{"id":121970,"date":"2025-06-18T17:00:56","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T15:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=121970"},"modified":"2025-06-18T08:08:43","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T06:08:43","slug":"18-00-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=121970","title":{"rendered":"IDF Says Iran Strikes May Wrap in \u2018One or Two Weeks\u2019 as Speculation Swirls Over US Role"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>IDF Says Iran Strikes May Wrap in \u2018One or Two Weeks\u2019 as Speculation Swirls Over US Role<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Debbie Weiss<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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US President Donald Trump speaks at the White House in Washington, DC, US, June 12, 2025. Photo: REUTERS\/Evelyn Hockstein<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Backchannel efforts suggest the regime in Iran is seeking off-ramps, with the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0on Monday reporting that Iranian diplomats had \u201csignaled\u201d through Arab intermediaries their willingness to return to negotiations.<\/span><\/p>\n

But US President Donald Trump has publicly dismissed the prospect of a negotiated ceasefire.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not looking for a ceasefire,\u201d he said, but rather for a \u201creal end\u201d to Iran\u2019s nuclear ambitions. After two months of stalled negotiations, he added, \u201cI\u2019m not in the mood to negotiate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump later posted a message on social media that read \u201cUNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Military officials said Tuesday that Israel expects its\u00a0current campaign targeting Iran\u2019s nuclear program<\/a>\u00a0to meet its primary objectives \u201cwithin one to two weeks.\u201d Its aim \u2014 to eliminate what Israel views as the core threat posed by both Tehran\u2019s nuclear weapons efforts and its long-range missile capabilities \u2014 would be fulfilled by then, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) brass said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the start of the operation, Israeli strikes have hit multiple elements of Iran\u2019s nuclear infrastructure. According to the officials, the attacks have caused extensive damage at two major enrichment sites \u2014 Natanz and Isfahan \u2014 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\u2019s nuclear operations. Israeli strikes have also taken out 40 percent of Iran\u2019s ballistic missile launchers and destroyed 70 Iranian air defense batteries since the start of the campaign on Thursday night.<\/span><\/p>\n

One potential target that Israel has so far not hit is\u00a0Iran\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a>. However, Trump noted on social media on Tuesday that could change.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cWe know exactly where the so-called \u2018Supreme Leader\u2019 is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there \u2013 We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,\u201d Trump posted. \u201cBut we don\u2019t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Jonathan Ruhe, director of foreign policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said Trump\u2019s recent military posturing might be designed to strengthen US leverage rather than signal imminent intervention.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTrump 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,\u201d Ruhe told\u00a0The Algemeiner<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ruhe added that\u00a0Trump\u2019s increasingly explicit threats<\/a>\u00a0to join the war was \u201cone more way to try to build US leverage against Iran.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Eyal Hulata, Israel\u2019s former national security adviser, voiced skepticism about American involvement. \u201cI\u2019d be very surprised if the Americans join the war themselves,\u201d he said on call with reporters on Tuesday. \u201cIsrael is proving that it\u2019s pretty much capable of handling the situation so far.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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. \u201cThat will change the American calculus,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

While Israel continued its strikes in its so-called\u00a0Operation Rising Lion<\/a>, 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\u2019s oil industry and broader economy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ruhe cautioned that the collapse of the Islamic Republic, if it came, would not follow a linear trajectory. \u201cRegime collapse is always gradual until it\u2019s sudden,\u201d he said. \u201cOne key factor determining whether regimes disintegrate or survive is not whether the people take to the streets and protest and conduct subversion \u2014 which we\u2019re already seeing initial indications of \u2014 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While the heavy losses suffered by the Revolutionary Guards, particularly among senior commanders, could spark defections or widespread disorder that might prevent\u00a0the regime from suppressing uprisings<\/a>, Ruhe cautioned that Iran\u2019s internal security apparatus remained significantly more \u201crobust, pervasive, and capable\u201d than the non-state actors Israel has confronted over the past two years, like Hamas and Hezbollah.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s also very possible, amid all this chaos, that the regime doesn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u201cup to three years away\u201d from building a nuclear weapon.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, a White House assessment released Tuesday to counter the CNN report cited CENTCOM Commander Gen. Erik Kurilla as saying that Iran was \u201cmere steps\u201d 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\u00a0\u2014 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

A recent analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security found that if\u00a0Iran chooses to \u201cbreak out\u201d toward a bomb<\/a>, it would have enough highly enriched uranium at two of its main facilities, Fordow and Natanz, \u201cfor 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

This sense of urgency was sharpened by increasing calls from Iran\u2019s security establishment, including advisors to the supreme leader, to \u201csimply finish the bomb very quickly,\u201d Ruhe said. Ruhe also pointed to the risks of misjudging Iran\u2019s timeline. Israel had long assumed Iran would complete enrichment first and only then move to weaponization over the course of months or years. But\u00a0Tehran increasingly pursued both tracks in parallel<\/a>, and, as Ruhe noted, one lesson from past breakouts is that there may never be a \u201cclear and detectable \u2018go\u2019 order from the top leadership to finish the bomb.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael\u2019s increasing sense of urgency to strike after\u00a0the horrors of Oct. 7<\/a>\u00a0reflects 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,\u201d he continued.<\/span><\/p>\n

This was also a key reason behind Israel\u2019s decision to strike Iran\u2019s scientific brain trust in addition to its known nuclear facilities.<\/span><\/p>\n

For his part, Hulata highlighted the asymmetric warfare Israel wages with its adversaries and the difference between Israel\u2019s precision targeting and\u00a0Iran\u2019s indiscriminate missile barrages against civilians<\/a>. \u201cWhen it\u2019s Hamas, then people say well it\u2019s a terror organization so what do you expect, but Iran is a serious country,\u201d he said. Even so, he continued, \u201cthe damage to Israel in this conflict so far is way below what we all would have expected.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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IDF Says Iran Strikes May Wrap in \u2018One or Two Weeks\u2019 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121970"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121982,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121970\/revisions\/121982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}