IDF Says Iran Strikes May Wrap in ‘One or Two Weeks’ as Speculation Swirls Over US Role

Debbie Weiss

US President Donald Trump speaks at the White House in Washington, DC, US, June 12, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes and Iranian missile launches on Tuesday and estimations by Jerusalem that its campaign would end soon, debate intensified over whether the United States would enter the conflict in the 90th hour, with experts divided on how far Washington may go. 

Backchannel efforts suggest the regime in Iran is seeking off-ramps, with the Wall Street Journal on Monday reporting that Iranian diplomats had “signaled” through Arab intermediaries their willingness to return to negotiations.

But US President Donald Trump has publicly dismissed the prospect of a negotiated ceasefire.

“We’re not looking for a ceasefire,” he said, but rather for a “real end” to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. After two months of stalled negotiations, he added, “I’m not in the mood to negotiate.”

Trump later posted a message on social media that read “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” without elaborating, further fueling speculation that the US may take military action against Iran or at least not stop Israel from fully completing its campaign.

Military officials said Tuesday that Israel expects its current campaign targeting Iran’s nuclear program to meet its primary objectives “within one to two weeks.” Its aim — to eliminate what Israel views as the core threat posed by both Tehran’s nuclear weapons efforts and its long-range missile capabilities — would be fulfilled by then, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) brass said.  

Since the start of the operation, Israeli strikes have hit multiple elements of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. According to the officials, the attacks have caused extensive damage at two major enrichment sites — Natanz and Isfahan — and eliminated at least nine senior nuclear scientists involved in bomb development. Additional strikes have targeted facilities supporting the program, including command nodes and administrative offices tied to Iran’s nuclear operations. Israeli strikes have also taken out 40 percent of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers and destroyed 70 Iranian air defense batteries since the start of the campaign on Thursday night.

One potential target that Israel has so far not hit is Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. However, Trump noted on social media on Tuesday that could change.

Jonathan Ruhe, director of foreign policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said Trump’s recent military posturing might be designed to strengthen US leverage rather than signal imminent intervention.

“Trump has shown an inclination to always want to play peacemaker, staying above the fray and bringing both sides together when he believes US available leverage is at a maximum,” Ruhe told The Algemeiner.

Ruhe added that Trump’s increasingly explicit threats to join the war was “one more way to try to build US leverage against Iran.”

Eyal Hulata, Israel’s former national security adviser, voiced skepticism about American involvement. “I’d be very surprised if the Americans join the war themselves,” he said on call with reporters on Tuesday. “Israel is proving that it’s pretty much capable of handling the situation so far.”

Hulata noted, however, that US calculations could shift if Iran followed through on threats to strike American personnel or energy infrastructure in Gulf states like Saudi Arabia or the UAE. “That will change the American calculus,” he said.

While Israel continued its strikes in its so-called Operation Rising Lion, reports surfaced that senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) leaders were abandoning their posts. The IRGC, an Iranian military force and internationally designated terrorist organization, also reportedly controls a substantial portion of Iran’s oil industry and broader economy.

Ruhe cautioned that the collapse of the Islamic Republic, if it came, would not follow a linear trajectory. “Regime collapse is always gradual until it’s sudden,” he said. “One key factor determining whether regimes disintegrate or survive is not whether the people take to the streets and protest and conduct subversion — which we’re already seeing initial indications of — but whether the security services decide to fire on them and try to put them down or whether they drop their guns and melt into the crowds, disobey orders, or simply flee. That second factor is now very much in play.”

While the heavy losses suffered by the Revolutionary Guards, particularly among senior commanders, could spark defections or widespread disorder that might prevent the regime from suppressing uprisings, Ruhe cautioned that Iran’s internal security apparatus remained significantly more “robust, pervasive, and capable” than the non-state actors Israel has confronted over the past two years, like Hamas and Hezbollah.

“It’s also very possible, amid all this chaos, that the regime doesn’t so much disintegrate as fracture and we see an abrupt turnover in leadership in which the clerics, including supreme leader [Ali] Khamenei, give way to a more militarized government of IRGC diehards willing to fight on no matter the cost.”

Divisions remain within the US intelligence community over how close Iran actually was to a bomb. A CNN report published Tuesday, citing American intelligence, estimated that Tehran was “up to three years away” from building a nuclear weapon.

