This was confirmed by US President Donald Trump himself, who posted on Truth Social that Iran’s response was “weak and expected,” and “there will, hopefully, be no further HATE.”

“I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured. Perhaps Iran can now proceed to Peace and Harmony in the Region, and I will enthusiastically encourage Israel to do the same,” he wrote.

Monday was the 11th straight day in which Iran and Israel exchanged missile strikes. According to reports, the latest Israeli strikes were the largest in scale, including an attack on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC’) headquarters.

Iran’s Qatar gamble

The American strikes on Iranian nuclear sites have neither eliminated Iran’s enrichment capabilities, nor destroyed its existing stock of enriched uranium.

Iranian officials claimed that stockpiles of 60%, 20%, and 3.67% enriched uranium had already been withdrawn from Fordow, partially or fully, ahead of the strikes. (This stockpile will remain central to Iran-US negotiations, if they ever resume).

Arab media reports suggest that Washington supplied advance notice to Tehran of its June 22 strikes, and communicated privately that the attacks were a “one-off” and that it was willing to resume negotiations.

Across the 10 days of Israeli attacks, the Iranians consistently maintained two positions – that it was willing to resume nuclear negotiations if Israel ceased its attacks, and that Iran would certainly attack US bases (including those in Arab states) if the US joined Israel’s attack.

After the American attacks, Tehran had to find the optimal point between acting to preserve the credibility of its threats, and restraining itself enough to retain space for negotiations and recuperate. This is more so given Iran’s abject economic condition, which has increasingly worsened over the last five years.

Among all Arab states, Qatar was arguably among the few where the Iranians could risk targeting US assets, and attempt to contain diplomatic fallout.

Qatar, which has positioned itself as a neutral mediator for the region’s many conflicts (including between Israel and Hamas), has long maintained strong ties with Iran.

This relationship was among the crucial reasons for Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain imposing an unprecedented blockade on Qatar between 2017 and 2021. This blockade ended in 2021, two years before the Arab rapprochement with Iran.

Iran’s “advance notice” allowed Qatar to shut its airspace an hour before the attacks. Moreover, the US has spent the last week removing its aircraft from the base. By June 19, there were reportedly less than five American aircraft left at Al-Udeid.

Iran’s Israel challenge

While the US strikes were the first American military attacks on Iranian soil in history, it is Israel’s sustained attacks which have imposed the most substantial costs. Iran now faces an active threat to the Supreme Leader, attacks on its military, energy, and nuclear sites, and the elimination of key IRGC senior leaders. Its homeland defences have all but been decimated.

However, while Ali Khamenei has reportedly named his successors in the event of his own demise, the IRGC has reorganised itself enough to sustain its missile salvos against Israel. For Iran, this is both symbolically and substantially important.

Its threshold of success is lower, defined simply by its ability to hit Israel, beating both American air defence units in the region, and Israel’s multi-layered AD systems. Following the US strikes, the IRGC for the first time employed its homegrown Kheybar Shekan solid-fuel missiles against Israel.

This is what triggered a larger-than-before Israeli salvo on Monday. Unlike the US, which declared its one-time operation complete and successful, Israel’s campaign continues to be fought with the maximal objectives of both Iranian nuclear dismantlement and regime change. Despite contradictory statements coming from the White House, Washington evidently remains unwilling to support the latter objective.

Moreover, any bombing campaign, let alone a one-off strike, is likely to only delay, not end, Iran’s road to a nuclear weapon. It is this clear inference that has always pushed both the US and Europe to seek negotiations with Tehran, despite the severe imbalance in conventional military power.

What did not happen

Despite issuing threats to this end, Tehran in the end did not close — or even try to close — the Strait of Hormuz, as has always been the case. The Strait is vital for both global and Iranian energy needs, and even now, the Iranian position is not dire enough to warrant a blockade.

What is more interesting is the complete absence of its proxies in the Iranian retaliation.

While the Yemeni Houthis declared an end to their April ceasefire with the US, the group has not yet resumed attacks against US shipping. The Houthis have thus far shown a marked ability to start/halt attacks on their own terms.

On the other hand, Iran’s Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah, has consistently maintained ambiguity, especially in the light of its significant internal challenges.

Even after the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel, Hezbollah engaged only in calibrated rocket and drone attacks, drawing Israeli retaliation at a level it could absorb. Hassan Nasrallah did not commit to a full-scale war — until Israel initiated it in the second half of 2024, and killed Nasrallah himself.

On June 20, Hezbollah’s current chief, Naim Qassem, expressed strong solidarity with Iran amid Israel’s attacks, but committed only to “act as we see fit” — retaining the ambiguity that the group has now preferred for the past 20 months.

In Iraq, Iran has cultivated the Hashd-al-Shaabi as an umbrella proxy group since 2019, after their successful campaign against ISIS in Iraq. The government in Baghdad, though firmly opposed to the Israeli and American aggression against Tehran, has long worked to remove Iraq as a proxy battleground, and to potentially integrate the Hashd, which has a strength of about 50,000 fighters collectively, into Iraq’s armed forces.

While US bases in Iraq were most expected to bear the brunt of any Iranian retaliation, Iran evidently did not press this militia into action, much like in January 2020.

That month, after the US assassinated Iran’s Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani, the IRGC launched missiles directly at US bases at Ain-al-Assad and Erbil in Iraq but excluded Hashd from an operational role. The Americans did not suffer any casualties, and chose not to escalate — then too Iran had telegraphed its impending attack.

Not using its proxies, arguably allows Iran a greater ability to calibrate its actions, with relatively lesser risk of inadvertent escalation. But the attack on Al-Udeid is markedly different from the Iranian 2020 action in Iraq.

The Al-Udeid base is the US military’s crown jewel in the Middle East. The 29 year old self-sufficient base houses 10,000 troops from multiple countries and is the nerve-centre for US operations in the region. However, like in 2020, the US has recognised Iran’s need to save face, and has refrained from escalating in response — as Trump’s message makes amply evident.

What now?

With Israel keeping up its attacks, it is uncertain whether Iran will remain committed to its offer — which stood between June 13 and June 22 — to negotiate if the Israelis stop their assaults.

Iran is close to withdrawing from the NPT and suspending cooperation with the IAEA, which indicates that the US attacks may have made it even more determined to pursue a nuclear weapon. However, Iran’s economic imperatives for negotiations remain.

In the larger scheme of things, the developments of the past few days might have convinced the Arab states in the Middle East of the value of nuclear deterrence.

While Saudi Arabia and the UAE have long worried about an Iranian nuclear weapon and Iranian or Houthi-led attacks against their energy sites, the Israeli actions have potentially created a new threat-in-being.

The UAE completed the first nuclear power plant of the Arab world last year, and Saudi is on the road to its own. One downstream impact of the Israeli aggression against Iran may be an increase in the collective Arab anxiety, regardless of their recent rapprochement with Israel.