The thing that's strange to me is why they waited so long. They have been sabre-rattling for war with Iran since George W. Bush was in office. If I recall correctly, we were supposed to get involved there by about 2007. But the last 2 years of Bush in office, he did basically nothing and dished the problem off to his successors.
What just happened is almost exactly the scenario that was discussed back in the 2000s: Bunker busters to eliminate the facilities at Natanz, et al. So, I'm not sure what the hold up was? America apparently had the exact capabilities then, and Iran in that time period gained no additional abilities to deter such an attack.
It seems like America was waiting for something but I'm not really sure what. There are theories though that Israel forced this because popular support for Israel is dying in the USA with the decline of the Boomers and Evangelical Christianity (more recent Evangelicals aren't as pro-Israel and actually want to focus on the American economy, illegal immigration, etc). So it's now or never from the perspective of Israel.
But the delay still is puzzling. Wouldn't it just have been better, from a strategic perspective, to do it back then?
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not puzzling at all - they were waiting for Syria to fall
they didn't want to attack Iran until i was isolated
they knew that the entire middle east hates Israel so their job was to avoid having Israel attacked by all its neighbors at the same time
so they embarked on a long game of toppling those countries one by one leaving the biggest one ( Iran ) for last when everybody else has been toppled
Assad in Syria was allied with Putin and Iran and that presented a problem but they were just recently able to get him to flee to Russia
then Trump recently did a tour of ME and got assurance from all the Arab states that they would cooperate even though Israel was masacring Palestinians
there were also pager attacks and other assassinations in Lebanon recently - another major ally of Iran
they were working to weaken Iran's support in the region to a level they were comfortable with
once they were ready they didn't really wait at all - Rubio said the attack was decided on in March - Trump simply lied about negotiations to confuse Iran