However, a White House assessment released Tuesday to counter the CNN report cited CENTCOM Commander Gen. Erik Kurilla as saying that Iran was “mere steps” from weapons-grade uranium enrichment. Iran had amassed 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent of weapons grade — double its stockpile from six months earlier. According to the White House, if Tehran accelerated enrichment, it could produce one bomb within a week and as many as ten within three weeks.

A recent analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security found that if Iran chooses to “break out” toward a bomb, it would have enough highly enriched uranium at two of its main facilities, Fordow and Natanz, “for 11 nuclear weapons in the first month, enough for 15 nuclear weapons by the end of the second month, 19 by the end of the third month, 21 by the end of the fourth month, and 22 by the end of the fifth month.”

Ruhe noted that even before reaching full weapons-grade enrichment, Iran had accumulated enough material to assemble a crude device that could be used for a test with its existing stockpiles of 60 percent enriched uranium.

This sense of urgency was sharpened by increasing calls from Iran’s security establishment, including advisors to the supreme leader, to “simply finish the bomb very quickly,” Ruhe said. Ruhe also pointed to the risks of misjudging Iran’s timeline. Israel had long assumed Iran would complete enrichment first and only then move to weaponization over the course of months or years. But Tehran increasingly pursued both tracks in parallel, and, as Ruhe noted, one lesson from past breakouts is that there may never be a “clear and detectable ‘go’ order from the top leadership to finish the bomb.”

“Israel’s increasing sense of urgency to strike after the horrors of Oct. 7 reflects its new security calculus where there is no margin of error to assume they could detect the last turn of the screwdriver on a bomb with enough time to act and to stop it,” he continued.

This was also a key reason behind Israel’s decision to strike Iran’s scientific brain trust in addition to its known nuclear facilities.

For his part, Hulata highlighted the asymmetric warfare Israel wages with its adversaries and the difference between Israel’s precision targeting and Iran’s indiscriminate missile barrages against civilians. “When it’s Hamas, then people say well it’s a terror organization so what do you expect, but Iran is a serious country,” he said. Even so, he continued, “the damage to Israel in this conflict so far is way below what we all would have expected.”

Chirurgiczny atak na tyranię islamistyczną

Brendan O’Neill
Tłumaczenie: Małgorzata Koraszewska

Odważny atak Izraela na Iran zadał druzgocący cios barbarzyńskiemu, wojowniczemu reżimowi.

Świat obudził się do wiadomości o dekapitacji. W piątek wczesnym rankiem, czasu izraelskiego, siły powietrzne państwa żydowskiego uderzyły ze zdumiewającą precyzją w tyranów i infrastrukturę reżimu irańskiego. Najważniejsi przywódcy republiki islamskiej zostali wyeliminowani. Jej obiekty nuklearne zostały zredukowane do spopielonych ruin. Nikt nie może sobie pozwolić na luksus politycznej obojętności w tej chwili, a tym bardziej na moralne tchórzostwo, które maskuje się jako pacyfizm. Stawka jest zbyt wysoka. Wydarzenia zmuszają nas do wyrwania się z beztroski i opowiedzenia się po którejś stronie.

Brendan O’Neill – brytyjski dziennikarz, redaktor naczelny magazynu „Spiked” , autor głośnej książki A Heretic’s Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable.

Israel Just Ended China’s Great Power Status in the Middle East

Gordon G. Chang

• “There were some very, very relieved people in the Gulf as the sun rose this morning…. The Saudis know that China had armed their enemy Iran with nukes and lesser weapons and fully backed the Houthis, who have been waging war on the Kingdom for years.” — Jonathan Bass, Chief Executive Officer, Argent LNG, to Gatestone Institute, June 13, 2025.
• “The Chinese state is only as strong as its main energy provider, and that main energy provider, which so far has not been able to counter Israeli strikes, is unlikely to survive this war in its current form.” — Brandon Weichert, author of The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy, to Gatestone Institute, June 13, 2025.
• “With the loss of Syria and Hezbollah, Iran no longer has a command and control center in Damascus, only a two hour drive from Beirut. That means China can no longer manipulate events there.” — Jonathan Bass, to Gatestone Institute, June 13, 2025.
• China has a Trump problem in the wider region as well. With the exception of Iran, almost everybody, including Iran’s partner Qatar, seems to love the American president. Trump took the Gulf by storm in his three-nation — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — trip in May.

