The US has changed the course of the conflict

As Benjamin Netanyahu stood at the podium in the Israeli prime minister’s office this morning, he did not at first address the Israeli people in Hebrew, to update them on the latest, dramatic development in this, his latest war.

Instead he spoke in English, speaking directly to, and lavishing praise upon, US President Donald Trump after the US bombed Iranian nuclear sites.

If Netanyahu’s tone was triumphant, and the smile barely suppressed, it is hardly surprising. He has spent most of his political career obsessed with the threat he believes Iran poses to Israel.

Netanyahu has spent much of the last 15 years attempting to persuade his American allies that only military action (and only American munitions) could destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.

While congratulating Trump for a bold decision that “will change history”, Netanyahu can also congratulate himself on changing the mind of a US president who campaigned against overseas military adventures, and whose supporters were overwhelmingly opposed to joining Israel’s war against Iran.

It should also be noted that Trump’s own intelligence agencies had not shared Israel’s assessment of how quickly Iran could seek to build a nuclear weapon, nor indeed whether it had taken the decision to do so.

Throughout this conflict, which began just 10 days ago, Israel’s government and military have insisted that Israel had the capacity to deal with the Iranian threat on its own.

But it was no secret that only America possessed the massive ordnance capable of dealing with the strongest levels of protection around Iran’s nuclear facilities, particularly at Fordo, built deep inside a mountain.

If the nuclear sites bombed last night are now indeed out of use then Israel’s prime minister will be able to declare his main war aim complete, perhaps bringing this conflict closer to an end. For its part, Iran says it had already moved its nuclear material out.

But without last night’s bombing, Israel would have continued working its way down the long list of targets its air force has spent years drawing up.

Damage would continue to have been inflicted on the Iranian military, on its commanders, on nuclear scientists, on government infrastructure and on the parts of the nuclear programme accessible to Israel’s bombs.

But Netanyahu may have been denied a clear point at which Israel could say the nuclear threat had been definitively neutralised. Perhaps only regime change in Iran could have delivered that moment.

The B2 bombers have undoubtedly changed the trajectory of the war. Whether it escalates even further will depend on how Iran and its allies respond.

Last week Iran’s supreme leader had vowed to hit back at the US were it to enter the war. “The Americans should know that any US military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said.

Only on Saturday the Houthi group in Yemen – staunch Iranian allies – had threatened to attack US ships transiting through the Red Sea if America entered the war.

American military personnel, businesses, and citizens in the region are now potential targets. Iran can strike back in multiple ways, should it so chose, attacking US warships, or bases in the Gulf, and potentially disrupting the flow of oil from the Gulf, and sending the price of petrol soaring.

The US has signalled that, for now, its military action is over, and it has no interest in bringing down the government in Tehran.

That may encourage Iran to limit its response, perhaps attacking US targets in ways that do not lead to high casualties, or using proxies in the region to do the same.

Iran chose to follow this course after Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard leader Qasem Soleimani in 2020. On Saturday night, the US president repeated his own threat to Iran, to use overwhelming force to counter any retaliation.

This morning the whole of the Middle East is holding its breath, waiting to see whether this marks the beginning of the end of this conflict, or the beginning of an even more deadly phase to the war.