Israel is feeling victorious after its 12-day war with Iran, culminating in the U.S. strikes on underground nuclear sites that significantly degraded and rolled back Tehran’s nuclear program. While the country is mourning 29 civilian deaths — in addition to seven soldiers killed in Gaza this week — and thousands have lost their homes in missile strikes, nearly two-thirds of Israelis, according to a new poll, think their country won the war.

But there have been some cautionary signals about the state of Iran’s nuclear program since the fighting ended, most notably a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency report from the U.S. that suggested — with reportedly low confidence — that the bombings only set back Iran’s nuclear program by a few months. President Donald Trump, at the NATO summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday, called the DIA intelligence report “fake news” and cited a more favorable Israeli intelligence report as being more reliable. CIA Director John Ratcliffe said Thursday that “a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes. This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”

Further dampening the mood was Trump angrily and publicly pressuring Israel not to aggressively respond to a ceasefire violation that came within hours of a volley of missiles that killed several Israelis right before the ceasefire went into effect.

But as Israeli officials and national security experts have taken the time to assess the geopolitical landscape, the overall picture is one of significant military success. 

Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, the IDF chief of staff said that “based on the assessments of senior officers in IDF Intelligence, the damage to [Iran’s] nuclear program is … systemic … severe, broad and deep, and pushed back by years.”  

Similarly, in a statement shared by both Israel’s government and the White House, the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission said that “the devastating U.S. strike on Fordow destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable. We assess that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes … have set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.”

The Trump administration and Israeli officials have an interest in presenting the mission in Iran as successful, which may lead some to trust the intelligence leaks over their statements. However, their assessment of the DIA report as “flat-out wrong,” as the White House put it, is backed up by several experts surveyed by Jewish Insider – though most cautioned that it’s unlikely anyone knows the full extent of the damage yet.

David Albright, president and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, published an extensive report on the damage, stating that “Israel’s and U.S. attacks have effectively destroyed Iran’s centrifuge enrichment program. It will be a long time before Iran comes anywhere near the capability it had before the attack,” though there are “non-destroyed parts … [that] can be used in the future to produce weapon-grade uranium.” 

Albright cited evidence relating to the sites bombed by the U.S. indicating that “the elimination of, or severe damage to, the majority of the centrifuges at the Natanz site, significant damage to the Fordow underground site, destruction and damage to several facilities at the Isfahan Nuclear Complex, including one used in the conversion of enriched uranium to uranium metal and another that converts natural uranium into uranium hexafluoride.” 

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JI that the DIA report was assessed as a “low-confidence” analysis and is based only on satellite imagery. “That’s part of the puzzle, but it’s not enough to go on. It gives some sense of what happened above ground, but not a sense of what happened below ground, and that’s the real question,” said Dubowitz.

Even using the satellite imagery, Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, told JI that “based on the pictures, it looks a lot worse than the DIA said.” Like the DIA, Citrinowicz was skeptical of Trump’s claims of “obliteration” of the nuclear facilities at Fordow, but he said it appears significantly damaged. “It’s a matter of time. We need to wait patiently,” he said, adding that even the Iranians do not appear to know the extent of the damage yet.

To have a better sense of the damage, “we would need the International Atomic Energy Agency to go there, or an Israeli intelligence assessment on the ground or signal intelligence,” Dubowitz said.

Gerald Steinberg, founder and president of NGO Monitor and a nuclear arms control expert, argued to JI that “estimates of the time it might take Iran to repair enough of the very fragile components are even more speculative” than current damage assessments. 

Still, some of the results are already clear. Steinberg explained that “the banks of rapidly spinning centrifuges used to convert natural uranium into enriched material used to create weapons are highly sensitive to shockwaves caused by earthquakes and nearby high-energy bombs.”

Dubowitz pointed out that centrifuges are so sensitive that about 1,000 were destroyed by an Israeli cyberattack, making them spin too fast. “It’s hard to believe many centrifuges survived a massive crack in a mountain.” 

