Iran-US-Israel war: Part III - Israel's haste.

Late February 2026. Flight tracking enthusiasts found to their surprise, a massive armada of heavy duty C17A Globemaster III transport aircraft of the United States Air Force Air Mobility Wing, setting off from their premier European airbase, Ramstein in Germany, to Al Udeid in Qatar, as well as some bound for other Middle Eastern airbases like Muwaffaq Salti in Jordan and Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates.

Little did they know that this mobilization, touted to be the largest since Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, would in mere hours, lead to the start of one of the largest conflicts in the 21st century. Mere hours later, Operation Epic Fury of the United States, Operation Roaring Lion of Israel, and Operation True Promise IV of Iran, would become household names like a wildfire spreading through a forest.

The causes for this conflict are many, and said causes can be debated and argued in great detail and at great length. However, in this article, we will focus on the immediate response of the State of Israel, and its operation in the war, Operation Roaring Lion, and its falterings and analyse its position and strategy in inflicting damage to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The current Israeli government, led by longtime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been believed to be the primary instigator and co-belligerent that played a vital role in the involvement of the United States in the coordinated attack against Iranian targets, after the failure of mediated indirect nuclear negotiations between the US and Iran in Geneva and Vienna weeks prior.

The Israel Defence Forces or IDF is seen to be one of the most highly skilled, highly capable and highly effective military forces in the Middle East, having vast combat experience across many decades, as well as a highly adept conscript army with ample reserves of both men and material. However, the IDF’s strength lies more in short-burst, tactical objective based operations, which is the complete opposite of the long-drawn war of attrition that this war’s trajectory is seeming to head towards.

Also, its heavy use of ground based methods in Lebanon as well as the Golan Heights in Syria to counter the coordinated response of Hezbollah also threatens the IDF’s capabilities to assist with the main goal of neutralizing Iranian government targets. Combined with the already ongoing large-scale operations in Gaza in response to the October 7, 2023 attacks, the IDF now finds itself in an apparent three-way strategic dilemma.

Israel now also faces the possibility of the wrath of the very Gulf nations that the United States worked hard to mediate between in order to establish the much celebrated Abraham Accords, by appearing to pull seemingly uninvolved countries into a conflict that they necessarily did not need themselves to be found in. Even if the media reports of Saudi Arabia being one of the primary instigators is considered, there still were nations in the Gulf that would have otherwise had interests in maintaining good relations with Iran such as Oman and Qatar.

But Israel still stands to have a reasonably better claim of existential survival than the United States in fighting this war. However, the readily available US support as well as possible diplomatic backing from Saudi Arabia enabled Israel to make the first moves and strike the initial Israeli targets. However, as the war progresses, it is soon becoming apparent that Israel is only the spark that set alight, the volatile gas chamber (metaphorically and literally) of the cold war in the most geopolitically unstable region in the world, that is, the Middle East.