Not Over: Ensuring Iran Does Not Rebuild

Israel’s 12-day military campaign against Iran and its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities will almost certainly be viewed as a major turning point in the history of the modern Middle East—on a par with such transformative events as the wars of 1967 and 1973, the Camp David Accords and Iranian revolution, 9/11 and 10/7. It capped off 21 months of dramatic regional events. On October 7, 2023, Iran-backed Hamas invaded Israel, perpetrating the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. The next day, Iran’s most powerful proxy, Hezbollah, launched an unprovoked war of attrition against Israel. Israel’s security posture and deterrence were shattered. The ambitions of Iran, and its stable of regional proxy armies, to destroy the Jewish state via a sustained multifront war appeared closer than ever to realization.

Within a year, however, Israel effectively decimated Hamas and Hezbollah to the point that neither pose a military threat to Israel. That facilitated last month’s Israel-U.S. attack. We will learn more in the future, but that attack likely set back Iran’s nuclear program more than years of sanctions, sabotage, and diplomatic agreements. Decades and billions of dollars that Iran invested in its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and proxies have been wiped away. No cracks have—yet—appeared in the Tehran regime’s edifice, but it stands humiliated, the pillars of its deterrence and national security doctrine in tatters, thoroughly penetrated by spies and saboteurs, and in its weakest position since at least the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

Now, however, is no time for complacency, triumphalism, or distraction by secondary concerns. Instead, the United States and Israel should remain laser-focused on finishing the job at hand. Iran’s military and nuclear programs and ambitions are down, but not out. While a diplomatic agreement that verifiably dismantles Iran’s nuclear and missile programs remains the best means of defusing the Iranian threat, there remains a distinct possibility that Iran will refuse to return to negotiations absent unacceptable U.S. concessions. Whether new talks commence or not, it will be necessary to return immediately to a campaign of maximum military, economic, and political pressure on Iran. Most importantly, the United States and Israel must be agreed and coordinated in resuming military operations in response to credible indications that Iran is seeking to rebuild its nuclear and missile programs and strategic air defenses.

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Report Authors
Michael Makovsky
President & CEO
John Hannah
Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow
Blaise Misztal
Vice President for Policy
Jonathan Ruhe
Director of Foreign Policy