The Israeli military carried out a surprise multi-front drill on Sunday in what it called an effort to gauge readiness to counter a cross-border assault and stave off any rerun of the October 7 attacks by Iran-backed Hamas militants.
Four current and former Israeli intelligence officials, cited in the report, said the offensive had been a long-term contingency plan, but strategic timing was key.
“Israel has never hidden the fact that it wants to destroy the Iranian nuclear program, and it has never hidden the fact it was also willing to allow it to be resolved diplomatically, as long as the diplomatic solution prevents Iran not only from enriching uranium, but from ever getting the capacity to pose an existential threat to the state of Israel,” one intelligence source told Euronews.
On June 13, Israel launched land and air strikes targeting senior Iranian military leaders, nuclear scientists, and politicians, while damaging or destroying Iranian air defenses and nuclear facilities. Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks on Israeli cities and military sites. On the ninth day of fighting, the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear sites. Iran then struck a US base in Qatar.
A US-brokered ceasefire was reached on June 24. Both sides claimed victory, with Israel and Washington saying they had significantly degraded Iran’s missile and nuclear programs -- claims Tehran denied. Independent assessments remain limited due to the secrecy surrounding Iran’s nuclear activities.
Trump’s re-election
The intelligence sources told Euronews that Trump’s second election win in 2024 was pivotal to Israel’s decision-making.
“The original plan was to attack in October 2024. That was after the second direct missile attack by Iran on Israel following Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon in September,” the first intelligence source said. However, the strike was postponed until after the US elections.
“I think it was very important for Israel that Trump should win those elections. Once Trump was elected, he put the main emphasis on reaching a hostage deal,” said a second source, referring to the Hamas-Israel conflict.
Once the hostage deal was signed in March 2025, Israel again considered an attack on Iran, but US-Iran negotiations temporarily stalled those plans.
A 60-day ultimatum
Indirect talks between Washington and Tehran began in March 2025 but failed to produce an agreement, despite being described by counterparts as “constructive.”
“Trump gave 60 days to those negotiations. The day after, Israel attacked Iran. I think that obviously was coordinated with the US administration,” all four sources told Euronews.
Although the US has never publicly confirmed coordination, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on June 23 that the operation had been “planned for many years.”
“When we attacked, we were at the end of the 60-day period of negotiations. I think it was very clear to Trump at this stage that the Iranians were not willing to forego enrichment on Iranian soil, even though the negotiations did bring up some interesting solutions to that. For example, some sort of international enrichment agency that would allocate enriched uranium at civilian levels to all countries in the region interested in it,” the first intelligence source said.
“Trump realized Iran was engaging in negotiations merely to buy time, with no real intent to reach a resolution. The talks served as a decoy, giving Iran the impression it wouldn’t be attacked, especially amid widespread press reports that Israel was on the verge of striking,” the source added.
On the first day of conflict, Trump said in a post on Truth Social: “Two months ago I gave Iran a 60-day ultimatum to ‘make a deal.’ They should have done it! Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance!”
Iran’s missile attacks
The proxy conflict between Israel and Iran had been intensifying for years, but the intelligence officials said a turning point came in April 2024 when Iran launched missiles directly from its own territory at Israel.
“I think the pivotal moment was in April 2024, when Iran launched missiles directly from its own territory at Israel. Until then, Iran had primarily relied on proxies to attack Israel, while Israel carried out covert operations inside Iran with plausible deniability, aiming to prevent escalation into full-scale war,” the first source said.
The strike followed an Israeli attack on Iran’s consulate in Syria that killed Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, at the time the highest-ranking Iranian military official killed since the 2020 US assassination of Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.
“I think Israel had to wait from April 2024. It needed time to gather all the intelligence and planning it needed in order to feel confident that, already in the first two or three days of the war, we would be in a position where we had complete control over the situation, minimal casualties at home, and complete control of Iranian airspace, with the ability to attack whenever and wherever we want to,” the source added.
A second intelligence source told Euronews that Israel intends to “destroy anything that even suggests that the Iranians are preparing to rebuild any of the capabilities that we have destroyed.”
"As part of the exercise, complex scenarios were practiced in order to examine the IDF's competence, processes for transitioning from routine to emergency, and the functioning of the General Staff and regional commands," the Israeli military said in a statement.
Taking place just ahead of the two-year anniversary of the surprise Hamas attacks in which thousands of members of the militant group attacked Israel from air, land and sea, the drill aimed to "implement the lessons of October 7," the military added.
In one day, Hamas killed around 1,200 people mostly civilians, and took another 251 hostages to Gaza, sparking the worst round of Gaza war since Hamas took over the strip in 2007.
Israel's incursion into the enclave has killed 61,000 Palestinians according to Gaza health officials. Humanitarian organizations have warned famine looms for the population there, most of which has been displaced by Israeli military action.
"The Chief of Staff also conducted situation assessments in the Air Force and Navy together with the commanders," the statement added.
The exercises came two months after Israel launched a surprise military campaign against Iran on June 13, targeting military and nuclear sites and killing hundreds of military personnel, nuclear scientists and civilians.
Iran responded with missile strikes that killed 31 civilians and one off-duty soldier, according to official figures published by the Israeli government.
"The IDF will continue and initiate a series of audit activities across all commands, branches, and units in order to improve their competence and readiness," the military added.
During a press conference this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that in the wake of the Iran war, the country must remain “fully alert”.
“We are prepared for every scenario. The Iranians are preparing for different scenarios - and I won't go into detail,” he said.
According to Israeli daily Maariv, the military was woken up to what they were told was a mutli-faceted attack on the country.
Threats they were told they were facing included rocket fire at rigs, infiltration from the Jordanian border in three locations, attacks by armed groups on settlements in the occupied West Bank and missile fire from Iran’s military allies the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
As the Houthis continue to fire ballistic missiles and drones at Israel regular basis, almost all intercepted by Israel’s air defenses before reaching Israeli territory, Maariv also reported that Iran is working to incite the Houthis as well as militias in southern Syria, in addition to others in Jordan.
The Israeli military has recently carried out a series of bombings on the de facto authorities in Syria, accusing its ex-jihadist president of posing a threat to the country and Syria's Druze minority.
