-Analysis-
All signs indicate that the current Israel-Iran ceasefire — which was imposed by the United States after 12 days of war in late June — will not last and has merely returned the conflict to the shadows. Indeed, most experts believe Israel has continued pursuing secret operations inside Iran without admitting to anything.
Since the end of the war, several gas explosions have occurred in Iran, though the authorities in Tehran have not blamed Israel. On Monday, an explosion at a residential building injured seven people in the Iranian city of Qom, Iranian state media reported, with the fire department blaming a gas leak and Qom’s governor ruling out any “terrorist” action, Reuters news agency reported.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
Yet these explosions may indeed be a continuation of this “shadow war” between the two countries, which experts suggest could soon return to the open. Israeli, European and American officials all believe that both Iran and Israel are preparing to resume their war.
In its reporting on Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent visit to Washington and meetings with Donald Trump, Israeli daily Israel Hayom observed that the Israeli prime minister returned to Jerusalem with the U.S. president’s conditional green light on again attacking Iran. Tel Aviv-based Maariv also wrote the 12-day war was but the prelude to a longer conflict.
Avigdor Lieberman, an Israeli opposition lawmaker and former minister, believes the country must change its priorities, as Tehran was busy preparing for a retaliatory war that will be more complex and difficult than the June strikes. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has said his country is making plans to completely neutralize the Iran’s nuclear program, with attacks that would deprive it of the ability to rebuild its facilities in the short term.
State of Iran nuclear facilities
Experts have disputed Trump’s claims that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been obliterated, stating the damage has set back Tehran’s enrichment activities by months only. They fear the country’s stock of 60% enriched uranium, which was likely not destroyed in the recent attacks, could suffice to make several nuclear bombs as well as “dirty bombs.”
One of those experts is International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi, who has said that the recent strikes certainly did grave damage to installations but that Iran still had the facilities, experience and experts to relaunch enrichment within a short time. He warned that enrichment could restart within three to four months.
Iran is still a threat to Israel’s existence.
Grossi has been declared persona non grata and worse inside Iran, where the regime has for long suspected UN nuclear inspectors of passing state secrets to the West. Ali Larijani, a senior advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has called for Grossi to be arrested and tried. Another Khamenei confidant, Hossein Shariatmadari — who is editor-in chief of the hardline Kayhan paper, which usurped this paper’s publishing licence in 1979 — wants him executed.
Specialists remain unsure how much real damage U.S. bunker-busting bombs dropped on the Fordow nuclear facility had caused. Experts from the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) recently told the press they did not yet have precise information about the damage and were still waiting for wait for data.
Israel Hayom reported, citing Israeli experts, that a significant portion of Iran’s 60% enriched uranium had not been destroyed. In this regard, Israeli military’s chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said that “the list of goals that we had prepared before the war was very long, but unfortunately we were not able to achieve all of them in these 12 days, so Iran is still a threat to Israel’s existence.”
Concerns for renewed conflict
Menashe Amir, a veteran Persian language broadcaster on Israel Radio International, also believes that to destroy the regime’s entire nuclear system the war would have had to continue a few more days, but Trump prevented it. Amir also believes the conflict will restart in the near future.
Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, a prominent Arab analyst who may be considered an unofficial spokesman for the Saudi monarchy, has written that the halt to fighting should not be considered its end, but an interlude between two scenes.
Recently — and on more than one occasion — Netanyahu has compared Iran’s nuclear program to cancer saying Israel’s “mission is to bring its full destruction, like cancer, you remove cancer… Maybe it will be back one day, but I believe we are delaying them for a long, long time… We are going to do a root canal here.”
Meanwhile, concerns are growing among European countries. The head of the French foreign intelligence service (DGSE), Nicolas Lerner, recently told French television that while various stages of Iran’s enrichment system had been “seriously hit and very seriously damaged,” there was as yet no “perfect, total evaluation” of the final impact of June strikes. He said Iran’s “industrial-scale” program was now delayed by “many months,” but that in any case, concern remained about it pursuing enrichment on a more restricted scale and in entirely furtive conditions.
Another European official has told Kayhan-London that EU states could only restart nuclear talks with Tehran after a “precise assessment of the damage done to Iran’s nuclear facilities,” as this information “can determine the direction of the negotiations.”
Rearmament efforts
Another possible sign of impending war is in the two sides’ rearmament efforts. In Washington, Netanyahu was able to obtain Trump’s approval on receiving advanced munitions and missile defense systems.
Separately, the London-based news website Middle East Eye, citing an informed Arab official, reported that Chinese surface-to-air missile systems were delivered to Tehran shortly after the ceasefire was declared and that the United States and its Arab allies were aware of Tehran’s efforts to boost its air defenses. The Chinese embassy in Tel Aviv, of course, rejected the report, telling Israel Hayom in a statement that the contents of the report were “incorrect.”
Iran has also resumed talks with China to buy its J-10C fighter jets.
Iran has also resumed talks with China to buy its J-10C fighter jets, paying for them in crude oil. The Chinese jets attracted considerable attention worldwide after their successful performance in the conflict in May between Pakistan and India. Hong Kong’s Tsingtao Daily daily observed that Iran and China failed several times previously to reach a purchase deal for the jets. The last meeting on the issue was in Qingdao on June 25, on the sidelines of a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The U.S. weekly Newsweek is also seeing signs of a possible return to war in Israel calling up reservists, expansion of Israeli jet patrols over Lebanon, and recent attacks on Houthi positions in Yemen. One final sign are Iran’s attempts to reactivate its regional militias, which did next to nothing against Israel in June.