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<div class="moz-forward-container">Thoughtful and pragmatic analysis
by Bret Stephens in the New York Times.--Manny<br>
<br>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/opinion/iran-israel-strikes.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/opinion/iran-israel-strikes.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare</a>
</p>
<h1>Israel Had the Courage to Do What Needed to Be Done</h1>
<p class="MsoNormal"><time class="css-kx0gap e16638kd0"
datetime="2025-06-13T15:00:06-04:00">June 13, 2025</time></p>
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data-testid="photoviewer-children-ImageCaption"
class="css-ktho12 e3rygrp0">By <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/bret-stephens"
itemprop="name" moz-do-not-send="true"><span
style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman";mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast">Bret
Stephens</span></a>
<p class="css-1npznau">Opinion Columnist</p>
<section name="articleBody" class="meteredContent css-1r7ky0e">
<p class="css-at9mc1">It may be months or years before we’ll
know the full results of Israel’s attack on Iranian nuclear
and military targets, which began early Friday morning and
could last for days or weeks. But critics of the strike —
and already they <a
href="https://x.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1933345572443783580"
target="_blank" title="" moz-do-not-send="true"><span
style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman";mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast">are</span></a>
<a
href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-iran-strike-conflict/card/sen-jack-reed-denounces-israeli-strike-31Papxe9dxHuKkpryJtz?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAiq-yeHeDrmgWWbHE79oQIwxjU37La7NuN-bOJ05VZcyiUyGOkZVVoozJnaIxs%3D&gaa_ts=684c4f3d&gaa_sig=S3rN4zppZnY1V9pdUcS2fjf8vU3_GjKiRsyWfUOw97Fdb0V-CNXJ26g3zLIABtZv4D5jVsLu8sd-H-JONISGlQ%3D%3D"
target="_blank" title="" moz-do-not-send="true"><span
style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast">vocal</span></a>
— might at least ask themselves whether Israel had any
realistic alternative against an adversary that has
repeatedly vowed to wipe it off the map.</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1">Barely a day before the strike, the
board of the International Atomic Energy Agency,
representing 35 nations, declared that Iran was in violation
of its nuclear nonproliferation obligations. The agency’s <a
href="https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-25.pdf"
target="_blank" title="" moz-do-not-send="true"><span
style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast">technical
report</span></a> points to “rapid accumulation of
highly enriched uranium,” a failure by Iran to provide
“technically credible answers regarding the nuclear material
at three locations” and Iran’s “insistence on a unique and
unilateral approach to its legally binding obligation.”</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1">In plain English, Iran has been
deceiving the world for years while gathering the means to
build multiple nuclear weapons. In a better world, diplomacy
would have forestalled and perhaps eliminated the need for
Israeli military action.</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1">But President Trump, who tried to
dissuade Israel from striking, failed to get a deal after
five rounds of negotiations and noted this week that Tehran
had become “<a
href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5342152-trump-iran-nuclear-deal-negotiations/"
target="_blank" title="" moz-do-not-send="true"><span
style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast">much
more aggressive</span></a>” in the talks. Make of his
testimony what you will, but it’s worth recalling that a
much more pliant and patient Biden administration spent
years trying to reach an agreement, and <a
href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-administration-cold-water-prospect-renewed-iran-nuclear-talks/story?id=113189046"
target="_blank" title="" moz-do-not-send="true"><span
style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast">also
gave up</span></a> in frustration with Iran’s repeated
prevarications.</p>
<aside class="css-ew4tgv"></aside>
As for other alternatives, the clandestine means of sabotage
and targeted assassinations that Israel had long used, and
which probably delayed Iran’s nuclear breakout moment by
years, had plainly run their course — otherwise, Israel would
have continued to use them rather than risk Iranian
retaliatory strikes using drones and missiles that could
overwhelm Israel’s defenses.
