operation Spider’s Web, which I recently covered), and on the precision of Iranian ballistic missiles.
Separately, Project Syndicate invited me to contribute on the question of whether U.S. allies should start thinking about nuclear proliferation. I wrote against the proposition (as the sole American contributor out of five, with other voices coming from Spain, Germany, Australia, and South Korea).
My recent chat with Isaac Kardon on Carnegie’s The World Unpacked podcast is available in video form:
And, finally, as something of a military parade afficionado I spoke to the Wall Street Journal about what I’ve learned watching military parades in Russia, China, and North Korea over the years. The July 14 parade here in Washington, DC, was rather disappointing—especially in contrast to North Korean parades!
More soon!