Israel Reframing the Iran Threat

By RFE/RL staff - Dec 27, 2025

• Israel now views Iran’s ballistic missile program as a more urgent threat than its nuclear activities, citing lessons from the June conflict.
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• Netanyahu is pressing Washington to treat missiles as weapons of mass destruction and to consider strikes on Iranian missile production infrastructure.
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• Iran insists its missile program is non-negotiable, while analysts warn that enforcement and monitoring would be extremely difficult even under a new agreement.
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As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to meet US President Donald Trump in Florida on December 29, the agenda centers on Iran -- with a twist.

Israel is laser-focused on Iran’s ballistic missile program, which it views as the most urgent existential threat after the US-Israeli strikes severely damaged Iran's nuclear infrastructure during a 12-day aerial campaign in June.

This shift highlights a growing US-Israel divergence. Trump has repeatedly described Iran's nuclear threat as "obliterated," crediting wartime bombings of sites in Isfahan, Fordow, and Natanz. Israel agrees the program is set back by a year or two.

However, it warns that missiles -- which Iran is working to amass -- could soon overwhelm defenses, as demonstrated when 36 out of 550 missiles struck Israeli soil in June, causing widespread damage.

Missiles As 'Immediate' Priority

Israeli officials, speaking to NBC News and Axios, describe Iran's missile ramp-up as "more pressing" than its nuclear program.

Israel says the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has carried out drills and has warned Washington that Tehran might use the exercises as cover for surprise attacks.

This comes amid contradictory reports in Iran over whether missile tests are actually taking place. Iranian media, including the IRGC-affiliated Fars news agency, reported on December 22 that the armed forces were conducting drills, with users on social media sharing videos and footage of contrails in the skies over central and western Iran. However, the state broadcaster swiftly denied the reports, citing an unnamed "informed source" who insisted the contrails were from "high?altitude aircraft" and claimed that no exercises were underway.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief Eyal Zamir hinted at readiness for new strikes against Iran "wherever required," prioritizing production lines that Israel fears could churn out 3,000 missiles annually.

Netanyahu plans to present Trump with strike options -- Israeli-led, joint, or US-backed -- arguing missiles enable proxy wars via Hezbollah and Houthis while shielding Iran’s nuclear revival.

Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute, told RFE/RL's Radio Farda that Israel is pressing the United States to reclassify missiles as weapons of mass destruction.

“Israel is trying to shift this view, using the recent war's experience to convince the United States that Iran's missile capabilities are as existentially threatening as its nuclear ones,” Nadimi said.

He noted US reluctance, viewing nukes as the core danger, now degraded, but added, “From Israel's standpoint, these should count as weapons of mass destruction for its people.”

Nadimi warned that total missile destruction could force a doctrinal pivot in Tehran.

“If Israel fully destroys Iran's offensive missile capabilities... it would either have to surrender or make a fundamental doctrinal shift,” he said, adding that Iran's technical path to nuclear warheads remains feasible in a secure lab using 90-percent enriched uranium stocks.

Iran’s Missile Red Line

Iran has long maintained that its missile program is non-negotiable, asserting it is purely defensive. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baqaei reiterated this on December 22:

“The defensive capabilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran have been designed with the aim of deterring aggressors from any thought of attacking Iran. Under no circumstances are they a matter that can be discussed or negotiated.”

Hamidreza Azizi, a fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, noted that while the United States and Israel may want different things from Iran, they converge on one point: “Iran is weakened now, so it's time to extract more concessions.”

Iran has capped the range of its missiles at 2,000 kilometers, though in recent months it has hinted it could increase the limit if it deems necessary. Azizi said the United States and Israel want Iran to reduce the range of its missiles -- a non-starter for Tehran.

Even in the unlikely scenario of an agreement on Iran’s missile program, he noted that Washington is aware enforcement would be difficult, given the absence of any international monitoring body or safeguards regime for missile programs.