IDF Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and the former head of the research division of the Israel Defense Forces’ Intelligence Directorate, noted to JI that while Iran may be able to rebuild parts of its nuclear program from whatever remains of it, the Isfahan conversion facility was purchased from China, and Iran does not know how to build one itself. He posited that China would be unlikely to construct a new one for the Islamic Republic after the IAEA said it had a nuclear weapons program in violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty.

Steinberg said that, in light of the lack of solid information a few days after the U.S. strikes on Iran, he views articles about the DIA assessment citing “anonymous officials who may or may not have read the actual report” in outlets that are highly critical of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “as more political spin than strategic analyses.”

Dubowitz similarly said that “one can speculate that it was clearly done to damage the president … The leak suggested a political motivation. Welcome to Washington, D.C.!”

As to possible spin from the other direction, cheering on the strikes, Citrinowicz accused the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission of putting out a statement “to support Trump. They’re trying to stabilize the narrative that [the nuclear facilities are] obliterated.”

Dubowitz, however, said that the IAEC is “very careful, professional and serious. There is no way they are putting out a report intended to spin anything or help the prime minister sell something that is not true.” 

Looking to the future, Israel “needs to remain vigilant,” Kuperwasser said. Israel “needs to eliminate any new kind of air defense Iran will try to build, in order to maintain freedom of action in the air [above Iran].”

“Israel needs quality intelligence about the details of what Iran is planning and how it may try to advance to break out and build nuclear weapons. We need to advocate that the Americans enter an agreement so that [Iran] cannot enrich uranium or have highly enriched uranium stockpiles, with close ‘anywhere, anytime’ supervision by American inspectors. Israel should make clear what needs to be done to ensure Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon in the future,” Kuperwasser added.

In addition to the lack of clarity about what remains of Iran’s nuclear program, Kuperwasser said there is an “intelligence gap” about the location of Iran’s remaining missile launchers. “We shot many down, up to the very last minute, but we must admit that there are many we did not shoot.” 

Still, Kuperwasser said, “There’s nothing to do now. The nuclear sites are done. If we knew where more launchers were located, we would have shot them.”

Former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said that the U.S. cannot allow Iran to rebuild its ballistic missile program. “If they get further along than they were, they could attack Europe or the United States … I think it’s part and parcel of the Iranian nuclear program,” he explained, because ballistic missiles would be used to launch the nuclear weapon. 

Speaking on the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy’s new “Mideast Horizons”  podcast, O’Brien painted a broader picture of the 12-day Israel-Iran war than the specifics of what remains of Iran’s nuclear facilities. (The writer is a senior fellow at the Misgav Institute and co-hosts its podcast.)

“This radical Shia regime in Iran has been a cloud and a pall over the region for 40 years, and the nuclear issue was very dangerous, because if Iran had developed a nuclear weapon, they said that Israel is a one-bomb state … They could [have] eliminate[d] Israel,” he said.

“But it was also a threat to the Gulf monarchies,” O’Brien added. “If Iran had gotten a nuclear weapon, there’s no doubt in my mind that Saudi Arabia would have immediately gone nuclear … and the UAE would have probably developed nuclear weapons very, very quickly. There’s no way the Turks … would have stayed conventional. And you got Egypt … So we would have had a nuclear arms race in the most dangerous part of the world.”

Kuperwasser argued that one significant achievement that has emerged from the war is “breaking down barriers” in demonstrating that the U.S. and Israel are willing and able to successfully attack if the threat from the Islamic Republic becomes acute.

Israel “attacked and had aerial superiority in Iran for nearly two weeks and could have continued for as long as [it] wanted, had international legitimacy and not just American support, but involvement,” he said. “The change in mindset is more important than the physical damage. Iran can build a new Fordow in three or four years; they were already working on more underground facilities, but what is the point if they know that the U.S. has an unlimited number of bombs that they can drop anywhere and are willing to use them?” 

Kuperwasser added a caveat: “As long as we have President Trump. After that, I don’t know. But we are at the beginning of his term, and that is an important asset [for Israel].” 

O’Brien said that Iran is unlikely to maintain a comprehensive ceasefire, even if it isn’t shooting directly at Israel. 

