Bringing Iran to 'Goldilocks' point underpins the rationale behind this war

It is a commonplace idea that the US and Israel have gone to war against Iran without a clear plan.

- Ceri Thomas

But a military strategy is not only what a combatant country says; it is also what it does — and a week into the war, a lot has been done that speaks eloquently about the underlying strategy.

After the opportunistic strike that killed supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the early choices made by the US and Israel were driven by necessity and efficiency. The need to eliminate Iran’s air defences dictated they were targeted first. With control of the skies, a war that was never likely to involve ground forces was safe to proceed.

Iran has been divided up: targets in its north and west apportioned mostly to Israel; the south, largely to the US. The reasons for this are simply to do with the most effective conduct of the war from Israeli airbases and US ships. But they have led to a concentration of Israeli air superiority on the centres of power and decision-making in Tehran.

Burcu Ozcelik, senior fellow at the military and strategic thinktank the Royal United Services Institute, says: “The pattern... is to decapitate Iran’s leadership, dismantle its capacity to wage war and deny it the means to rearm and regroup.”

The former US ambassador Michael Carpenter, now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington, told