Why Did Israel Attack Iran?

Israel carried out a series of airstrikes against Iran on Saturday, the Israeli military said.

The strikes seen and heard by residents in the capital, Tehran, came weeks after Iran fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israel, forcing millions of Israelis to take cover in bomb shelters. Iran said its attack early this month was in retaliation for Israel’s killing of an Iranian commander and several leaders of Iranian-backed groups in the region.

The recent exchanges of airstrikes by Israel and Iran have ruptured their longstanding practice of avoiding direct military clashes.

Here’s a look at everything we know about the Israeli military action against Iran and the events that brought the countries to this point.

What happened?

The Israeli military said in a statement at 2:30 a.m. on Saturday that it was “conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran,” saying it was acting in response to more than a year of attacks on Israel by Iran and its allies across the Middle East. It was a rare acknowledgment by Israel of military activity on Iranian territory.

Residents of Tehran reported hearing explosions in and around the city. Israeli officials said the attack was over by about 5 a.m., after striking about 20 targets.

During an exchange of airstrikes in April, Israel waited only about five days to respond to an Iranian attack similar to Tehran’s Oct. 1 missile barrage.

Various factors seem to have dictated a longer lead-up to a response this time, about 25 days, including talks between Israel and the Biden administration, the arrival of a U.S. air defense system and the Jewish holidays. The coming U.S. election could have also affected Israel’s timing.

Two classified U.S. intelligence documents that were leaked last week described satellite images of Israeli military preparations for a potential strike on Iran and offered insight into American concerns about those plans.

How have Israel and Iran arrived at this point?

For decades, Iran and Israel engaged in what amounted to a shadow war. Iran has used a network of allied groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, to attack Israeli interests, and Israel has assassinated senior Iranian officials and nuclear scientists and staged cyberattacks against Iran. The conflict between them burst into the open this year, in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks last year by Hamas on Israel.

In April, Iran launched a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel — its first direct attack on the country — in retaliation for an Israeli strike on an Iranian Embassy compound in Syria’s capital, Damascus, that killed three top Iranian commanders. Israel largely thwarted the Iranian missile barrage using its air defenses, assisted by the United States and other allies, and then responded with an attack of its own.

Then, in late July, Israeli jets killed a top commander of Hezbollah in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, in retaliation for a rocket attack that killed at least 12 people. One day later, Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an explosion in Tehran.

The Iranian government and Hezbollah vowed to retaliate but, to the surprise of many, Iran took no immediate action.

What were Israel’s potential targets?

After severely weakening the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Hamas, Israel was trying to balance its strategic goals with concerns from its allies, particularly the United States, that a new attack could set off a wider regional war.

The Israeli government had told the Biden administration that it would avoid striking Iran’s nuclear enrichment and oil production sites, two officials said this month. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, said that Israel had agreed to focus its attack on military targets in Iran.

U.S. officials have been concerned about being dragged into a bigger Middle East confrontation with the presidential election less than two weeks away.

As of early Saturday in Iran, it not immediately clear what targets Israel had struck. Avoiding nuclear or oil infrastructure sites may reduce the likelihood of an all-out war between the two adversaries, which would be devastating for the region.

What are Israel’s military capabilities?

Israel has recently shown that it is capable of carrying out airstrikes over long distances.

In assaults against the Houthis in Yemen at the end of September, Israeli forces flew more than a thousand miles to attack power plants and shipping infrastructure, using reconnaissance aircraft and dozens of fighter jets that had to be refueled in midflight. Tehran, about 1,000 miles from Israel, is in a similar range.

Iran has much stronger air defenses than Lebanon and Yemen, but Israel has shown that it may have an edge.

In April, in retaliation for Iran’s first missile barrage, an Israeli airstrike damaged an S-300 antiaircraft system near Natanz, a city in central Iran critical to the country’s nuclear weapons program. Western and Iranian officials said that Israel had deployed aerial drones and at least one missile fired from a warplane in that attack.

That strike showed that Israel could bypass Iran’s defensive systems and paralyze them.

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research institution, Israel has additional options: Jericho 2 medium-range ballistic missiles, which can reach targets about 2,000 miles away, and Jericho 3 intermediate-range ballistic missiles, which can reach targets more than 4,000 miles away.

What is the U.S. government’s stance?

President Biden said this month that he would not support an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.

When asked last week whether he knew when Israel would strike and what kind of targets it had chosen, Mr. Biden said yes, but gave no details. His response implied that the United States and Israel might have reached an agreement on the matter. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken held a lengthy meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Tuesday.

Some analysts argue that the looming U.S. presidential election and the fact that Mr. Biden is not seeking a second term make it harder for the administration to influence and potentially limit Israeli action.

A U.S. official said Saturday Israel had alerted Biden administration officials ahead of the strikes, but declined to specify how far in advance.