ok story time taking out the iranian nuclear plan was always an american interest, and an interest of most arab countries in the middle east. not just an israeli interest knowing this, iran funded and trained for decades extremists in lebanon (heozballa), gaza (hamas) and syria (also heozballa, with assad’s blessing) and armed them all with missiles if anyone — not just israel! anyone! — were to attack the nuclear facilities in iran, iran would direct its proxies to shoot missiles at israel from all directions while also invading with ground troops from all directions. all while iran itself would also attack with its ballistic missiles. that would surely spark an actual regional war costing US and others a fuckton of money and blood. for this reason no one ever dared attack iran’s nuclear plan for decades, even though everyone wanted to note that the above isn’t israeli propaganda, those are threats that iranian officials proudly and publicly stated for years for whatever reason in october 7th 2023 hamas got trigger happy and executed the plan on its own without getting the ok from tehran and without cooperation from the other fronts. the massacre that ensued was a tiny taste of what iran was planning if all proxies were to attack together. as a result, israel all but took out hamas. i understand that people are very unhappy about the way that israel did that but for the subject at hand — how did iran already lose — this is currently beside the point. the point is that hamas is no longer a threat. in the chaos israel also saw an opportunity to take out heozballa, its leadership, and most of its weapon arsenal. it used to be a massive threat, and now it’s peanuts. those who paid attention saw that in the recent strike of iran, heozballa officials said they condemn israel’s attack but will not retaliate. such a statement from that org would’ve been unimaginable 12 months ago another huge piece is syria. for years syria openly cooperated with iran to house iranian weapons on syrian grounds to participate in the above mentioned plan. with the fall or assad’s regime that went out the window too. to be sure, israel took out most of the iranian missiles in syria when the regime fell. but anyways the new syrian ruler is openly looking for a US alliance. the new syria will not help defend iran the final piece was iran’s own aerial defense systems. those were taken out by israel 6 or so months ago in retaliation to iran’s previous round of firing missiles at israel thanks to all of the above, iran was left with no defenses whatsoever. it is wide open. that’s why israel was able to take out its chief of staff and his generals, the air force command, and the intelligence command. that’s how israel was able to bomb the nuclear facilities in natanz with no one to stop them. that’s how israeli fighter jets are able to fly above tehran day after day with no opposition whatsoever iran lost. their supreme leader was intentionally not killed to give him the chance to surrender. it’s over. this isn’t like afghanistan. this isn’t some terrorist group hiding in cave. It’s a country with a government and a military. and that military lost. and the government is about to surrender.