Israel carried out an attack on Iran late Thursday night near the city of Isfahan, Iran’s second-largest metropolitan area. The operation was confirmed by senior US and Iranian officials.
It appears to be Israel’s response to Iran’s attack on Sunday, when Tehran fired hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel. That attack was in response to Israel’s strike on the Iranian Embassy complex in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on April 1.
US officials have urged restraint and deescalation, and on Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was not involved in the attack.
“We’re committed to Israel’s security,” Blinken said. “We’re also committed to deescalating, to trying to bring this tension to a close.”
The World’s host Carol Hills spoke with Ali Vaez to understand the situation. He’s the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group and spoke from Washington.
Carol Hills: What do we know so far about the weapons Israel used in this attack against Iran?
Ali Vaez: There are still more questions than answers about what exactly happened. But it appears that Israel fired three ballistic missiles into Iran from the Iraqi airspace. There were also some small drones that Iranians shot down. And so, it’s quite possible that this was a hybrid attack, that there were drones that were flown from inside the country in order to confuse or distract the aerial defense systems so that the missiles could actually reach their targets.
Now, since Iran’s attack on Israel last weekend, it was unprecedented. The US has been urging Israel to use restraint. Do you think the scale of this retaliatory attack by Israel on Iran is an indication that Israel is listening or not listening?
Well, I think President [Joe] Biden’s preference would have been that Israel would not respond at all. But now that Israel has responded, we can say safely that it was a very limited and restrained response, and that hopefully would result in both sides being able to draw a line under this chapter and move on. The reality is that with what Israel has done, it basically has signaled to Iran that it does not allow Iran to unilaterally revise the rules of the game. But also, it has not triggered a broader escalation and putting Iran in a position that it feels that the urge to retaliate in kind is irresistible.
Tell us more about Isfahan, which was the nearest city to where the attack took place and its strategic role in Iran?
Well, Isfahan is at the heart of the country, and this is the message that Israel was trying to send, that it can reach deep inside Iran. But Isfahan is also the ancient capital of the Persian empire, the Safavid Empire. There are a lot of UNESCO-protected heritage sites in that city, but it is also the location of Iran’s drone-production factory and also some of Iran’s most-important nuclear facilities. And in the past, Israel has conducted covert operations against those facilities. And that’s why the Israeli counterstrike seems to fall in the category of covert operations, which is the status quo of the relationship between the two countries, the gray zone combat that they’ve been fighting for many years now.
Given the proximity of the attack to Iran’s nuclear sites, do we know anything about how close Iran is to acquiring a nuclear weapon?
Well, Iran has never been closer to the threshold of nuclear weapons. When President [Donald] Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, it would take Iran about 12 months to enrich enough uranium for a single nuclear weapon, it would still have to fashion that into a nuclear device. But today, we are in a situation that it would only take Iran about six days to enrich enough uranium for a single nuclear weapon. And for the first time since the beginning of the nuclear crisis with Iran, Iran has the possibility, given the lower level of inspections of its nuclear program by UN inspectors, to basically dash towards weaponized uranium without detection.
Did these attacks by Israel, did they damage anything? Did they damage any nuclear sites or cause any casualties?
So, nuclear sites, we know that they have not been damaged because, last night, the US administration had leaked to the media that nuclear sites were not among the targets. And this morning, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, has announced that the nuclear sites are intact. And so, it appears that at least the nuclear sites were not the main target. But the signaling is hard to miss, that Israel was trying to tell Iran that its nuclear program is also within Israel’s reach.
But do we know of any casualties from these attacks by Israel?
There has been no announcement. And the Iranians, I think, are purposefully minimizing the attack because it gives them a face-saving way out of this cycle of escalation. The main question to which we don’t have an answer is whether this was a one-off Israeli attack or is a prelude to more attacks, or bigger, attacks in the future.
Which leads me to my last question: Where do you think things stand now between Israel and Iran?
Look, I think in this process, both sides have demonstrated that neither has the appetite for a direct confrontation or for the expansion of the conflict in Gaza. But the most dangerous moment in any geostrategic rivalry is when the parties start revising the rules of the game. Because in a case like [the one] between Iran and Israel, the two countries that have no relations with one another, there is plenty of space for misunderstanding before a new equilibrium is established. And so, in the coming weeks and months, we might see that, as the conflict in Gaza continues, and there’s currently no light at the end of a tunnel for that war, that there is still plenty of risk for Iran and Israel, even if this episode has come to an end, to commit miscalculations and for tensions to spiral out of control.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
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