“The Iranians are always in the Axis of Resistance, with Hamas, Hezbollah, Kataib Hezbollah [in Iraq],” he said. “They’re always very reticent to live up to their word and to agree to a ceasefire because they think they can get an advantage in pressing their violence against Israel and against the United States.”

Still, O’Brien was hopeful that the ceasefire “will stay and a lot of the death and destruction that we’ve seen in Tel Aviv, but also in Tehran, will end.”

Iran is unlikely to initiate attacks against the U.S. after the American strike on Islamic Republic nuclear sites, but it will continue to launch missiles at Israel, experts told Jewish Insider on Sunday.

Hours after the U.S. bombed nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan in Iran, Raz Zimmt, director of the Iran program at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, told JI that he doesn’t “identify a great desire — to say the least — of the Iranians to escalate with the U.S. … If they have a sharp reaction, it could drag in the Americans, who said that the matter is finished for them after they strike Iran. The U.S. has capabilities that could threaten the survival of the regime.”

Zimmt said it was likely that the Iranians would have a “symbolic reaction,” possibly targeting a U.S. military base in the region but with advance warning, similar to their response to the killing of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020.

“We shouldn’t underestimate Iran’s capabilities — their missiles are a big concern — but those who think we’re on the verge of World War III and that all the American bases will burn need to understand that the central goal of the Iranian regime is to survive, so I don’t think they’ll do that in the foreseeable future,” Zimmt added.

However, he said, hours after Iran shot 25 missiles at Israel on Sunday morning, causing damage in central Israel and Haifa, “Israel is another story. I think [Iran will] continue what they’re doing in Israel.” 

Oded Ailam, a former senior official in Israel’s defense establishment and a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told JI that Iran may choose not to escalate with the U.S. and instead “take out their anger on Israel with an increase in ballistic missiles,” but he said an Iranian attack on U.S. military targets in the region was still possible.

“The Iranians probably have not decided yet. It can go either way,” he said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X that “we were in negotiations with the U.S. when Israel decided to blow up that diplomacy. This week, we held talks with the E3/EU when the U.S. decided to blow up that diplomacy. What conclusion would you draw?” 

Ailam said that while, in the short term, Iran was unlikely to return to the negotiating table “as a matter of national pride, it would look like a total defeat,” they would probably reenter talks farther down the line.

“I don’t know when it will happen, but I think the Iranians will very cautiously try to reach out to the Americans to negotiate and say they want to try to salvage some uranium enrichment for civilian needs,” he said.

Zimmt, however, said it was “clear that they won’t go back to negotiations.” 

“The more significant thing in the weeks and days ahead is what they do in the nuclear arena,” he said. “Do they announce that they’re quitting the [Non-Proliferation Treaty]? In the end, I think their decision is connected to the question to which we don’t have an answer: what capabilities they still have.”

The lesson that Iran likely learned from the past week and a half, Zimmt posited, is that “being on the verge of having a nuclear weapon is not enough. They need to have a nuclear weapon. I’m not sure they can do it, though.”

“If, theoretically, they can use a few hundred centrifuges that remain and a few hundred kilos of uranium and try to break out [to weapons-grade enrichment] in a hidden place, they may consider it. I doubt they’ll do it now, when Israeli planes are flying over their heads, but I assume they would wait some time and reconsider their nuclear strategy,” Zimmt explained.

Initial satellite photos published by the Associated Press showed damage to the entrances of the nuclear facility in Fordow, which is under a mountain, as well as damage to the mountain itself. David Albright, president and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, wrote on X that the photos appear to show that the bombs were dropped on a ventilation shaft into Fordow’s underground halls. 

Ailam said that “the damage is very extensive.” According to his analysis, the attacks “neutralized” Iran’s ability to use its 400-kg stockpile of uranium enriched to 60% purity and turn it into weapons-grade (90% enriched) uranium. 

“They don’t have the capability because they don’t have the centrifuges anymore,” he said. “It’s not terminal; if we want to ensure the nuclear weapons program is totally destroyed, we need to strike the 400 kg or reach an agreement in which it is removed from Iran, but this has significantly damaged the Iranians’ ability to rapidly reach military-grade enrichment.”

