What Israel’s kitchen-sink operation against Iran tells us so far

Israel’s military and intelligence operation against Iran that began Thursday night is unprecedented in scale and scope. I was on live with Anderson Cooper as it happened and the full extent of the attack began to clarify. Now that we know more, here are three points to consider as events continue to unfold. First: A full-spectrum military and intelligence operation, unprecedented in scale, scope and effectiveness. Israel is calling it “Operation Rising Lion,” an appeal to the Iranian people, the vast majority of whom do not support the ruling regime, with reference to Iran’s national symbol (a lion and sun) before its 1979 revolution. I’d also call it Operation Kitchen Sink: airstrikes, sabotage, operatives acting inside Iran and with targets across the entire country. Thus far, the result is a swift decapitation of Iran’s military command: its top commander, its top missile and drone commander, the head of Iran’s external support for proxies across the Middle East and many others we likely have not yet heard about. Any Iranian official right now is either looking over his shoulder or hiding in a bunker — or both. President Donald Trump this morning warned Iran the attacks will continue unless and until Iran returns to the negotiating table and shows it’s prepared to dismantle its nuclear program. This places Iran’s leaders in a severe predicament, fearing for their own lives while seeking to project confidence in their own damaged country and considering response options against Israel. Second: Israel has demonstrated full intelligence dominance over Iran, and now has air superiority as well, placing Iran in a severe quandary. By eliminating an entire command structure in a matter of hours, Israel has shown it has total intelligence penetration of Iran, and it has now achieved air dominance as well. This will further limit Iran’s ability to mount a coherent and coordinated response. Israel destroyed much of Iran’s strategic air defense systems in October of last year in response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack against Israel at the time. Now, Israel has destroyed the rest and can fly where it pleases over Iran with manned and unmanned aircraft. Significantly, the Iranian officials who would have met this morning to coordinate a response are all dead. And what Iran attempts, it knows Israel can strike back at will. Iran still has options — missiles, drones, proxies — and no doubt will seek to continue its response, but it’s in a quandary due to the scale and effectiveness of Israel’s attack. Iran’s supreme leader has named replacements for some of the dead commanders, but these are undesirable posts, since they can be targeted at will, particularly if they seek to attack Israel. Third: Why now? Iran made a fateful strategic error in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attacks against Israel, and then foolishly doubled down with nuclear escalations. Hamas’s horrific invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, forever changed the strategic equation in the Middle East – but not as Hamas intended. Hamas, a terrorist group long supported by Iran’s Quds Force, the commander of which Israel killed last night, had hoped it would so weaken Israel that Israel’s existence might be called into doubt. Immediately after the October 7 attacks, Iran fatefully chose to join in the assaults against Israel. It supported Hezbollah in Lebanon to open a northern front against Israel, and it provided munitions to proxies across the Middle East — from Iraq to Syria to Yemen — to attack Israel from multiple directions and simultaneously. Iran also launched two massive direct salvos of missiles and drones against Israel in April and October of last year. Both attacks were largely defeated by Israel and a coalition of military forces led by the United States, and coordinated from the White House. At the same time, Israel has made clear that after October 7, it will never again allow threats to fester — whether on its borders or inside Iran. That especially includes Iran’s nuclear program, which after October 7, Iran chose to significantly escalate beyond any conceivable civilian need or use case. Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency found Iran to be in “egregious failure” with respect to upholding commitments to demonstrate its nuclear program lacks a military dimension. Then, just yesterday in Vienna, 19 countries found Iran to be in breach of its commitments under the nonproliferation treaty — something that has not happened in 20 years. Only Russia, China and Burkina Faso supported Iran in this vote at the IAEA Board of Governors. Iran responded with another escalation, announcing it would install new advanced centrifuges in a deeply buried facility called Fordow, and declaring a new underground enrichment facility, all once again with no plausible civilian need or use case. The moves threatened to place Iran’s nuclear activities out of reach of a military response should the diplomacy to curtail its program fail. This was clearly the final straw for Israel, and understandably so. Israel will not watch an adversary sit at the threshold of a nuclear weapons capability. It will act to defend itself, and last night it felt it had unique window to do so. That opportunity was opened because of the staunch support the United States provided Israel across now two administrations. Hezbollah is degraded and ineffective. The Assad regime in Syria — historically an ally of Iran — is gone, eliminating Iran’s ability to export weapons and terrorists across the Middle East toward Israel. Iran’s air defenses were degraded last year, allowing last night’s air attacks to take place with reduced risk for Israeli pilots. The crisis is not over, of course. Israel’s attacks are ongoing, as are Iran’s. I helped coordinate the defense of Israel from the White House during those April and October attacks last year. Any attack with hundreds of missiles is extremely serious, but we know how to defend against such attacks, and must be prepared to do so again. By Friday afternoon Eastern time, Iran had fired “hundreds of various ballistic missiles” toward Israel, in what Tehran called the beginning of its “crushing response” to Israeli attacks on the country. It’s important that the United States do all it can to help defend Israel against these attacks, as it did twice over the course of 2024. The fastest way to defuse this entire situation for good would be for Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions and for Hamas to release hostages and relinquishing its control in Gaza. They are the ones, after all, who started this war. And until they do so, Israel will continue to act in its own national security interests and the United States will stand by it. That is the hard and unmovable equation in the Middle East today, sparked by events launched by Hamas and Iran and now rebounding decidedly against them. Brett McGurk is a CNN global affairs analyst who served in senior national security positions under presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden.