Israel Bombs Tehran

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WW3 would happen only if China, North Korea and Russia will declare war on US/Israel for the sake of Iran.
Which will never happen.

Iran had no choice but to retaliate against Israel’s sweeping strikes on its nuclear facilities and targeted killings of senior officials, experts of the region said Friday, risking an escalation that could drag the United States into a spiraling conflict.

This left the Islamic Republic with few options, having been weakened by a succession of Israeli strikes over the past year, experts warn.

One scenario, according to experts who spoke to NBC News on Friday, is that Iran strikes a combination of Israel, international Jewish sites, U.S. allies in the Gulf and even American interests themselves, thus forcing the United States' hand to retaliate and become involved in the conflict.

“From the Iranian perspective, this is a declaration of war from the Israeli side,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a Berlin think tank. “The Israelis have surpassed all the rules of engagement between the two countries as they stood.”

Many inside Iran believe it’s “now or never” for retaliation, Geranmayeh said. That’s because, with so many senior figures taken out, there will be fears “that next on the hit list may be Khamenei himself,” she added, referring to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

It’s hard to overstate the potential implications, according to Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a British defense and security think tank.

“Pandora’s box has been cast wide open,” she said in an emailed briefing. “What comes next may define the regional security order for years to come.”

Though greatly weakened, Iran still has a huge arsenal at its disposal.

It has the Middle East’s largest and most diverse stockpile of ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as drones, according to Washington’s Council on Foreign Relations think tank and others.

This includes an estimated 3,000 ballistic missiles alone, per the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a nonprofit foundation in Washington aimed at limiting the spread of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.

What comes next will depend on how Iran plans to use its arsenal— whether exclusively against Israeli targets or also those of the U.S., Israel’s most important and powerful ally.

There are American bases in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain.

Trump has not shied away from the U.S.'s close ties to Israel's military.

The "United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come," he posted on Truth Social on Friday.

Even before Israel’s strike, President Donald Trump announced some personnel were being moved out of the region because “it could be a dangerous place.”

Afterward, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad reminded Americans across the Middle East of the “need for caution” and to “know the location of the nearest shelter in the event of hostilities.”

Iran said it does not buy Washington’s assurances, and that the attack was impossible without Washington’s “coordination and approval,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.

That view is shared by Vali R. Nasr, a professor of Middle East studies and international affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, in Washington.

“It is difficult to believe that Israel would and could have attacked at this scale without U.S. knowledge and green light,” Nasr, a former senior adviser to Washington’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, posted on X.

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If Iran did decide to retaliate against American interests, that would likely mean some form of “major creep” into Iraq or the Gulf, Geranmayeh, at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told NBC News. And that’s less likely, according to her and other analysts, because of the rapprochement between Tehran and previous foes such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar in recent years.

Despite Israel's overwhelming military superiority, Netanyahu could be in a tricky spot, as he does not have the capabilities to eliminate Iran’s nuclear facilities alone, according to Dina Esfandiary, the Middle East geoeconomics lead for Bloomberg Economics, Bloomberg’s internal research division.

With its U.S.-funded armed forces, Israel “can do considerable damage” she said. “But it can’t be successful” in its stated objective of “crippling Iran’s nuclear program” without “the U.S. coming on board,” Esfandiary said.

Principally, it doesn’t have the means to target the deeply buried underground facilities of Iran’s nuclear program, experts say.

In short, as Rouzbeh Parsi, director of the Middle East program at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, put it on X: “Israel has always been capable of starting this war. But it has been equally clear that it cannot finish it on its own”.

Iran is furious but why would you attack a country that has nuclear weapons when you don't? when Israel can't afford a conventional war against you

Israel has nukes.

Israel and the US carried out a multi-faceted misinformation campaign in recent days to convince Iran that a strike on its nuclear facilities was not imminent, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Friday.

The official asserted that US President Donald Trump was an active participant in the ruse, and knew about the military operation since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to move forward with the strike on Monday.

Netanyahu and Trump spoke by phone for 40 minutes that same day. At the time, unnamed officials leaked to Israel’s Channel 12 that Trump had told Netanyahu in a “dramatic” conversation to remove an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites from the agenda as negotiations continue. According to the TV report, Trump stressed that there would be no discussions on a military strike until the president concluded that nuclear talks with Iran had failed.