Against this backdrop, Azizi argued that missiles serve as pressure leverage:

“First, to make Iran fully abandon [uranium] enrichment on its soil; second, to secure concessions on arms transfers to groups such as Hezbollah or the Houthis.”

Iranian Media Gleeful Yet Concerned

Israeli rhetoric around Iran’s missile program has been met with a mixture of delight and alarm in Iranian media.

Highlighting Iran’s pace in replenishing its missile arsenal following the June war, the IRGC-affiliated newspaper Javan said Israel was “terrified” of Iran’s ability to launch hundreds of missiles in a potential conflict. The same sentiment was echoed by other hard-line outlets, such as Mehr news agency.

But others have urged caution. Bultan News argued that Netanyahu was exaggerating Iran’s ability to restore its missile stockpile to justify an attack. It added that Tehran must take the rhetoric seriously.

“Every piece of news or report that is published can be part of a larger puzzle. Distinguishing which news is real and which is psychological warfare is not easy. But making that effort is a national security necessity,” it argued.

By RFE/

Iran in ‘comprehensive war’ with US, Israel, Europe, president says

December 28, 2025 

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian speaks during a press conference after arriving at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran, Iran on September 27, 2025. [Iranian Presidency – Anadolu Agency]

Iran is in a state of “comprehensive war” with the United States, Israel, and Europe, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Saturday, Anadolu reports.

“We are in a state of comprehensive war with the United States, Israel, and Europe,” Pezeshkian said in an interview published on the official website of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

“This war is more dangerous, more complex, and more difficult than the war with Iraq” between 1980 and 1988, he added.

The Iranian leader accused the US, Israel and some European countries of supporting the collapse of Iran.

“The situation during the war with Iraq was clear: they fired missiles and we knew where to strike. But today, they surround us from all sides, apply pressure on us, obstruct our trade, and raise public expectations inside society in various fields.”

During a 12-day war with Israel in June, the US military struck three major Iranian nuclear facilities – Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan – using bunker-buster bombs.

The strikes came more than a week after Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, killing senior military commanders and nuclear scientists and also targeting some nuclear sites.

CONTRAILS REAL;  CHEMTRAILS NOT SO MUCH

Study: More eyes on the skies will help planes reduce climate-warming contrails

Images from geostationary satellites alone aren’t enough to help planes avoid contrail-prone regions, MIT researchers report.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Four research figures show how contrails appear in two satellite views (left) and two photographs taken from the MIT Green Building.

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Credit: Courtesy of Prakash Prashanth, Marlene Euchenhofer, et al

Aviation’s climate impact is partly due to contrails — condensation that a plane streaks across the sky when it flies through icy and humid layers of the atmosphere. Contrails trap heat that radiates from the planet’s surface , and while the magnitude of this impact is uncertain, several studies suggest contrails may be responsible for about half of aviation’s climate impact.

Pilots could conceivably reduce their planes’ climate impact by avoiding contrail-prone regions, similarly to making altitude adjustments to avoid turbulence. But to do so requires knowing where in the sky contrails are likely to form. 

To make these predictions, scientists are studying images of contrails that have formed in the past. Images taken by geostationary satellites are one of the main tools scientists use to develop contrail identification and avoidance systems.  

But a new study shows there are limits to what geostationary satellites can see. MIT engineers analyzed contrail images taken with geostationary satellites, and compared them with images of the same areas taken by low-Earth-orbiting (LEO) satellites. LEO satellites orbit the Earth at lower altitudes and therefore can capture more detail. However, since LEO satellites only snap an image as they fly by, they capture images of the same area far less frequently than geostationary (GEO) satellites, which continuously image the same region of the Earth every few minutes. 

The researchers found that geostationary satellites miss about 80 percent of the contrails that appear in LEO imagery. Geostationary satellites mainly see larger contrails that have had time to grow and spread across the atmosphere. The many more contrails that LEO satellites can pick up are often shorter and thinner. These finer threads likely formed immediately from a plane’s engines and are still too small or otherwise not distinct enough for geostationary satellites to discern.

The study highlights the need for a multiobservational approach in developing contrail identification and avoidance systems. The researchers emphasize that both GEO and LEO satellite images have their strengths and limitations. Observations from both sources, as well as images taken from the ground, could provide a more complete picture of contrails and how they evolve. 

“With more ‘eyes’ on the sky, we could start to see what a contrail’s life looks like,” says Prakash Prashanth, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “Then you can understand what are its radiative properties over its entire life, and when and why a contrail is climatically important.”

The new study appears today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The study’s MIT co-authors include first author and graduate student Marlene Euchenhofer, undergraduate Sydney Parke, Ian Waitz, the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and MIT’s vice president of research, along with Sebastian Eastham of Imperial College London.

Imaging backbone

Contrails form when the exhaust from planes meets icy, humid air, and the particles from the exhaust act as seeds on which water vapor collects and freezes into ice crystals. As a plane moves forward, it leaves a trail of condensation in its wake that starts as a thin thread that can grow and spread over large distances, lasting for several hours before dissipating. 

When it persists, a contrail acts similar to an ice cloud and, as such, can have two competing effects: one in which the contrail is a sort of heat shield, reflecting some incoming radiation from the sun. On the other hand, a contrail can also act as a blanket, absorbing and reflecting back some of the heat from the surface. During the daytime, when the sun is shining, contrails can have both heat shielding and trapping effects. At night, the cloud-like threads have only a trapping, warming effect. On balance, studies have shown that contrails as a whole contribute to warming the planet. 

There are multiple efforts underway to develop and test aircraft contrail-avoidance systems to reduce aviation’s climate-warming impact. And scientists are using images of contrails from space to help inform those systems. 

“Geostationary satellite images are the workhorse of observations for detecting contrails,” says Euchenhofer. “Because they are at 36,000 kilometers above the surface, they can cover a wide area, and they look at the same point day and night so you can get new images of the same location every five minutes.”

But what they bring in rate and coverage, geostationary satellites lack in clarity. The images they take are about one-fifth the resolution of those taken by LEO satellites. This wouldn’t be a surprise to most scientists. But Euchenhofer wondered how different the geostationary and LEO contrail pictures would look, and what opportunities there might be to improve the picture if both sources could be combined. 

“We still think geostationary satellites are the backbone of observation-based avoidance because of the spatial coverage and the high frequency at which we get an image,” she says. “We think that the data could be enhanced if we include observations from LEO and other data sources like ground-based cameras.”

Catching the trail

In their new study, the researchers analyzed contrail images from two satellite imagers: the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) aboard a geostationary satellite that is typically used to observe contrails and the higher-resolution Visible Infrared Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), an instrument onboard several LEO satellites. 

For each month from December 2023 to November 2024, the team picked out an image of the contiguous United States taken by VIIRS during its flyby. They found corresponding images of the same location, taken at about the same time of day by the geostationary ABI. The images were taken in the infrared spectrum and represented in false color, which enabled the researchers to more easily identify contrails that formed during both the day and night. The researchers then worked by eye, zooming in on each image to identify, outline, and label each contrail they could see. 

When they compared the images, they found that GEO images missed about 80 percent of the contrails observed in the LEO images. They also assessed the length and width of contrails in each image and found that GEO images mostly captured larger and longer contrails, while LEO images could also discern shorter, smaller contrails. 

“We found 80 percent of the contrails we could see with LEO satellites, we couldn’t see with GEO imagers,” says Prashanth, who is the executive officer of MIT’s Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment (LAE). “That does not mean that 80 percent of the climate impact wasn’t captured. Because the contrails we see with GEO imagers are the bigger ones that likely have a bigger climate effect.” 

Still, the study highlights an opportunity.

