Arjakas told ERR that this is the most extensive Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear program to date.

"For decades, Israel has seen Iran's nuclear program as an existential threat to the survival of its state and always said that they are not prepared to accept that Iran ever having the ability to obtain a nuclear weapon," Arjakas said.

"Why has this attack happened now? There have been a series of negotiations in recent weeks between the U.S. and Iran to reach some sort of agreement regarding this nuclear program. Israel certainly does not have any faith that Iran would seriously give up its intentions of developing a nuclear weapon, should it be expedient for them to do so. The simplest explanation is that political and military circumstances coincided. The military circumstance is that Iran has been weakened considerably by Israel's activities in the region and politically Israel saw that now was the time for them to deliver a blow like this," Arjakas said.

According to Arjakas, Israel most likely informed the United States of the attack.

"This has also been pointed out by American officials. However, there have been no reports to date that American forces themselves were involved in the operation. But it is highly unlikely that Israel would have launched an attack like this without at least tacit U.S. approval," Arjakas said.

She also noted that Iran has previously launched air strikes against Israel.

"Iran's tactics have been to attack Israel through some kind of handholding, by supporting for example the Hezbollah group in Lebanon or the Assad regime in Syria. Now those proxies have either been completely overthrown or very much weakened. In other words, Iran will have to start delivering military strikes from its own territory, which it has done twice in the past year. However, those attacks demonstrated that Israel's air defenses are stronger," Arjakas explained.

"It all depends on how much the Iranian Air Force was hit over night, how many ballistic missiles they have to send in Israel's direction and what kind of actions other groups are carrying out in the region. It's a very volatile situation and really difficult to make these kinds of predictions right now," Arjakas said.

According to Arjakas, the Israeli-Iranian conflict will definitely draw some international attention away from Russia's aggression in Ukraine. "In the case of Ukraine, it means the attention of all countries is very much focused on the Middle East at the moment. The Ukrainians themselves are of course pleased that Iran, which has supplied Russia with a lot of drones used to attack Ukrainian civilians, will now be weakened," she said.

"The main danger of the Iran-Israel conflict and why it is being followed in the way it is, is that it could snowball into some much bigger regional conflict. At the moment, the possibility of that happening is definitely greater than ever. What limits that possibility] is that Iran does not really have any allies in the region," Arjakas said.

Even Russia has distanced itself from the conflict, Arjakas pointed out.

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