Narratives will change as the fighting between Iran and Israel continues, but one conclusion is already evident: China, Iran’s long-time backer, is a victim of the fighting. That is a quick reversal of fortunes. Only last year, the Chinese looked ascendant in the region. Pictured: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (C), Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov (L) and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazeem Gharibabadi meet on March 14, 2025 in Beijing. (Photo by Getty Images)

Israeli air and drone strikes during the early hours of June 13th crippled Iran — and severely set back Tehran’s regional ambitions. The Israel Defense Forces hit nuclear weapons development facilities and ballistic missile sites, and killed senior military officers, including Major General Mohammad Bagheri, the armed forces chief of staff, and Major General Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Iranian media announced the death of Ali Shamkhani, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s top adviser.

Tehran said that Israel’s action was a “declaration of war.” This war is continuing, and Iran has struck back with ballistic missile and drone attacks.

Narratives will change as the fighting continues, but one conclusion is already evident: China, Iran’s long-time backer, is a victim of the fighting. That is a quick reversal of fortunes. Only last year, the Chinese looked ascendant in the region.

“China is closely following Israel’s attacks on Iran and is deeply concerned about the potential grave consequences of the operations,” the Chinese foreign ministry stated on X a few hours after the initial attacks. “China opposes actions that violate Iran’s sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity, and opposes moves that escalate tensions or enlarge conflicts.”

“China stands ready to play a constructive role in helping ease the situation,” it added.

Beijing may stand ready, but, apart from the Iranian regime itself, the region is not looking for Chinese assistance.

For instance, Saudi Arabia and neighboring Gulf states are, as academic and analyst Christopher Balding put it, “quietly happy” that Israel has set back Iran in general and its nuclear weapons program in particular. “There were some very, very relieved people in the Gulf as the sun rose this morning,” Jonathan Bass told Gatestone the day after Israel’s initial attack.

As Bass, who travels extensively in the region for Argent LNG points out, the losses sustained by the Iranian military and the IRGC give the Sunni Muslim states fewer reasons to cooperate with Tehran. “The Saudis were not particularly happy with Chinese attempts to forge a relationship between them and the Iranians,” Bass said. “The March 2023 deal was not popular in the Kingdom.”

Bass was referring to the China-brokered pact that led long-time enemies Riyadh and Tehran to reestablish diplomatic relations.

“The Saudis,” Bass pointed out, “know that China had armed their enemy Iran with nukes and lesser weapons and fully backed the Houthis, who have been waging war on the Kingdom for years.”

Yes, the Chinese regime did all that, and the Kingdom has been looking for payback for a long time.

Beijing may also suffer another setback. China has been taking more than 90% of Iran’s exports of crude oil in recent years. Israeli strikes on June 14th hit a processing plant in Iran’s South Pars gas field, the world’s largest. There are reports that Israel also attacked Iran’s Abadan oil refinery. If the strikes on Iranian energy sites continue, Beijing could soon be scrambling for hydrocarbons.

“As Iran’s largest purchaser of energy, China stands the most to lose from the potential fall of Iran’s theocracy,” Brandon Weichert, author of The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy, told this site. “The Chinese state is only as strong as its main energy provider, and that main energy provider, which so far has not been able to counter Israeli strikes, is unlikely to survive this war in its current form.”

The possible loss of the Iranian regime reverses two years of fast Chinese progress in the region. “China is the head, Iran is the shoulder, Qatar is the elbow, and the proxies—Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah—are the fingers,” Bass notes. “Without the shoulder, the head cannot move either the elbow or the fingers.”

The decimation of Iran also sets back China in another crucial part of the region. “With the loss of Syria and Hezbollah, Iran no longer has a command and control center in Damascus, only a two-hour drive from Beirut,” Bass points out. “That means China can no longer manipulate events there.”

Syria, once a promising target for Chinese domination, is leaving Beijing’s sphere of influence. The country’s new leader, former militant Ahmed al-Sharaa, is fast moving Syria closer to the United States.

Sharaa has a willing partner: U.S. President Donald J. Trump. While in Saudi Arabia last month, Trump met with Sharaa after announcing that the U.S. would drop its Assad-era sanctions on his country.

China has a Trump problem in the wider region as well. With the exception of Iran, almost everybody, including Iran’s partner Qatar, expresses love for the American president. Trump took the Gulf by storm in his three-nation — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — trip in May.

Chinese leaders obviously thought that their backing of Iran would let them ride into control of the region. A proxy war is a sly maneuver when the proxies do well, but it can lead to disaster when the proxies are being ground into the dust.

China’s proxies — and China itself — are now being ground into the dust.

Gordon G. Chang is the author of Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.

