How Israel Achieved its Objectives in Iran

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The Institute for the Study of War, a nonpartisan group based in the United States, has issued its report on Israel’s achievements in its 12-day war with Iran. Dozens of nuclear facilities were damaged by Israel, while three of them — Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow — were also attacked by the Americans, with the first two “destroyed,”and the last “severely damaged” (or, according to the administration, “totally obliterated”) on June 22. More on what the IDF accomplished in its brief war with Iran can be found here: “Israel ‘Achieved Its Objectives’ in Iran Operation, Says Leading War Studies Think Tank,” by Jack Elbaum, Algemeiner, June 26, 2025:

A leading war studies think tank has assessed that Israel “achieved its objectives” in its recent operation against Iran’s nuclear program.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) released a report on Tuesday explaining that, in the 12-day operation, “Israel achieved its objectives vis-a-vis the nuclear program by destroying nuclear facilities and enrichment capacity with US support and killing key nuclear scientists who were instrumental in the development and weaponization of the program.”

ISW, in conjunction with the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project (CTP), explained the details and implications of the conflict in their daily Iran Update, “which provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests.”

Israel launched a broad preemptive attack on Iran earlier this month, targeting military installations and nuclear sites across the country in what officials described as an effort to neutralize an imminent nuclear threat. Over the next several days, Israeli forces systematically dismantled Iran’s nuclear and ballistic-missile capabilities, destroying much of the infrastructure and killing top military leaders and nuclear scientists….

In addition to nuclear sites hit by Israel, the IDF destroyed more than 1,000 ballistic missiles, a ballistic missile factory, six airbases together with the planes — F-4s, F-14s, AH-1s — parked on their tarmacs or hidden in bunkers nearby. Fifteen of Iran’s senior nuclear scientists were assassinated, as were twenty generals in both the IRGC and the Iranian army.

The debate over the extent of the damage at the Fordow site continues unabated in Washington. Everyone, however, can agree that at a minimum the damage was “severe.” It will not be until the IAEA can inspect the site up close that a final reckoning can be made. The ISW believes that there is sufficient evidence to support a finding that the attacks, first by Israel and then by the Americans, on those three main nuclear sites, have “decimated” Iran’s nuclear program.

The ISW believes that even if the centrifuges were not hit directly, that the impact of the blast would have so shaken the highly delicate centrifuges as to cause them to shatter.

Not every part of the nuclear program may have been utterly destroyed, but there has been sufficient damage from the US and Israeli attacks to end, for now, Iran’s uranium enrichment program. It can be revived, but according to the IDF, that will take not months, but many years.

The Israeli officials were surprised by that leaked document from the Defense Intelligence Agency, one which came to conclusions far different from what the Israelis believed. They, of course, were unaware of the deep hatred of Trump, and the desire to undermine his claims, that motivated the authors of the DIA report.

The CIA’s assessment backed up the administration’s claim that there was “severe damage” to those three nuclear facilities hit by the American bunker-busters and Tomahawk missiles, based on “new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source.” That “source” was surely Israel, which has Mossad agents reporting from all over Iran.

The IDF sought to limit Iran’s ability to respond to Israel at the start of its campaign and continued to destroy Iranian missile launchers and stockpiles throughout the air campaign,” ISW wrote. “Iranian leaders originally planned to launch up to one thousand ballistic missiles at Israel in the immediate aftermath of an Israeli strike, presumably in multiple barrages. The first Iranian missile barrage included about 30 missiles, and Iran never managed to launch over 40 ballistic missiles in a single barrage throughout the 12 days of attacks.”…

Instead of launching 1000 ballistic missiles in a single barrage, as they had hoped, the Iranians never managed to launch at the same time more than 40 such missiles.

So a total of 54 Iranian missiles managed to get through Israel’s defenses during the war, that is, and almost all of them landed harmlessly in open fields. About four to five missiles a day, then, landed in Israel, with a mere handful hitting residential buildings. A grand total of 28 Israelis were killed during the war, while 974 Iranians were killed as a result of Israeli airstrikes and missiles.

Israel has come out way ahead in those 12 days of war. The Israelis had wanted to keep fighting; they had already selected fifteen sites in Tehran to be hit the next day, when Trump issued his diktat, successfully pressuring Israel to agree to a ceasefire. In that time, the IDF achieved much. More than a thousand ballistic missiles have been destroyed, some inside Iran, and others intercepted over Israel. Ballistic missile factories have been flattened. Six of Iran’s airbases have been so damaged as to be unusable. Iran’s air force has been decimated, with its F-4s, F-14s, and AH-1s hit by Israeli airstrikes as they sat on the tarmacs or in bunkers. All above-ground nuclear facilities, as at Parchin and Isfahan, have been destroyed. The Natanz facility, both what was built aboveground and what was built deep underground, has been destroyed. After some initial public dispute over the amount of damage done to the nuclear facility at Fordow by the American bunker-buster bombs, the consensus seems to be that the damage was so “severe” as to set back Ian’s nuclear program by “many years,” a judgement with which both the Israelis and the ISW concur.

The one remaining question is what happened to the 900 pounds (400 kg.) of uranium enriched to 60% purity, just below weapons grade, which Iran was known to possess. Was it taken out of Fordow just two days before the American strike, as satellite photos of lines of trucks leaving Fordow suggest? Or was that enriched uranium always hidden elsewhere? And if the IDF locates its whereabouts, how will the Israelis deal with that uranium? Wouldn’t a hit cause an unacceptable amount of deadly radiation to escape? Or could the Israelis manage to simply seize that enriched uranium, as they did with Iran’s nuclear archive in 2018, and bring it back safely to Israel?

Questions, questions.