This, the Israeli official argued on Friday, had all been untrue.

The next day, Netanyahu announced in a video statement that there had been “significant progress” in hostage talks with Hamas. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar echoed the message in a joint statement alongside his Zambian counterpart.

Israeli reporters were told by officials that Thursday’s cabinet meeting would deal with hostage talks.

The problem was, foreign officials couldn’t figure out what progress Israel was speaking about, as there hadn’t been a major development in efforts to secure a deal. An Arab official familiar with the hostage negotiations, who spoke with The Times of Israel speculated at the time that Netanyahu was expressing public optimism to “spook” ultra-Orthodox lawmakers against voting Wednesday to dissolve his coalition.

But the Israeli official indicated that this too was part of the misdirection. Israel wanted Iran to think it was focused primarily on getting a hostage deal, not preparing for a strike.

At the same time, Israel had to sell Iran a believable story, and not ignore the nuclear issue. Instead, Israel wanted Tehran to think it was still debating the matter of a potential strike with the White House.

It thus announced that Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Mossad Chief David Barnea would take off for talks with US special envoy Steve Witkoff ahead of the next round of talks between Tehran and Washington, set for Sunday, claiming the trip was meant to “clarify Israel’s position.”

The Prime Minister’s Office wouldn’t even answer a direct question from The Times of Israel as to where the purported meeting was to take place. It is now clear that the meeting was never on the schedule.

Israel clearly hoped the Iranians would believe there was no way it would attack before the Sunday talks.

On all fronts, Israel sought to put forth an air of business as usual. Netanyahu’s office put out a statement on Thursday stressing that despite some media reports to the contrary amid the rising regional tensions, he would not be canceling his weekend vacation in the north.

Netanyahu’s son Avner is scheduled to be married next week, an event that also led many to believe an imminent strike was unlikely. Preparations for the event went ahead. On Thursday, police erected iron roadblocks and barbed wire fences around a 100-meter (109-yard) perimeter around the upscale Ronit’s Farm event hall in Kibbutz Yakum, north of Tel Aviv. That ceremony is sure to be delayed now.

Trump contributed to the effort. “He played the game together with Israel,” said the Israeli official. “It was a whole coordination.”

Trump said Thursday that an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites “could very well happen” but advised against it, saying the possibility of a deal was “fairly close” if Tehran compromised on its atomic ambitions in ongoing talks with the US.

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee also said in an interview Thursday that Israel was unlikely to attack Iran without a green light from Washington.

It is too early to say definitively that the misinformation campaign worked. But the opening act of the Israeli air campaign against Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile sites has been stunningly effective, and it would seem that senior Iranian commanders eliminated in their homes were not anticipating any danger.

And, perhaps surprisingly for Israel, ministers did not leak anything related to the plans, and played their parts well. It is a discipline that has been noticeably absent from Israel’s fight against Hamas in Gaza.

Iran will see this as a battle for survival
Prime Minister Netanyahu has opened another open-front war.

He says it will take “as many days as it will take” and he’s been clear that his ambition is not just to destroy Iran's ability to make a nuclear weapon; he also wants to bring down the regime.

The Iranian regime is going to see this as a battle for survival - this is something they have also been preparing for.

They will throw everything they have at this war.

Their attacks so far have been limited. The Israeli intelligence assessment seems to be that despite the damage to Iran's arsenal after the last 20 months of war in the region, Iran still has about 2,000 ballistic missiles and a capacity to produce more.

They’re now using them to hit strategic targets which are in or near populated centres.

In Tel Aviv, for example, they seem to be aiming at the defence ministry and other military sites but they are landing short and hitting residential areas. Either deliberately or accidentally there is a risk of mass casualties - in both Israel and Iran.

But Iran does not want to draw in America directly - Iran's Supreme Leader knows that militarily and politically Iran cannot win. But as this war escalates, Iranian military officials are now warning of attacks against U.S. bases in the region.

They had always believed their bulwark against the kind of war has been one American president after another saying to Netanyahu: "No, you cannot attack Iran's nuclear facilities, we will try to find a diplomatic way out of it - that is simply too dangerous an option".

President Trump says he did not give a green light - but even if it was just amber, this war has been unleashed, with no clear sign as to how and when it will end.

And they will never use them, they cant...its only a deterrent