Israel has inflicted unprecedented damage on Iran’s elite

Not only has Israel’s attack on Iran been more wide-ranging and intense than its two previous military operations last year, but it also appears to have adopted some of the strategy that was used in the Israeli offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon last November.

That is not only to hit Iran’s missile bases – and thus its ability to respond with force – but also to launch strikes to take out key members of Iran’s leadership.

That strategy of decapitation of Hezbollah senior figures had devastating consequences for the group and its ability to mount a sustainable counter offensive.

Footage from Tehran has shown what seem to be specific buildings hit, similar to images from Israel’s attacks on the southern suburbs of Beirut, which culminated in the killing of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

No figure of that magnitude appears to have been killed in Iran. The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has not been targeted.

But to kill Iran’s military chief of staff, Hossein Salami, the commander of the powerful Revolutionary Guards, and several nuclear scientists, in the first hours of the operation is to have inflicted an unprecedented degree of damage on Iran’s elite. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested this might go on for days

That would seem to necessitate a fiercer response from Iran than we saw in its two attacks on Israel last year.

But it may also make Tehran’s ability to summon up such a response that much harder. That presumably is the calculation that Netanyahu made in ordering this escalation in the conflict.

Why he decided to go ahead with the attack right now – one that he has for so long advocated – could be for the reasons he has given.

In a statement released not long after the operation began, he said that it was a matter of Israel’s survival.

But Netanyahu has been making the argument for many years that Israel faces existential threat if Iran gets a nuclear bomb. To underline the renewed urgency, a senior Israeli military official has said that there was information that Iran had enough material to make 15 nuclear bombs within days.

But there may also have been a very different factor at play.

The talks between the US and Iran on a deal over Tehran’s nuclear programme were about to enter their sixth round on Sunday. There have been conflicting signals over how much progress has been made in this.

For Netanyahu, though, it may have seemed that this was a crucial moment to ensure that what he sees as an unacceptable deal would be stopped in its tracks.

Militarily, he and his advisors may have felt that not only Iran but its proxies in the region – Hezbollah in particular – have been weakened to such an extent that the threat they once posed is now no longer as potent.

The coming hours and days will show whether that is proved to be correct or a dangerous miscalculation.