<p class="css-at9mc1">Those strikes have begun. But they
underscore, from an Israeli point of view, how crucial it is
that Iran be prevented from being able to mount any of those
missiles with a nuclear warhead. Academic theorists in, say,
Chicago may be convinced that an Iran armed with nuclear
weapons would merely help create a stable balance against a
nuclear-armed Israel.</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1">Yet that fails to take into account the
<a
href="https://www.memri.org/reports/former-iranian-president-rafsanjani-using-nuclear-bomb-against-israel"
target="_blank" title="" moz-do-not-send="true"><span
style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast">millenarian</span></a>
mind-set of some of Iran’s theocratic leaders, for whom the
ideological objective of destroying Israel may be worth the
price of mass martyrdom in a nuclear exchange. It also
ignores the prospect that an Iranian nuclear bomb would lead
<a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/21/crown-prince-confirms-saudi-arabia-seek-nuclear-arsenal-iran-develops-one"
target="_blank" title="" moz-do-not-send="true"><span
style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast">Saudi
Arabia</span></a>, and perhaps <a
href="https://www.iar-gwu.org/blog/erdogans-nuclear-itchstrong-strongwhy-turkeys-nuclear-program-is-a-threat-to-regional-stability-and-the-international-nonproliferation-regime"
target="_blank" title="" moz-do-not-send="true"><span
style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast">Turkey</span></a>
and <a
href="https://www.memri.org/tv/egypt-military-analyst-gen-samir-farag-if-iran-gets-nukes-we-want-them-too"
target="_blank" title="" moz-do-not-send="true"><span
style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast">Egypt</span></a>,
to seek nukes of their own. How stable is a balance of
terror if there are three, four or five nuclear powers in
the world’s most volatile region, operating in uncertain
diplomatic combinations, each at daggers drawn with the
others?</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1">Still, even if Israel had no better
options against Iran, it’s no guarantee that the strikes
will succeed, either in the short or long term. Besides a
direct retaliatory strike on Israel, Iran will be tempted to
hit back at other targets: ships transiting the Strait of
Hormuz, <a
href="https://apnews.com/article/argentina-amia-attack-terrorism-iran-milei-israel-war-memorial-b1094f4e38ba33f1c7e13c9cbd5fbbce"
target="_blank" title="" moz-do-not-send="true"><span
style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast">Jewish
sites in faraway places</span></a>, U.S. diplomatic or
military installations in the region. The Israeli strike may
also drive Iran’s nuclear programs further underground,
figuratively and literally, accelerating its effort to get
nukes while making future attacks more difficult to carry
off.</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1">Those risks can’t be ignored. But it’s
worth noting that Iran was doing many of those things
without the pretext of an Israeli strike, sometimes directly
and sometimes through proxies, such as the Houthis and
Hezbollah.</p>
<aside class="css-ew4tgv"></aside>
Also worth noting is that Hezbollah has been quiet since
Israel’s attack. That could always change, but it’s a result
of its swift decimation at Israeli hands last September. That,
too, was denounced by Israel’s critics as dangerously
escalatory. But now it’s paying dividends in the form of
constricted Iranian retaliatory options, the end of the
pro-Iranian regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and the first
possibility in two generations for the Lebanese people finally
to govern themselves.
<p class="css-at9mc1">Sometimes military strikes end with
blowback. But sometimes they accomplish their goals — as
Israel showed when it took out Syria’s nuclear reactor in
2007 and Iraq’s in 1981. Neither regime, thankfully, ever
acquired nuclear weapons.</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1">As for the prospect of Iran now racing
toward a bomb, evidence suggests it was already doing so
anyway. It will take time, probably years, for Iran to
regain its former pace, and it will do so in a severely
weakened military, technical and economic state. And it can
always be hit again.</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1">It also matters that Iran’s leadership
has again been bested on its home turf, not by the “Great
Satan” of the United States but, much more humiliatingly, by
the “Little Satan” of Israel. The weaker and more uncertain
the regime looks in the eyes of ordinary Iranians, the
likelier it will spark the kinds of mass protests that
nearly brought it down in 2022. An end to the regime that
has inflicted so much misery on so many people for so many
years offers the only sure route to ending the nuclear
crisis for good.</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1">I’m writing in the first hours of a
conflict that surely still has many surprises in store. It’s
far too soon to say how it will end. But for those who worry
about a future in which one of the world’s most awful
regimes takes advantage of international irresolution to
gain possession of the most dangerous weapons, Israel’s
strike is a display of clarity and courage for which we may
all one day be grateful.</p>
<p class="css-798hid"><em></em></p>
<aside class="css-ew4tgv"></aside>
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</section>
<aside class="css-ew4tgv"></aside>
Bret Stephens is an Opinion columnist for The Times, writing
about foreign policy, domestic politics and cultural issues. <span
class="css-4w91ra"><a
href="https://www.facebook.com/Bret-Stephens-1897344563844527"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"><span
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Roman";mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast">Facebook</span></a>
</span>
<p class="MsoNormal">A version of this article appears in print
on <span class="css-1dmwf73"> </span>, Section SR, Page 3 of
the New York edition with the headline: Israel Had the Courage
to Do What Needed to Be Done. <a
href="https://nytimes.wrightsmedia.com/"
moz-do-not-send="true"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family:
"Times New
Roman";mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast">Order
Reprints</span></a> | </p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"> </p>
</figcaption> </div>
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