U.S. intelligence agencies said that the stockpile, held at the Isfahan facility, was harmed, but Israel has not yet released a similar assessment, Ailam said.

However, Zimmt said that it is harder to know the extent of the damage to the nuclear program without more extensive satellite photos of the nuclear sites.

“The Iranians are trying to present a picture that it was not significantly damaged, but there really is not much to rely on yet other than IDF reports,” he said.

IDF Spokesperson Effie Defrin said on Sunday that the Israeli army “has more targets. We are prepared for the campaign to continue and must prepare for any developments.”

Ailam said that Israel “did not entirely meet [its] goals. It was mostly Israel, but with the help of the U.S., we partially removed the immediate threat from the nuclear program and the massive ballistic system and [Iran’s] ability to manufacture 300 ballistic missiles a day. That was an existential threat to Israel.” 

“But we are not at the point where we can say we removed all the threats and finished the whole bank of targets. It’s a huge country,” he added.

Zimmt said that the U.S. strike on Fordow was “the cherry on top” of Israel’s war against Iran, and that it’s time to wind down.

“Of course we can continue. We can always try to further degrade the nuclear program, but … as long as the goal was, foremost, to severely damage the nuclear program, the goal was — if not already achieved — it’s very close … I think the time has come to think of how to end this, even if it’s unilateral. If they attack, we can react, but we need to aim to finish in the coming days,” Zimmt said.

As for talk about regime change, Zimmt said it would be “impossible” through airstrikes. 

Ailam said that every major attack on Iran creates “cracks in the regime’s wall and stability, and reveals this regime to be an empty vessel.” However, he said that there are not powerful enough forces within Iran that have risen up against the regime yet. “When it will happen is hard to say, but the more [the regime] suffers blows, the closer it gets.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised President Donald Trump for his “bold decision” to strike three Iranian nuclear facilities located deep underground on Saturday.

Netanyahu made the comments in a video address posted shortly after Trump announced the completion of the operation targeting Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan, three nuclear sites that are deeply entrenched underground. 

“Your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history. In Operation Rising Lion, Israel has done truly amazing things, but in tonight’s action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, America has been truly unsurpassed. It has done what no other country on Earth could do. History will record that President Trump acted to deny the world’s most dangerous regime, the world’s most dangerous weapons,” Netanyahu said. 

The Israeli prime minister argued that Trump’s “leadership today has created a pivot of history that can help lead the Middle East and beyond to a future of prosperity and peace.”

“President Trump and I often say ‘peace through strength.’ First comes strength, then comes peace. And tonight, President Trump and the United States acted with a lot of strength. President Trump, I thank you, the people of Israel thank you, the forces of civilization thank you,” Netanyahu added.

Trump’s decision to carry out the strikes came just over a week after Israel began its military operation to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and before the end of the two-week period that the Trump administration had provided for a decision on potential strikes. The decision also came as analysts and lawmakers on Capitol Hill warned that Israel lacked the capacity to destroy deeply entrenched nuclear facilities and would need the U.S. to get involved.

The president said on Saturday that the U.S. dropped six bunker-busting bombs on Fordow and launched a total of 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. submarines at Natanz and Esfahan. He said that all three facilities were destroyed completely.

President Donald Trump announced Saturday evening that the U.S. had carried out military strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites earlier Saturday.

“We have completed our very successful attack on three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,” Trump announced on Truth Social. “All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home.”

The three sites, particularly Fordow, are deeply entrenched underground, and analysts believe that Israel lacked the capacity to destroy the Fordow site on its own. Fox News host Sean Hannity said that Trump told him that the U.S. had dropped six bunker-busting bombs on Fordow and launched a total of 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. submarines at Natanz and Esfahan. He said that all three facilities were destroyed completely.

The strikes come before the end of the two-week period that the Trump administration had provided for a decision on potential strikes. 

In brief remarks from the White House, Trump said that the strikes were a “spectacular military success” and that the sites had been “completely and totally obliterated.”

Trump threatened further military action if Iran does not agree to make peace, warning Tehran that there are many other targets the U.S. can still hit “in a matter of minutes.” 

