The Iran-Israel Face-off: From Shadow War to Direct Confrontation

By Aditi Bhaduri

It was bound to happen. The decades-long shadow war between Iran and Israel has finally turned into a full-blown struggle. In hindsight, it was probably coming all along. There are, however, two elements of surprise here.

The first is that of Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear and military installations in the wee hours of June 13, almost on the eve of the sixth round of negotiations between Iran and the US over the former’s nuclear programme. US President Donald Trump’s demand is that Iran would not enrich uranium under any nuclear deal. Iran found this unacceptable. While it has always stated that it did not seek nuclear weapons – as per the diktat against weapons of mass destruction by its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – Iran has always maintained its right to nuclear energy.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu justified these ‘preemptive ” strikes on Iran saying how “in recent months, Iran has taken steps … to weaponise its … enriched uranium…”. The strikes also killed a number of Iran’s nuclear scientists, several high-ranking personnel of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Chief of Army Staff, and other personnel.

US intelligence officials, however, have said that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and that Supreme Leader Khamenei had not authorised the nuclear weapons programme suspended in 2003.

The second element of surprise has been Iran’s response to the strikes. Many analysts, including this writer, had expected angry rhetoric and possibly some symbolic strikes against Israel. This is how Iran had responded last year in the aftermath of Israeli strikes on its diplomatic complex in Damascus. Israel, too, responded by undertaking tit-for-tat strikes against Iran, though it was careful not to escalate tensions. However, this time, it has been the fourth day now that Iran, without a common border with Israel, has been raining drones and missiles on its adversary, simultaneously showing up the gaps in Israeli air defence systems, targeting Tel Aviv as well as the strategic and western most Israeli port city of Haifa, and striking both military and civilian sites. In response, Israel has widened its targets, hitting radar sites, fuelling aircrafts, energy infrastructure, and even a national broadcasting centre during a live broadcast.

Reports have also emerged that Netanyahu was mulling eliminating Khamenei, but President Trump vetoed it.

At the time of writing this piece, around 24 Israelis and 240 Iranians were reported dead, with hundreds more wounded on both sides. Predictably, the sixth round of negotiations between Iran and the US, slated for Sunday in Oman, have been called off. Iranian lawmakers also announced that they were considering drafting a law that would enable their country to pull out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Speculation has also been rife that Iran may close the Strait of Hormuz, which transports one fifth of the world’s oil. Editorials in the Arab press, however, have highlighted that doing so would be a self-goal for Iran. 

Even so, while the world, including Trump, has urged restraint on both sides, he does not seem to be in any particular hurry to bring the war to an end, pleading instead Russia’s case at the G7 meeting in Canada.

The US has warned Iran against the targeting of American interests in the region. It has also deployed two B-52 bombers to the Diego Garcia island in the region. Besides this, the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, one of the world’s largest warships, is reportedly headed to the Middle East to support the 45,000-odd American troops stationed across the Middle East.

While Trump, Britain, France and the EU have defended Israel’s strikes, China and Russia support its right to defend itself. Yet, increasingly it seems both Iran and Israel, while wreaking havoc on each other, are fighting a losing battle. Why is this so?

Israel’s stated intention has been to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme. It has boasted of air superiority over Iran, having initially destroyed much of Iran’s air defense from within Iranian territory. While it has inflicted heavy damage on Iran’s Natanz enrichment plant, iran’s other main enrichment plant at Fordow is buried deep underground. The Israeli military has ceded that air power alone cannot destroy all of Iran’s scattered nuclear infrastructure. It would require American help, which, according to the latest Axios report, will not be forthcoming until there is an Iranian attack on any American interests. This aligns with Trump’s MAGA campaign, premised on the promise that the US will not involve itself in any more foreign wars.

Meanwhile, the visuals of destruction emanating from Israel, under a military information censorship, makes for bad optics for the Netanyahu administration. It is already under fire from Israelis for the failure to free all hostages taken captive by Hamas in October 2023. Netanyahu’s critics have alleged that he began the war with Iran to divert attention from Gaza and for his own political survival. Certainly, the attack on Iran has helped scuttle the US-Iran negotiations as well as an upcoming international conference on Gaza that France was convening. Increasingly, Israel’s actions are more in line with effecting regime change in Iran rather than eliminating the country’s nuclear programme once and for all. But that may be easier said than done.

While Iranian strikes may rally the people around the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and the government for now, it will be difficult to justify the war and its impact on Israelis if the war objectives are not met or if Iranian attacks continue with more destruction and loss of lives inside Israel.

Iran has appealed to Britain, France, and Germany to pressure Israel to halt its military campaign. President Masoud Pezeshkian has reiterated that Iran does not seek nuclear weapons but has the right to the peaceful use of nuclear power. Iran has also reached out to its Gulf neighbors, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to urge Trump to get Israel to agree to an immediate ceasefire. Instead, Trump has asked Iranians to flee Tehran, indicating a major strike upcoming.

At the same time Iran, with a depleted air force, destroyed air defence systems, and defanged proxies in the region except for the Houthis in Yemen, will find it hard to sustain the high-intensity conflict. In many ways, it finds itself isolated. The Sunni Arab world is tacitly supporting Israel, fed up as it is with Iran’s decades-long meddling in Arab affairs and in creating parallel power centres in the region. But now, these fronts have been decimated. The Hamas in Gaza and the Hezbollah in Lebanon have been battered, while the Assad regime has been toppled in Syria. Neither Turkiye nor Azerbaijan will intervene actively in support of Iran. Russia, with whom Iran recently signed a strategic partnership, is embroiled in its own war with Ukraine. It is also doubtful whether Iran’s other close partner, China, will directly support Iran militarily. 

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of nine lawmakers have written to Trump, stressing that “the United States must maintain a position of absolute clarity: zero enrichment, zero pathway to a nuclear weapon”.

Much will depend on the international community. It is imperative for leaders meeting in Canada to effect an immediate ceasefire and push for the resumption of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme.

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