Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a televised address about Operation Rising Lion on June 13, 2025.
Days after approving strikes against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor on June 7, 1981, Israel’s then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin publicly defended his decision amid much international criticism, including from US President Ronald Reagan. “Another Holocaust would have happened … we shall defend our people with all the means at our disposal. We shall not allow any enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction [to be] turned against us,” Begin said. This decision inaugurated what has come to be known as the “Begin doctrine”—a security doctrine that lays out how Israel will not permit states that seek its elimination to develop weapons of mass destruction.
After Israel launched air strikes against Iran in June, many drew parallels between Begin and Israel’s present and longest-serving Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. But was the recent operation against Iran as strategically successful as the one against Iraq? Netanyahu’s decision to launch an extensive aerial campaign passes, some argue, “the Begin test with distinction.” This conclusion, however, is premature. Netanyahu may have applied the Begin doctrine, but it does not mean he has achieved the doctrine’s primary objective, here meant to be the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program. Though a very difficult and high bar to achieve, Netanyahu argued Israel satisfied its war aims and declared the military operation a “historic victory.” His triumphant narrative, however, ignores the extent to which Israel failed to achieve its strategic aims because Iran can still reorganize and revive its nuclear program—and may now have a greater willingness and desire to do so.
The uncertainty lingering over the effects of Israeli—and even US—airstrikes makes it clear that a political rather than a military solution is needed to remove, or at least mitigate, the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Unless there is a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear question, the region and the international community ought to expect future Israeli preventive strikes and a renewed outbreak of war, perhaps even longer and more intense than what has been referred to as the 12-day war.
No knock-out blow. The June strikes showed the limits of Israel’s tactical and operational successes in achieving broader strategic objectives. On June 13, Netanyahu released a 7-minute video online in which he announced that Israel had just launched Operation Rising Lion, “a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival.” He outlined limited objectives that involved destroying Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure to prevent Iranian nuclearization. As the Prime Minister defiantly noted toward the end of his video, “we will not let the world’s most dangerous regime get the world’s most dangerous weapons.” With this operation, Israel began what international relations theorists call a “preventive war,” attacking Iran when it was weaker rather than waiting for it to acquire nuclear weapons and pose a greater threat to Israel in the future. This logic is consistent with the Begin doctrine—first applied to Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 and then later to Syria’s Al-Kibar reactor in 2007—which, in both cases, successfully set back their nascent nuclear programs.
As battle damage assessments continue to be carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the airstrikes, early intelligence reports suggest that the Israeli and US bombing campaign set back Iran’s nuclear program by only several months or, at best, by a few years. Even assuming Iran’s nuclear facilities suffered “severe” or “significant” damage, the strikes did not result in the utter destruction of Iran’s nuclear program, especially its enrichment capabilities. Worse, Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched (60 percent) uranium remains unaccounted for, raising questions over whether Iran moved or whether it can retrieve even portions of this near-bomb grade material.
Though Israel’s aerial campaign is undisputedly a tactical and operational success, it is questionable whether it, as Netanyahu asserted, “sent Iran’s nuclear program down the drain” and whether Netanyahu effectively passed the Begin test—let alone did so “with distinction.”
Unlike the Iraqi and Syrian reactors, much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was heavily fortified, buried deep underground, and well-dispersed across the country. This made it harder to target and destroy. Also unique to Iran was how advanced its nuclear program was relative to Iraq and Syria when they were attacked, and how much expertise Tehran had developed to support it.
Iran’s progress vis-à-vis its nuclear program accelerated after 2018 when the first Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. Iran retaliated, abandoning many of the JCPOA’s restrictions on its nuclear program. Unshackled by the nuclear deal, Iran redeveloped the necessary technologies and components and reappropriated human capital to expand the nuclear program, thereby making it much more resilient and durable than those of Iraq and Syria.
Operation Rising Lion may well have enhanced Israel’s security in the short term by damaging Iran’s nuclear program, but it might very well contribute to Iranian nuclearization in the long term. Iran has the depth of knowledge, materials, equipment, and capabilities to reorganize and reconstitute its program should it choose to do so.
Reestablishing deterrence. For decades, Tehran’s expansive network of regional proxies and its vast and diverse arsenal of missiles have constituted the foundations of Iran’s deterrence strategy. But the effectiveness of these instruments has been called into question over the past two years. Since the October 7 terrorist attacks, Israel has targeted and degraded the abilities of Hamas—Iran’s proxy in the Gaza Strip—and other larger, more powerful Iranian clients like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. Meanwhile, Iran-Israel tensions erupted from a shadow war to open conflict in 2024 and again in 2025, but, in each engagement, few of Iran’s missiles and drones penetrated Israel’s layered air defense systems, though the 12-day war did stress its defense grid. Iran, for its part, was left vulnerable—if not defenseless—against Israel’s recent aerial attacks. Today, both Iran and its network of proxies—the so-called “Axis of Resistance”—have either been weakened or their weapons systems neutralized to the point they no longer have the capacity and capability to credibly impose costs on rivals and deter them from launching direct attacks against Iran.
Because the recent 12-day war was such a debacle for Iran and showcased the country’s glaring military weaknesses, it may have made hardliners in Tehran more fearful and suspicious of other countries’ intentions. Amid this uncertainty, they may reason that if its asymmetric and conventional capabilities alone cannot deter adversaries, then Iran ought to reevaluate the effectiveness of its coercive instruments and seek the nuclear option.