“If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier,” Trump said. “This cannot continue. There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.”

He also highlighted Iran’s four-decade history of attacks against U.S. personnel.

“I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu,” Trump continued. “We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel.”

Dana Stroul, the research director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East under the Biden administration, told Jewish Insider that the “failed talks in Europe on Friday likely convinced [Trump] that diplomacy, at least in the short term, was futile.”

“The threat of a conventional war with the United States is what Iran’s leaders presumably fear most,” Stroul said. “For the past week of Israel’s operations, the Iranians have only responded with ballistic missiles and drones aimed at Israel. The real risk now is that Iranian leadership expands the scope of their retaliation, including aiming missiles at the U.S. and its partners, militia attacks on US forces, and potentially the targeting of energy infrastructure throughout the Middle East.”

She said that the “most pressing strategic question is whether US strikes make negotiations with the Iranian regime more or less likely, and whether Iran’s leaders are now more convinced of their need for a nuclear weapon or are finally willing to make concessions.”

Andrea Stricker, the deputy director of the nonproliferation and biodefense program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JI that further operations of some kind will likely be necessary to eliminate stockpiles of highly enriched uranium in tunnels at Esfahan.

She said that could entail more strikes, or a U.S. or Israeli commando operation to recover the nuclear material.

So far, the strikes are being supported by most congressional Republicans, while most Democrats are opposed, with many saying that the action was unconstitutional given that Congress did not authorize it.

“The regime in Iran, which has committed itself to bringing ‘death to America’ and wiping Israel off the map, has rejected all diplomatic pathways to peace. The mullahs’ misguided pursuit of nuclear weapons must be stopped,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said. “As we take action tonight to ensure a nuclear weapon remains out of reach for Iran, I stand with President Trump and pray for the American troops and personnel in harm’s way.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said the strikes “should serve as a clear reminder to our adversaries and allies that President Trump means what he says.”

“The President gave Iran’s leader every opportunity to make a deal, but Iran refused to commit to a nuclear disarmament agreement,” Johnson continued. “The President’s decisive action prevents the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, which chants “Death to America,” from obtaining the most lethal weapon on the planet. This is America First policy in action.”

Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said: ”This war is Israel’s war not our war, but Israel is one of our strongest allies and is disarming Iran for the good of the world,” adding that the strike would “put an end to [Iran’s] ambitions” of destroying Israel and killing all Jews and could only have been carried out by the United States.

“This is not the start of a forever war. There will not be American boots on the ground in Iran,” Risch added, pushing back on concerns that anti-interventionists on both sides of the aisle have raised about a potential strike. “This was a precise, limited strike, which was necessary and by all accounts was very successful. As President Trump has stated, now is the time for peace.”

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also praised Trump’s decision and said, “We now have very serious choices ahead to provide security for our citizens and our allies and stability for the middle-east.”

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), one of the most pro-Israel congressional Democrats, said “this was the correct move” by Trump and said he’s “grateful for and salute the finest military in the world.”

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), another outspoken Israel supporter, said, “The world can achieve peace in the Middle East, or it can accept a rogue nuclear weapons program—but it cannot have both.”

“The decisive destruction of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant prevents the dangerous spread of nuclear weapons in the world’s most combustible region,” Torres continued. “No one truly committed to nuclear nonproliferation should mourn the fall of Fordow.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who was championing legislation in the House aiming to block U.S. military action against Iran, condemned the strike as unconstitutional in a X post which was re-shared by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), another isolationist House Republican, similarly questioned the strike’s constitutionality.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), who is leading the Senate version of Massie’s resolution, asserted that the American people are “overwhelmingly opposed” to the prospect of war with Iran and suggested that the strikes were not necessary to set back Iran’s nuclear program.

“What made Trump recklessly decide to rush and bomb today?” Kaine continued. “Horrible judgment. I will push for all Senators to vote on whether they are for this third idiotic Middle East war.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said Trump had “dramatically increased” the risk of war in the Middle East and endangered U.S. troops.

“President Trump misled the country about his intentions, failed to seek congressional authorization … and risks American entanglement in a potentially disastrous war in the Middle East,” Jeffries said, adding that the administration must explain its decision to the country and brief Congress.

