BREAKING: Israel Conducts Airstrikes in Iran; UPDATE: Military Decapitated; Mossad's 'Covert Sabotage'

Ed Morrissey 8:20 PM | June 12, 2025
AP Photo/Richard Drew

Earlier today, while hosting Hugh Hewitt's show, I asked former Senator Jim Talent whether we could expect Israel to finally attack Iranian nuclear sites, after the mullahs refused to stop enriching uranium. Talent hedged his bets, wisely, but noted that negotiations appeared to be going nowhere. We both agreed that action seemed inevitable.

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And as it turned out, highly imminent:

The Israeli Air Force conducted a strike in Iran on Thursday, according to two sources with knowledge of the operation. It's not yet clear what Israel is targeting.

That's perhaps a safe position for reporting at the moment, but there's not much doubt as to what Israel would target. Trying to decapitate the regime in a single mission, even with multiple aircraft, is too dicey. The real threat to Israel now is an Iranian nuclear weapon, so if they are taking this risk, that's the only target worth it.

Either way, this war will expand unless the Iranian regime falls. And the Iranians are already threatening to retaliate against US assets, which is why the Trump administration began recalling non-essential personnel from the region:

The big picture: Iran has vowed to strike U.S. targets in the region in the event of any attack on its nuclear program.

  • The U.S. is in the process of withdrawing diplomats and military families in Iraq, Bahrain and Kuwait who could be in harm's way.
  • The U.S. has also boosted air defenses around several of its sources in the Gulf.
  • Even if Israel does not directly strike Iran's nuclear facilities, the U.S. could be caught up in Iran's retaliation.

Israel is calling it a "pre-emptive strike," which again suggests that the nuclear sites will be the targets:

“Following the State of Israel’s preemptive strike against Iran, a missile and drone attack against the State of Israel and its civilian population is expected in the immediate future,” Katz says.

He says he has signed “a special order, according to which a special state of emergency will be imposed in the home front throughout the entire State of Israel.”

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They are preparing for a massive counterattack in retaliation. The US is worried that Israel's defenses won't hold up against a full-scale missile attack from Iran:

US President Donald Trump’s special Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has told Senate Republicans that if Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Iranian Republic’s response could lead to a mass casualty event, according to a Thursday report.

Axios reported, citing a US official, that since the October attack, Iran has ramped up production of ballistic missiles to some 50 per month. The Islamic Republic’s goal is to produce more missiles than Israel has interceptors, the official said.

Does Israel have enough interceptors? Or have they prepared for this by having a plan to disable at least part of such an attack? It seems unlikely that the Iranians have made the same mistake Hezbollah did in their pager purchasing. However, the Israelis have found ways to hack Iranian systems in the past.

We're about to find out some of these answers now, though. We'll update as developments warrant. 

Update: The Israelis have apparently decided to put a final end to the Iranian nuclear threat ... if they can:

According to the IDF, Iran has enough uranium to weaponize it to nuclear levels, for 15 nuclear weapons within days.

In recent days, Iran developed a plan with Hezbollah and Hamas and other proxies to destroy the State of Israel, potentially including attempts to attack via all borders, including Egypt and Jordan.

This was the point of no return according to the IDF. ...

The IDF targets also include commanders, bases as well as nuclear sites, though the main goal is nuclear sites.

Further, the IDF said in the last 20 minutes, Iran was taken by surprise and they were attacked in places they didn't expect.

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Perhaps that was the plan -- catch the IRGC by surprise and take out their command structure to disrupt their ballistic missile capability. If so, they had better succeed, because a strike on this scale is full-scale war, which is no small matter for a country whose enemy outnumbers them 8:1. But if this intel was accurate, Israel waited as long as they could without committing suicide. 

Update: The IDF may have taken out the command-and-control center for Iran's missile assets:

Bear in mind that the Iranians relied heavily on Syrian air-defense facilities that they lost with the fall of Assad, and that the IDF took out key air-defense assets in Iran in an earlier attack. The Iranans may have been blinded for months, which again means that Israel only had a limited window of opportunity to accomplish this with as little blowback as possible. We'll soon see whether they calculated correctly. 

Update: Rubio sent a pretty clear warning to Iran:

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The Iranian regime will never believe we didn't participate in this offensive. However, this may be a big enough strike that the IRGC will think twice before doing something that will bring Trump into the war. 

Update: Benjamin Netanyahu made clear that this is not a one-night operation:

This is the whole enchilada. Will the Iranian people take this opportunity to seize control from the regime before Israel has to wipe out needed infrastructure? If it were to happen, this would be the moment. 

Update: Here's the statement from Netanyahu, which claims that Iran had begun to "weaponize" their enriched uranium, and that was the last straw:

Update: If this is true, the Israeli intelligence on Iran is spooky good. And the Iranians were asleep at the switch.

I mean ... seriously? 

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Update: Yeah, seriously:

Has anyone heard from Ali Khamenei? 

Update: Israel may have taken out the entire top of the military command:

Consider this: the talks with the US were going nowhere, and the US had started moving personnel out of the region more than a day ago. How did this not create a red-alert mindset in the IRGC? 

Update: The Times of Israel reports that their top nuclear scientists got killed as well:

Israel believes the chief of Iran’s military, Mohammad Bagheri, other members of the military’s top brass, and senior nuclear scientists were eliminated in the IDF’s opening strikes on Iran, a defense official says.

This sounds too good to be true. If it is true, then it explains why Israel chose to act on its intel now rather than wait around for Iran to build a nuke. 

Update: They went after the ballistic missile sites too, at least those that the IDF knew about:

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When they called this "pre-emptive," the Israelis meant it comprehensively. If the mullahs got caught with their pants down to this extent, they may not survive long even if they literally survive these attacks. Their theocratic rule is based on a claim that Allah has ordained them to rule. This kind of humiliation will likely be fatal to the regime, to the extent it survives in any real form after tonight anyway. 

Update: Even the regime media is reporting that the top commander in the IRGC is dead:

If that's what state-run media is admitting, the reality must be catastrophic for the mullahs. 

Update: The operation is going well enough that the Israelis are beginning to talk about how that happened. The Mossad got an early start in disabling Iranian defenses and missile systems:

The Mossad carried out a series of covert sabotage operations against Iranian air defenses and missile facilities in tandem with the widespread strikes at a number of locations across Iran.

“A senior Israeli official told me that other than airstrikes, the Israeli Mossad, the foreign intelligence agency, conducted several operations inside Iran against Iranian air defenses and against Iranian long-range missiles,” Axios reporter Barak Ravid tells CNN.

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That likely started in the last couple of days. How successful were these efforts? We may find out soon enough, if Iran can muster a retaliatory attack at all. And if they try, the Mossad may have left them some surprises. 

Update: They got Soleimani's replacement too:

If even half of these reports turn out to be true, it may be one of the worst losses in war by any nation at any one time. 

Tags: FOREIGN POLICY IRAN ISRAEL NATIONAL SECURITY TERRORISM

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