The strike came at the last moment: Why Jerusalem’s timing was its last viable deterrent - analysis
One way or another, it took Iran a very long time to reach the nuclear threshold. Instead of the expected two to five years, twenty-five years passed. When the moment arrived, it left us no choice.
We will all remember, to our dying day, where we were on the night between Thursday and Friday, 13 June 2025.
What the ultimate result will be—and whether the Iranian danger can now be removed from the agenda—will be answered soon enough. One thing is certain: the sun will still rise tomorrow morning, and it will find the State of Israel here.
Israel has prepared for this event since the 1990s, when then-IDF Research Division chief Amos Gilead identified Tehran’s intent to acquire a military nuclear capability and briefed then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. From that moment on, Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly warned the international community, and then-Mossad director Meir Dagan received an instruction from Ariel Sharon to do everything possible to derail the Iranian program.
Israel managed to delay Iran’s project by roughly twenty years. A power of Iran’s size should need only a handful of years, once it decides, to build a bomb.
Inside Israel’s defense establishment, there was once a historic argument: should we focus on delaying the nuclear project or on collapsing the Iranian regime, even if that meant targeting its leaders? The first option won.
One way or another, it took Iran a very long time to reach the nuclear threshold. Instead of the expected two to five years, twenty-five years passed—and when the moment arrived, it left us no choice.
The timing debate that never died
Another fierce debate erupted in Israel’s leadership at the start of the last decade: the question of timing. Netanyahu and then-defense minister Ehud Barak believed, in 2011, that Israel had to strike.The security chiefs disagreed. Dagan said Israel should act only “when the knife is at the throat”—our throat, not theirs. Barak ultimately reversed himself; Netanyahu lacked the courage. He could have ordered a strike in 2012 or 2013 but backed down at the last minute.
Thirteen more years passed before we reached precisely the situation Dagan described: the knife against the jugular, pressing on the main artery—‘be or not be.’ That is where we are now.
Israeli intelligence discovered that over the past year Iran had begun what experts call the nuclear breakout—activating the weapon group and racing through every auxiliary process required to turn a stockpile of highly enriched uranium into an actual bomb.
The weapon group is the project that transforms weapons-grade uranium into a device—not just any device, but one the size of a basketball.
It must be small enough to fit on the warhead of a ballistic missile, must be tested and proven, and must include a tailored nuclear implosion chain so the bomb detonates at the right altitude above its target.
This is no simple feat. The problem, compared with enrichment—which leaves a clear radioactive signature that effective intelligence can detect—is that weaponization can be done with an almost invisible footprint: a few scientists, a couple of sealed rooms deep underground, and that’s it.
Once the testing stage is reached, it becomes irreversible.
Military Intelligence (Aman) and the Mossad determined that Iran embarked on this breakout during the past year. The moment they realized it, a dedicated monitoring cell was set up in Aman, and the Israel Air Force established a special planning arena for the strike.
At the same time, breakthrough attack capabilities were developed, shattering the glass ceiling of what the IAF had previously believed possible.
Iran’s ‘annihilation plan’
Iran had crafted what can fairly be called an annihilation plan against Israel. That is not a dramatic headline; it is a detailed, extensive, diabolical blueprint.The plan encircled Israel with rings of fire: Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad here; Hezbollah in Lebanon; Shi’ite militias in Iraq and Syria; Houthi ballistic missiles from Yemen; and attempts to infiltrate Jordan with similar forces.
The idea was for all of them to surge simultaneously—flood Israel with militias after a wave of ballistic strikes and bring the country to collapse, even envisioning the evacuation of Israeli civilians and mass detention camps. It sounds fantastical, but the plan existed and was approaching feasibility.
The man who upset everything was Yahya Sinwar. Israel had dozed while Iran nurtured all these monsters on our fences. Sinwar launched the plan too early, without coordinating with the others, bringing ruin upon himself and inflicting heavy damage on Iran’s broader design.
What happened afterward is fascinating: instead of retreating and trying to rehabilitate Iran domestically, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei doubled down.
He decided to push full-speed toward a military bomb, here and now, understanding that his regime was living on borrowed time. He gave the order to start the breakout—the very breakout that Israel discovered and is now trying to thwart.
Open questions
All this is based on Israel’s assessment. It is not carved in stone. Once the dust settles, we must ask: Was Iran really breaking out, or merely preparing? Did Khamenei truly issue the go-for-broke order, or was it a mirage? There are reportedly disagreements between US and Israeli intelligence on these points, and even inside Israel some question the picture. We will have time for that debate—if events allow.What remains is to find out whether the strike succeeded. How much damage did we inflict? How long will it take Iran to recover? How long have we delayed or halted the project? Will the United States now reinforce Israel, enabling continued military activity over Iran, isolating it from rebuilding options and constraining its ability to retaliate? None of this is settled. The verdict is not yet in; the event is only beginning. The one certainty is that we are in a historic war—no less.
Since the small hours of the morning, the IAF (and essentially the entire IDF, together with the Mossad) has been attacking Iran’s nuclear sites, enriched-uranium stockpiles, drone hangars and ballistic-missile launchers, while trying to eliminate as many nuclear scientists and senior officers as possible—some have indeed been killed.
In the meantime, Iran launched roughly 100 UAVs toward us—a first swallow. I write these lines while they are still inbound, as dozens of Israeli pilots “swarm” them over enemy territory.
What comes next?
How far can Iran now flip the table on us by launching dozens, perhaps hundreds, of ballistic missiles? We will learn in the coming days.It is vital to emphasize: if drones or missiles land here—may they not—people must not spread videos, photos or mention exact impact sites.
The Iranians monitor Israeli media and social networks. For them, it is crucial to know where their weapons struck. There is no reason to help them.
We have already aided them enough with some commentators’ unbelievable chatter, including those who named a strike window of “the coming days.” Iran hardly needs its own intelligence; it can find everything right here. That must stop.
Will Washington provide a protective umbrella? Will it join the strikes at some stage? Will it now bring its full weight to bear in isolating Iran and preventing it from rebuilding? Most intriguingly, was the operation coordinated with the US? Did President Donald Trump, who only last night declared he “does not want Israel to strike,” actually know and partake in an Israeli-American deception? We will know soon enough.
For now, the Americans sit on the fence. My assessment: they are letting Iran understand that if it lights up the entire Middle East—hitting US bases or Gulf oil facilities—America will come down on it with full force. The goal is to contain the conflict to Israel-versus-Iran, rather than let it explode into a regional war that might even become a world war.
‘Too early to tell’
Someone once asked China’s Deng Xiaoping whether the French Revolution succeeded. “Too early to tell,” he replied.Has Israel’s strike in Iran succeeded? Are we on the brink of a war of all wars that could last weeks or months? Will the Iranian threat finally be removed from the agenda? All these questions will soon be answered.
What is certain is that the sun will rise tomorrow morning and will find the State of Israel—far stronger than our enemies imagined when they devised their annihilation plan against us.