“We want to make sure this message gets across: Geostationary imagers are extremely powerful in terms of the spatial extent they cover and the number of images we can get,” Euchenhofer says. “But solely relying on one instrument, especially when policymaking comes into play, is probably too incomplete a picture to inform science and also airlines regarding contrail avoidance. We really need to fill this gap with other sensors.”

The team says other sensors could include networks of cameras on the ground that under ideal conditions can spot contrails as planes form them in real time. These smaller, “younger” contrails are typically missed by geostationary satellites. Once scientists have this ground-based data, they can match the contrail to the plane and use the plane’s flight data to identify the exact altitude at which the contrail appears. They could then track the contrail as it grows and spreads through the atmosphere, using geostationary images. Eventually, with enough data, scientists could develop an accurate forecasting model, in real time, to predict whether a plane is heading toward a region where contrails might form and persist, and how it could change its altitude to avoid the region. 

“People see contrail avoidance as a near-term and cheap opportunity to attack one of the hardest-to-abate sectors in transportation,” Prashanth says. “We don’t have a lot of easy solutions in aviation to reduce our climate impact. But it is premature to do so until we have better tools to determine where in the atmosphere contrails will form, to understand their relative impacts and to verify avoidance outcomes.  We have to do this in a careful and rigorous manner, and this is where a lot of these pieces come in.”

This work was supported in part by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration Office

of Environment and Energy. 

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Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News

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Journal

Geophysical Research Letters

DOI

10.1029/2025GL118386 

Article Title

“Contrail observation limitations using geostationary satellites”

Contrails are a major driver of aviation’s climate impact

Chalmers University of Technology

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Aviation’s climate impact extends beyond carbon dioxide emissions. A new study from Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and Imperial College, UK, reveals that contrails can represent a significant portion of aviation’s overall climate cost. The study also shows that climate impact can be reduced by optimising flight routes.

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Credit: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5 | André Karwath

Aviation’s climate impact extends beyond carbon dioxide emissions. A new study from Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and Imperial College, UK, reveals that contrails can represent a significant portion of aviation’s overall climate cost. The study also shows that climate impact can be reduced by optimising flight routes.

In a new article in Nature Communications, The social costs of aviation CO₂ and contrail cirrus, the researchers demonstrate that both CO₂ emissions and contrail formation contribute materially to aviation’s climate impact – and that the associated societal costs differ substantially depending on weather patterns and routing decisions. They find that, at the global level, contrails account for about 15 percent of aviation’s climate impact when measured in economic terms.

After also analysing nearly half a million flights across the North Atlantic, the research team has generated new insights that can support both industry and policymakers in guiding aviation towards more climate optimal operations. Drawing on extensive flight and meteorological data, in combination with a contrail model and an advanced climate-economy model, the researchers estimated the climate and societal cost attributable to each emission source.

“Our research provides a basis for strategies to reduce the climate impact of contrails. Our calculations can be used for optimisation of flight routes where climate impact is considered alongside, for example, fuel cost and travel time. The results give airline operators and air traffic management new tools for climate optimisation. This could bring significant climate and societal benefits,” says Susanne Pettersson, postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Space, Earth and Environment at Chalmers.

The study shows that 38 percent of flights generate contrails that have a warming effect. It also shows that it would be beneficial from a climate perspective to reduce the formation of contrails of almost all these flights through minor rerouting, to avoid contrail formation, even if this results in slightly higher carbon dioxide emissions.

“The new knowledge also provides a foundation for designing new regulations and policy instruments to reduce aviation’s climate impact. The European Commission is currently working on proposals to steer aviation towards lower climate impact, and our new study can hopefully support this process,” says Daniel Johansson, associate professor at the Department of Space, Earth and Environment at Chalmers and one of the lead authors of the next IPCC climate report.

Learn more on contrails, aviation and climate change: Read an article written by the researchers as a Resources For the Future (RFF) issue in brief.