Since the recent war, Tehran’s political and military officials are reassessing how to restore deterrence and might very well conclude that maintaining a nuclear “threshold status” for so long was a strategic mistake. Some suggested Tehran was advancing its nuclear program—particularly its enrichment capabilities—to obtain diplomatic leverage in negotiations with the United States. If that is the case, then that strategy completely backfired. Playing the game of brinksmanship by developing a breakout capability did not move the United States and European countries closer to making concessions toward Iran—quite the opposite—nor did it deter Israel from launching a preventive war.
Iranian officials might now conclude that ambiguity over its nuclear ambitions is not a viable option and that pursuing a nuclear weapon is essential for the regime’s survival. While such a path, of course, is risky—and is not the only one available to Tehran—choosing it would be consistent with what other countries like Iraq did after their nuclear program was targeted. The security afforded to states that have crossed the nuclear rubicon (including Pakistan and North Korea) and the wars or threats of invasion experienced by non-nuclear armed countries (including Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, and Taiwan) is shaping the calculus of Iran’s decision-makers. The fact that Iranian officials have now reframed their commitment to the nuclear program as something vital for national security suggests that a rhetorical shift is taking place in how this program is justified.
Regional implications. In a world where Tehran is fundamentally committed to pursuing nuclear weapons, Israel would once again react by launching further preventive attacks. Already, some Israeli officials have said future strikes are indeed possible. This would trigger back-and-forth military exchanges and sporadic—yet intense—eruptions of violence between the two regional powers with serious economic and military costs for both countries and the Middle East.
The potential for renewed fighting between Iran and Israel will contribute to further arms racing in an already heavily militarized region, with Iran reportedly already preparing to dramatically increase its defense expenditures to build up its conventional capabilities. Moreover, any new exchange of fire could potentially draw in the United States as well as other neighboring powers. Such a scenario would likely introduce greater instability into an already volatile and unpredictable security environment in the Middle East.
Notwithstanding these consequences, Israel might still conduct low- to mid-grade military operations against Iran and adopt some version of the “mowing the grass” strategy by intermittently launching attacks to disrupt and degrade Tehran’s nuclear capabilities. Because this strategy has been relatively successful in weakening Iran’s proxies, Israeli officials may be tempted to now use it to deal with the threat posed by Iran, a state actor and a regional power player. Planning future attacks against Iran, however, poses a strategic dilemma for Israel and the United States. Because Iran suspended cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency after the war, there are no longer inspectors on the ground to monitor Iran’s nuclear program. Consequently, Israel will have greater difficulty in ascertaining when and how much to cut the grass, given that Iran’s nuclear program may now be developed much more covertly than before.
Israel’s expansive and evolving security strategy toward Iran demonstrates how much Netanyahu’s claimed victory has been exaggerated and the degree to which he failed to achieve the strategic aims of the Begin doctrine. “Mowing the grass” in Iran implies that the conflict is far from over and that Israel’s aerial operations against Iran will likely continue, at least so long as Iran continues threatening Israel and advancing its nuclear program and ballistic missile capabilities and Israeli officials believe they have no other option to protect their security. While Israel’s concerns and fears are understandable, repeated military actions against Iran might be risky and might very well stretch Israel’s resources and capabilities even thinner at a time when it is still actively engaged in open-ended conflicts on multiple fronts against Iranian proxies.
Reviving diplomacy. To some, the Middle East has reached a turning point with the weakening of Iran and its most important proxies. But strategists and policymakers ought to refrain from concluding that the war has suddenly transformed the region. Israel has applied the Begin doctrine to Iran but cannot claim to have reached any “mission accomplished” moment. Moreover, there is no sign that Iran might abandon its nuclear program or that its theocratic regime might just collapse altogether. In fact, scholars of Iran have reached the opposite conclusion: The war revived Iranian nationalism and generated at least a short-term rally-around-the-flag effect that has potentially given the regime a “new lease on life.”
The war also makes it less likely that Tehran’s hardliners might suddenly make major concessions on the nuclear program, especially now that Iran is much more vulnerable and the regime is fearful of losing face and showing weakness after its notable intelligence and military failures in the 12-day war.
Although a fragile ceasefire is now in effect, countries across the greater Middle East are worried that the stop in fighting may only be temporary. The fundamental issue that triggered the war—the threat of Iran possessing a nuclear weapon—remains unresolved and unaddressed, and military actions alone will not change this.
Washington and other capitals should vigorously and urgently pursue a diplomatic solution because the ceasefire—or, better said, the status quo—remains extremely precarious. The June Israeli and US airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities bought sufficient time for US officials to think carefully and creatively about longer-term solutions to address the Iranian nuclear question, but at the same time, eroded Tehran’s trust and confidence in negotiations.
Despite a challenging environment in which mutual fear and suspicions remain relatively high, the opportunity for a diplomatic breakout still exists. The moment ought to be seized because, absent any sort of credible progress, it will be only a matter of time before another round of intense interstate conflict breaks out and with it, the risk of US involvement in another Middle East war.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Naval War College, the Department of the Navy, or the Department of Defense. The author thanks Daniel R. Post for his comments on earlier drafts of the article.