Israel to refrain from attacking Iran's nuclear sites, focus on military targets, sources say

Israel is not expected to attack Iran’s nuclear program but rather focus on various kinds of military bases and intelligence sites, The Jerusalem Post has learned, following a New York Times report on the issue.

Confronted with the Times report, sources did not deny the thrust of it, which predicted that Israel’s retaliation against Iran for its massive October 1 strike on the Jewish state would fall more in the medium range of attack scenarios.

Further, the Post understands that Israel’s attack on Iran – which virtually all top Israeli officials have publicly promised – will still be much more substantial than its narrower retaliation on April 19, when Iran’s S-300 anti-aircraft missile system was damaged.

Despite being presented with the idea that the current context could be a once-in-50-years opportunity to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, sources indicated that attacking Iran’s nuclear program would not necessarily be consistent with the “goals of the war” as set by the security cabinet.

For example, while the most stated goal of the war is to defeat Hamas, and returning Israel’s northern residents to the Lebanon border in security has also been discussed a lot lately, another formal goal is not to be dragged into a regional war, especially with Iran, the Post understands.

Worries of a regional war with Iran

In other words, getting drawn into a regional war with Iran – something the security cabinet, the IDF, the US, and most of the West are worried could happen if Israel would strike Iran’s nuclear facilities – could significantly distract and impair Jerusalem’s ability to finish off Hamas and achieve a more secure situation with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Post has learned that some top Israeli officials view Iran’s second attack on October 1 (after its first attack over April 13-14) not as an indication of a readiness by Tehran to get into a broader war but as an attempt to rebalance its own deterrence from Israel after the IDF has managed to substantially eliminate its two largest “insurance policies”: Hezbollah and Hamas.

According to the Islamic Republic’s security doctrine before October 7, it could always use Hezbollah and Hamas as threats to hold over Israel should Jerusalem consider attacking its nuclear sites or taking other actions to thwart Iranian ambitions in the region that went beyond what it was ready to tolerate.

Still, the idea that Israel would not use this opportunity – that Iran attacked the country directly for a second time in six months, this time with over 180 ballistic missiles that caused damage to multiple Israeli air force bases and a number of other sensitive sites – to finally strike Tehran’s nuclear program defies decades of statements by some top Israeli leaders.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have both presented removing the Iranian nuclear threat from hovering over Jerusalem’s neck as one of the greatest purposes of their time in public service.

If those officials and other members of the defense establishment have backed off from such an option in favor of attacking Iranian military and intelligence bases, such as possibly ballistic missile facilities, drone facilities, and commanders who coordinated the strikes on Israel, it would mark a dramatic shift toward directly emphasizing Gaza and Lebanon as bigger security issues than Iran.

Even though the war goals have implied this since near the start of the war, many observers believed that Iran’s October 1 attack on Israel, following the attack in April, had altered the playing field, forcing Iran to be front and center, as it had been before October 7, 2023.

Many US and Western officials have said that Israel cannot destroy Iran’s nuclear program on its own without American help, due to Jerusalem lacking a mega bunker buster bomb to destroy the Islamic Republic’s underground nuclear facilities at Fordow and Natanz.

But the Post has previously published that multiple smaller bombs could be dropped repeatedly in the same area to cause an underground cave-in, not dissimilar conceptually from how Israel killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah deep underground on September 27 using 85 bombs.

Fordow is a good deal deeper underground than Nasrallah’s lair, but such a cave-in could heavily slow and damage Iran’s nuclear progress.

In addition, other key nuclear facilities, including at Natanz, Isfahan, Arak, and elsewhere, are above ground.

Whether Iran would then double its efforts to make a nuclear weapon is a source of significant debate, but there are more observers who support risking such a scenario, given that Tehran’s actions of attacking Israel directly twice and causing the IAEA nuclear inspectors to go “blind” for three-and-a-half years in many areas have presented it as an actor that is more ready to take on risk than was thought before 2024.