Afrasianet - Hassan Lafi - While the Iranians can withstand weeks or even months in the face of bombing, Israel needs to resolve the war within a few days or weeks, otherwise the war could turn from a strategic blow to a long internal bleeding.
Israel launched a complex preemptive strike on Iran, targeting some of its nuclear facilities, ballistic missile depots, and air command centers, and carried out precise assassinations against senior commanders in the army, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Iranian scientists. In the first phase, Israel's superiority is clear: the collapse of air defenses, confusion in the Iranian response system, and the widespread disruption of military facilities. But soon the equation flips.
Iranian missile waves are launched from multiple bases, some from deep inside Iranian territory, and some from secret sites that survived the strike. Despite the technological superiority of the Iron Dome, Haytz and David's Slingshot systems, heavy rockets fall deep inside Israel, destroying buildings completely in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and military sites in the Negev, and causing dozens of deaths and injuries in each wave, amid silence imposed by Israeli military censorship, but with images leaked through social media highlighting the effects of the massive destruction of those missiles.
Civilian life is disrupted: schools are closed, airports are suspended, transportation networks are paralyzed, and the Israeli street lives in or on the doorstep of shelters. In this scene, crucial questions arise beyond the battlefield:
Can Israel actually destroy Iran's nuclear and missile infrastructure on its own?
If so, how long do you need? Is time working in its favor at all?
More importantly, how far can the Israeli home front endure a daily reality of rockets, deaths, destruction, and economic collapse?
Can a society living in an atmosphere of loss of confidence in its government, exhausted by the ongoing war in Gaza, withstand a psychological, economic and missile war of attrition being waged in its own backyard?
The Israeli plan was based on three premises:
1. A devastating and sudden first strike that causes chaos in the Iranian leadership, disrupts the control centers of air defenses and missile launches, reduces Iran's use of its missile weapon, while remaining without air cover in front of Israeli aircraft.
2. Defensive coordination with Washington and its allies to activate a regional network to intercept missiles before they reach Israeli airspace, to help Israeli defense systems intercept the remaining missiles.
3. Escalate the Israeli attack on Iranian civilian facilities (power plants, ports, oil fields, and citizens), in order to create internal pressure that may pave the way for regime change and, most importantly, end the battle time as soon as possible.
The American Role: Unrush Support and Escape from Direct Confrontation
Despite US President Donald Trump's public statements that the United States is a "strategic partner in the Israeli operation," the facts on the ground make it clear that Washington does not want direct military involvement against Iran. The U.S. role so far has been limited to intelligence, logistical and defense support, through the operation of joint missile defense systems in the Gulf and the Red Sea, and the provision of protection for US bases in Iraq and Qatar.
However, with the increasing frequency of Iranian missile attacks on the Israeli home front, and the emergence of destruction and killing rates in Rishon Lezion, Ramat Gan and Haifa, voices within Israel – politically and security – began to demand direct US military intervention to quickly end the Iranian threat, by directing extensive strikes on the Iranian nuclear program, in order to end the war by achieving its goals.
However, the Trump administration has so far shown adherence to the political ceiling of the operation, using Israeli force as a tool to pressure Tehran to push it into a new nuclear deal, tougher than the previous one, and categorically preventing it from enriching uranium on its soil or developing advanced centrifuges.
In other words, the United States sees military escalation as a means to a diplomatic end, while Israel finds itself trapped in a direct battle of attrition on its domestic front, waiting for Washington to make a shift that has not yet taken place: a transition from a supporting partner to a direct combat actor.
In the background, the United States under Donald Trump plays a dual role: not to intervene militarily first to keep the door to politics open, then to enter as a mediator to end the war in the event that Israel is embroiled in a war that drains it, or as a party to a tough nuclear agreement towards the Iranian nuclear project if Iran agrees to return to negotiations.
But this perception, despite its military precision, carries a double fatal loophole:
1. The Iranian side has a resilience and a civilized and ideological readiness to fight a long war, especially when the conflict is linked to the identity and dignity of the nation. The leadership and people of Iran are accustomed to decades of siege and pressure, and they have long nerves and a cohesive society in times of trouble, and history and civilization are not only for their benefit, but also the geography that the Iranian army has benefited from in distributing its military facilities, missile stores and platforms, in a way that makes it difficult for Israel to destroy them in a single attack or over months of consecutive attacks, on the assumption that The Israeli claim is that it has paralyzed Iranian air defenses.
2. The Israeli home front is the most serious weakness of the Israeli military system: a fragile Western settler society, with a lifestyle that is highly sensitive to losses, exhausted by accumulated political crises, and living under a growing sense of distrust of its leadership.
While the Iranians can withstand weeks or even months in the face of bombing, Israel needs to resolve the war within a few days or weeks, otherwise the war could turn from a strategic blow to long-term internal bleeding that could threaten the societal and political structure of the state itself.
The battle is not only military, who has the nerves? In the end, the decisive lie not only in firepower, but also in the battle of long breath, strategic patience, and the ability to collectively endure a long confrontation. Iran is a country whose root is deeply embedded in history, and its people have the ability to be patient until Iranian patience has become proverbial, while Israel is a bastard colonial project that is still doubtful about its ability to survive, despite all the military power it is trying to promote, what began as a lightning preemptive strike, It could turn into an unsustainable strategic Israeli attrition.