Russia, China Maintain Cautious Diplomacy Amid Israel-Iran Conflict, Despite Deepening Ties With Tehran

Ailin Vilches Arguello

Smoke billows following missile attack from Iran on Israel, at Tel Aviv, Israel, June 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Gideon Markowicz ISRAEL

Despite deepening their ties with Iran, Russia and China have held back from concrete action amid Israel’s recent attacks, choosing cautious diplomacy over direct support for their supposed partner.

Last week, Israel launched a broad preemptive attack on Iran, targeting military installations and nuclear sites across the country in what officials described as an effort to neutralize an imminent nuclear threat, as nuclear negotiations between the United States and Tehran appear on the brink of collapse.

The Israeli strike killed several of Iran’s top military commanders and dealt a major blow to the country’s retaliatory capabilities by destroying not only much of its ballistic missile stockpiles but also crippling its launch platforms.

According to Janatan Sayeh, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based think tank, Israel’s air superiority, combined with the element of surprise and Iran’s weakened air defenses, has left the Islamic regime incapable of sustaining its nightly missile attacks.

Tehran’s “only path to narrowing the battlefield gap lies in external military support,” Sayeh told The Algemeiner. “Yet Moscow, having previously depended on Iranian drones and missiles for its war in Ukraine, is unlikely to offer more than diplomatic backing.”

“That leaves China — a longtime economic lifeline for Tehran through illicit oil purchases — as the regime’s only potential partner in rebuilding its military infrastructure,” he continued.

So far, as the conflict between Israel and Iran continues to escalate, Beijing and Moscow have offered their so-called ally little more than public condemnation of the Israeli military campaign and formal offers to mediate the conflict.

“China is highly concerned about Israel’s attacks on Iran and deeply worried about the potential serious consequences of these actions,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said in a statement.

“China opposes any violation of Iran’s sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity, and opposes actions that escalate tensions and expand the conflict,” he continued.

The Chinese diplomat also urged both Middle Eastern adversaries to take greater action in promoting regional peace and stability and to avoid further escalating hostilities.

“China is willing to play a constructive role in helping to de-escalate the situation,” Jian said.

According to Jack Burnham, a research analyst at FDD, China’s capacity to offer Tehran support beyond diplomatic channels is limited by the country’s inability to effectively manage rapidly evolving crises.

“Having built the foundations of Iran’s missile program, Beijing can now only watch as it goes up in flames — incapable of projecting power on a scale that could tip the balance of power and wary of committing resources during a period of heightened tensions in its own region,” Burnham told The Algemeiner.

As China seeks to establish itself as a key power in the Middle East and counter Western influence, Beijing sees this conflict as an opportunity to position itself as a peace broker and leverage its partnership with Iran.

China, a key diplomatic and economic backer of Tehran, has moved to deepen ties in recent years — signing a 25-year cooperation agreement, holding joint naval drills, and continuing to purchase Iranian oil despite US sanctions.

Amid US-Iran nuclear talks, Chinese officials have consistently opposed Washington’s sanctions on Tehran and defended the country’s right to enrich uranium.

For its part, Russia also proposed on Monday to mediate the conflict between Israel and Iran, while reiterating that its earlier offer to store Iranian uranium on Russian soil still stands.

According to the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to discuss the ongoing conflict.

During the conversations, he emphasized “the importance of resuming the negotiations and resolving any issues pertaining to Iran’s nuclear program exclusively via political and diplomatic means.”

After US President Donald Trump suggested that Putin could play a role in mediating efforts between Iran and Israel, the European Union rejected the idea, saying that Russia has “zero credibility” as a potential mediator between the two adversaries.

“There has been a recent Russia-Iran partnership agreement, which signals deepening cooperation across multiple areas, including foreign policy and defense. In light of such, Russia cannot be an objective mediator,” EU spokesman Anouar El Anouni said in a statement.

Similar to China, Russia has expanded its ties with Iran to counter Western influence in the Middle East and mitigate the impact of US sanctions. For example, Russia pledged earlier this year to fund the construction of new nuclear power plants in Iran as part of a broader energy partnership that also includes a major gas deal between the two countries.

Premier Beniamin Netanjahu przybywa na rozprawę w swoim procesie w Sądzie Okręgowym w Tel Awiwie, 16 grudnia 2024 r. Zdjęcie: Yossi Zeliger/POOL.

Skorumpowana sprawa sądowa: Proces Netanjahu ma podłoże polityczne

David Isaac
Tłumaczenie: Małgorzata Koraszewska

David Isaac jest publicystą JNS.