A few hours after the first Israeli and U.S. airstrikes on Iran on Saturday, and as air raid sirens echoed across the skies of Jerusalem, Yehya Kassem, correspondent for the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) in Jerusalem, conducted an interview with Dr. Jack Neria, former foreign policy advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and a former officer in Israeli intelligence.
Unsurprisingly, the interview did not take place under ordinary circumstances. Sirens sounded repeatedly during the conversation, forcing the filming to stop several times. Between one interruption and the next, Neria offered a strategic reading of the operation, placing it within a broader framework than that of a simple direct military response.
Dr. Jack Neria argues that the events do not mark the beginning of a new war as much as they represent a continuation of a trajectory that never truly ended after last June’s confrontation. In his assessment, the previous strikes inflicted significant damage on Iran’s air, military, and nuclear infrastructure, temporarily slowing its nuclear program. However, subsequent developments, he said, showed that Tehran reorganized its nuclear and ballistic capabilities, prompting what he views as renewed Israeli American action.
Neria stressed that “the primary objective of the new strikes was purely security related,” noting that Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile capabilities pose, in his view, a direct threat to Israel. He further argued that the political and ideological doctrine of the Iranian regime is built on open hostility toward Israel and the United States, making — in his opinion, any attempt to ignore these capabilities untenable.
During the interview, he emphasized that the hierarchy of Israeli objectives is clear: first the nuclear file, then the ballistic missile program, followed by the network of regional proxies linked to Tehran — from Lebanon to Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. He added that “any potential change in the structure of the Iranian regime would profoundly affect the balance of power in the Middle East.”
Regarding the prospects for escalation, Neria stated that Israel’s air defense system is operating with high efficiency, asserting that the interception rate of incoming missiles is very high, an indication, he suggested, of Israel’s ability to contain Iranian retaliation.
Nevertheless, the recurring sound of sirens throughout the interview underscored the highly sensitive and dangerous security reality on the ground.
Politically, Neria rejected interpretations suggesting that the operation was driven by domestic Israeli electoral considerations. He argued that any Israeli prime minister would have addressed the Iranian threat with the same seriousness, given Iran’s longstanding centrality in Israel’s security doctrine.
In his broader assessment, he suggested that the operation could redraw lines of alignment in the region. If Iranian influence were curtailed, he said, it could open the door to new regional security arrangements and potentially reshape traditional balances of power.
In this sense, “Operation Epic Fury”, the name given by the United States to the operation, does not appear, in Neria’s view, to be an isolated event, but rather a milestone within a long and open-ended conflict in which military and security dimensions intersect with wider political and regional stakes.
Between the wail of sirens and strategic analysis, the moment raised questions larger than the strike itself: How far might the confrontation spiral? And is this a recalibration of deterrence, or the beginning of a deeper shift in the region’s power equations?
Alhurra