“Donald Trump shoulders complete and total responsibility for any adverse consequences that flow from his unilateral military action,” Jeffries continued.

Several House Democrats called for Congress to immediately return to Washington to vote on Massie’s resolution.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the strikes were a “clear violation of the Constitution” and that it is “impossible to know at this stage whether this operation accomplished its objectives.”

“We also don’t know if this will lead to further escalation in the region and attacks against our forces, events that could easily pull us even deeper into a war in the Middle East,” Himes said.

Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) called the strikes “an unambiguous impeachable offense.”

Since the Israeli strike on Iran’s air defenses in October, Jerusalem has sought a green light, or something close to it, from Washington to strike the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites. President Donald Trump, however, repeatedly told Israel to hold off as he pursued a diplomatic agreement with Tehran to stop its enrichment program. 

Now, after the Iranian nuclear program has continued apace and Trump has voiced frustration over Tehran’s intransigence, it seems that Jerusalem’s patience for diplomacy is running out.

Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Mossad chief David Barnea will be meeting Trump’s top negotiator Steve Witkoff on Friday ahead of the sixth round of talks with Iran in Oman on Sunday “in an additional attempt to clarify Israel’s stance,” an official in Jerusalem said, amid persistent reports and strong indications that Israel is prepared to strike Iran.

After a call with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu last week, Trump said that if Tehran does not agree to give up uranium enrichment, the situation will get “very, very dire.” On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that “there have been plenty of indications” that Iran is moving towards weaponization of its nuclear program, and Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the chief of CENTCOM, said that he presented Trump and Hegseth with numerous options to attack Iran if nuclear talks break down. 

Hours later, the State Department began to move some personnel out of Iraq and the military suggested that servicemembers’ families depart the Middle East, while the U.K. warned about a potential “escalation of military activity” in the region. Such evacuations are often the first step to reduce risk ahead of a large-scale military operation. 

Trump told reporters that the evacuations are happening because the Middle East “could be a dangerous place, and we’ll see what happens.” More on this from Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod here.

Kurilla postponed his testimony before the Senate planned for Thursday. Staff at U.S. embassies and consulates throughout the Middle East were told to take safety precautions, and those stationed in Israel were told not to leave the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, Jerusalem or Beersheva.

Multiple news outlets published reports citing anonymous American officials that Israel is ready to strike Iran without help from the U.S. One possible reason for the timing — moving forward even as Washington and Tehran are set to enter a sixth round of talks on Sunday — is that Iran has reportedly begun to rebuild the air defenses that Israel destroyed last year. Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri reportedly said last month: “We are witnessing a remarkable improvement in the capability and readiness of the country’s air defense.”

Ynet’s well-sourced military analyst Yoav Zitun reported early Wednesday that Israel’s threat to attack Iran’s nuclear program is serious, and the most likely scenario is that Israel would strike Iran on its own but coordinate with the U.S. to receive air defense support. That scenario appears consistent with both Trump’s stated reticence to launch an attack, and the events that took place later that day.

In light of the negotiations set to continue on Sunday, some American analysts told JI that Washington could be acting as though it’s preparing for a possible attack to pressure Iran into concessions. 

If the latest moves successfully pressure Iran, Shira Efron, Israel Policy Forum’s director of policy research, told JI that she hoped it would be “an opportunity to get to a bigger, better deal.” 

However, in Israel, it looks like the moves towards a strike on Iran are serious. 

The fact that Netanyahu is expected to go on a two-day vacation in northern Israel this weekend and his son is getting married next week have been counterintuitively pointed to as indications that a strike is imminent — after all, the Hezbollah pager operation happened when the prime minister was in New York, and the strike on Syria’s nuclear facilities in 2007 took place when then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was set to go on vacation in Europe.

“Yesterday, I thought there was no way something is going to happen,” Efron said, but now, “I think we’re at the money time. It’s more serious than we had thought.” 

“Israel clearly no longer thinks an agreement can work, so it all depends on whether Trump told Israel it can do something before” negotiations between Iran and the U.S. break down, Efron said.