Israel attacks Iran

What happens next?

As a response to a developing story this post was updated on the morning of Saturday 14th, with an additional section at the end.

For the past few days we have been going through one of those ‘is it real or is it bluff’ moments with talk of an imminent Israeli military strike against Iran, against the backdrop of planned talks on Sunday in Oman between US and Iran. The argument that this was bluff was that it might be means of extracting more concessions from Iran. The argument that it was not was that the Israelis had no interest in the talks succeeding as any deal would still leave Iran with significant nuclear capacity. Now we know. Israel has inflicted a series of stunning blows against the regime and its nuclear programme and for now Iran seems to be at a loss about how to respond.

The big uncertainty was and remains the US attitude to an Israeli attack. The conventional wisdom (to which I have subscribed) is that there are limits to the damage to Iranian capabilities Israel could inflict without US support, and if the US was not prepared to participate in the strikes then going it alone would be a big gamble, partly in what Iran might do in immediate retaliation but more in its ability and determination to get a weapon should the regime, and key elements of the nuclear programme, survive the shock of the attack.

And the attitude of the US remains uncertain. In this post I provide some background to the current strikes and an assessment of the situation after the first round of strikes, but the most important question is what the US does now. This is for two reasons. First without US participation, Israel may not achieve its objectives. Second, while Iran will want to hit back hard, not only is it not in as good position to do this as it would have been a couple of years ago, but it also may conclude that it would be prudent to temper any escalation to avoid drawing the US into a fight that it already risks losing.