At this point, Israel has effectively taken out two of Iran's proxies; Hamas and Hezbollah. Hamas is merely trying to survive in Gaza and is out of missiles to launch at Israel. Hezbollah's militants have been decimated; many of them missing eyes, hands, or their balls -- since Israel's pager attack. Hezbollah's leadership has also been taken out in multiple Israeli strikes. Additionally Hezbollah has been told by the government and military in Lebanon that they need to disarm and any attack on Israel will lead to their immediate demise. Hezbollah's supply line for new weapons from Iran via Syria is also out of business. Iran's third proxy, the Houthis in Yemen can launch a few missiles at Israel or possibly disrupt Red Sea shipping -- but will have a negligible impact on Israel. Besides from launching their few remaining missiles (up to 2000 left), with their proxies out of business a weakened Iran has few options for striking back after Israel’s devastating blows Israel's attack on Iran also aids Ukraine. The Iranian commander who provides drones to Russia has been eliminated and plants that manufacture the drones have been taken out. Israel's strikes on Iran also weakened Putin’s leverage with Trump. The entire situation is also another humiliating embarrassment for Trump, no matter how much he attempts to change the narrative now. Just like Putin ignoring Trump's demands to stop attacking Ukraine; Netanyahu took a mere three days to ignore Trump's demands and attack Iran. 'Israel felt confident enough to “publicly and spectacularly disregard the wishes of Trump, undermine his negotiations, and get away with it,” writes Ball. “As public displays of disrespect towards an ally go, there are few cases to match it.”' Once again there are renewed hopes that Israel's attack will lead to the fall of the mullahs in Iran and the the Iranian people will take to the streets to overthrow the Islamic regime. I view this as unlikely and overly optimistic -- even if it is the solution to some of the Middle East's thorniest problems.
Of note, the defeat/weakening of Hezbollah also led to the collapse of the Syrian government which was harboring and enabling Hezbollah and giving them a front row to Israeli's border. Hezbollah and Hamas are extremely weak now. In the old days, if you killed Hezbollah fighters and leaders off, they would just develop a new crop of cockroaches but they need that prime location in Syria to do their thing. Right now they have been deprived of that. The new guy in Syria is still on probation but so far so good. Trump and removed sanctions and is giving him bennies to be good. So that helps.
You make very good points and I understand your position on this. Perhaps I should put myself in the, there are no clean hands camp. Isn't anyone looking for peace at this point. Who threw the first stone? I seriously doubt anyone in the region gives a shit anymore. After generations of violence and revenge killing it's annihilation they're after. It is their right. What I'm most against is us helping them achieve that goal. From what I can see Israel is more than capable of pretty much neutralizing the Iranian threat all by themselves. What they just pulled off is impressive, from a purely war fighting point of view.
You're right that Israel's operational capabilities are formidable but they are not sufficient to stop a full-scale missile assault on their own. The much-hyped "Iron Dome" is designed for short-range threats like Qassam rockets, basically glorified pipe bombs running on sugar and fertilizer. It’s not built to intercept advanced ballistic missiles in quantity. They are spending other countries money forcing them to expend missiles. Not unlike a girl who gets carried away making her boyfriend defend her. Iran can dirty bomb the shit out of Israel.
It is sort of a separate topic in and of itself, but the reality is that the biggest threat from Iran nuclear development is not their outright missile warhead nuking Israel. It is their developing a lower level radiation bomb- a so-called dirty bomb. And they are not stupid enough to outright nuke Israel. They would deploy the dirty bomb through a simple suitcase carried by one of their proxies. (New York, etc. equally vulnerable). That type of thing. Then Iran gets to deny involvement. Unfortunately, Iran is already at and well, well, beyond that capability due to the lower level of enrichment required. So even if - big if- anyone were to stop them from further development they still have that capability. Sigh. Regime arising from within - not CIA style- would be great. You can never count on it but you cannot rule it out either. They have had a few riots episodes in junctures in recent history where the government almost lost its grip and things have only gotten worse there, plus the current ayatollah will die soon just for biological reasons. And yes, the cabal of top level hotheads will role another hothead in, but those are fragile times for the country. Especially if their economy is even worse off. Can't count on it. Can't rule it out. Even Assad in Syria eventually fell. The women were wearing mini-skirts and high heels in Tehran not so long ago so there is still a collective memory of the good life for some.
The 64 dollar question is how many ballistic missiles does Iran have left to launch. If they have hundreds or thousands, then you're right, the Iron Dome isn't going to handle that. It's a safe bet at that point we're involved in a big way, which was most likely the deal anyway. I'll be interested to see how Iran plays this. They go hard, Trump will have no problem giving the order to level the place. Short term that looks like victory. Long term, that comes back on us right here at home with gurillia warfare coming from multiple sources, some domestic, some foreign.
That would be great if the regime can be overthrown from within. Not sure that can happen without the CIA assistance.
Iron dome really is for bottle rockets, they do have a very limited capacity to tackle an ICBM attack, Arrow system I think, David's Sling too but... They are fucked without US, France and UK's ships and satellites. Iran is 75 times larger as a country, has 90 million vs Israel's 6.5 million Jews. The rest don't matter as Israel is an ethnostate (not a modern democracy, it just has elections). We know what happens in the middle East when you take out strong leadership, you get FUBAR. Bibi is a narcissistic leader who always needs a crisis to distract people, like Trump. The regime change needed is an election in Israel but as long as he keeps picking fights...
Tehran is a fairly normal place, not as scary as some may think. Metro is a bit of a sausage fest, still the case than mostly men work/commute, at around ten minutes you see at street level pretty ordinary people, not very different to Turkey.