Prevention Or Provocation? The Strategic Fallout Of Israel's Strikes On Iran

June 2025's Israeli-Iranian military clash is a seismic shift in the course of modern warfare, nuclear politics, and global norms.

- IFRAH ALI

A high-risk precision attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure began as a particular kind of high-stakes military action, but it has since evolved into what strategists increasingly refer to as a "threshold war"—a new category of warfare in which a nuclear-capable state wages explicit military action to block another from gaining nuclear capability.

In contrast to Cold War deterrence, this model is preemptive, destabilizing, and perilously escalatory. Not a contained conflict, it is an event with far-reaching implications for international nuclear non-proliferation, strategic stability, and the legitimacy of pre-emptive doctrine.

The current flashpoint is rooted in over two decades of tension, mistrust, and covert warfare. The modern phase began in 2002 when the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an exiled Iranian opposition group, revealed the existence of secret nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak. These disclosures ignited Israeli fears of a nuclear-armed Iran and prompted a long-term strategy of covert sabotage.

Israel has pursued a doctrine of prevention, often referred to as the Begin Doctrine, named after former Prime Minister Menachem Begin who authorized the 1981 airstrike on Iraq's Osirak reactor. In this spirit, Israel has spent the last two decades attempting to delay Iran's nuclear progress through cyber attacks (such as the 2010 Stuxnet worm, jointly developed with the U.S.), targeted assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists (including Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020), and aerial strikes on facilities and supply lines in Syria and Iraq.