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Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-025-64355-5 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The social costs of aviation CO₂ and contrail cirrus

 

Long-lived contrails usually form in natural ice clouds

Research team identifies common environmental conditions for the formation of contrails and provides initial insights into their impact on the climate

Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz

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Contrails over Jülich, embedded in very thin and therefore barely visible cirrus clouds

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Credit: Photo/©: Andreas Petzold

Long-lived contrails form predominantly not in cloud-free skies, but within already existing ice clouds. This is the conclusion reached by a team of scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich, the University of Cologne, the University of Wuppertal, and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). Using extensive observational data, the researchers were able, for the first time, to systematically determine the atmospheric conditions under which long-lasting contrails form – whether in cloudless skies, in very thin and barely visible ice clouds, or in more clearly visible ice clouds, known as cirrus clouds. The result: more than 80 percent of all persistent contrails form within pre-existing clouds, mostly within natural cirrus clouds. The effects of this on the climate are not yet clearly understood. The study, now published in Nature Communications, provides important insights for further research – and, beyond that, strong arguments for taking cloud cover into account when planning flight routes adapted to climate considerations.

Effect of natural and man-made ice clouds on the climate

Contrails are a visible signature of daily air traffic in the sky. They form when the hot exhaust gases from aircraft engines mix with the cold air at an altitude of around ten kilometers. In dry air, most contrails dissipate quickly. In cold and humid air, however, they can persist for several hours and develop into extensive ice clouds or cirrus clouds. Cirrus clouds are thin ice clouds that occur at altitudes of about eight to twelve kilometers and often appear as fine, fibrous veils in the sky. The overall climate impact of these cirrus clouds formed from contrails is greater than that of the direct CO₂ emissions produced by air traffic.

The decisive factor for their climate impact is whether the man-made clouds form in a blue, cloudless sky or within existing natural cirrus clouds. High ice clouds, whether natural or man-made, exist at cold temperatures below -40°C. Although they often appear optically very thin, they can act like a blanket that prevents heat from escaping from the atmosphere into space, thereby contributing to the greenhouse effect. Only when the clouds are very dense and the sun is barely visible does the amount of sunlight reflected back into space become large enough to produce a cooling effect on the climate.

Accordingly, artificial clouds formed by contrails affect the climate differently depending on their environment: Under clear conditions – such as blue skies or very thin cirrus clouds – they tend to contribute to warming, because they trap some of the Earth's radiation that would otherwise escape into space, while allowing sunlight to pass through. In dense, clearly visible cirrus clouds, however, the opposite effect can occur: Contrails reflect more sunlight than they absorb heat radiation, leading to a slight cooling effect. How exactly contrails and natural cirrus clouds influence each other is still poorly understood.

"Our results show that we need to take a more differentiated view of the climate impact of contrails in the future," says Professor Andreas Petzold from the Institute of Climate and Energy Systems – Troposphere (ICE-3) at Forschungszentrum Jülich. "If most persistent contrails occur within natural clouds anyway, it might be more effective to plan climate-relevant flight routes not only according to clear skies but also with regard to existing ice cloud structures."

For the study, the research team used measurement data on temperature and water vapor collected by commercial aircraft flying over the North Atlantic between 2014 and 2021. These aircraft are part of the European research infrastructure IAGOS (In-service Aircraft for a Global Observing System, https://www.iagos.org/), which is co-coordinated by Forschungszentrum Jülich. IAGOS aircraft are equipped with instruments that continuously collect atmospheric data during scheduled operations – something unique worldwide.

Mainz contribution to the study: model calculations of radiative forcing

The data evaluation was supplemented by model calculations on radiative forcing. "Our analysis shows that contrails in thick cirrus clouds actually have hardly any effect," says Professor Peter Spichtinger from JGU, who contributed this aspect to the study. "However, additional effects in more complex scenarios – such as those arising from multiple layers of contrails and cirrus clouds on top of each other – are difficult to estimate and will be investigated in more detail in the future."

The results of the study are being incorporated into ongoing international activities of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), and the aviation industry. The goal is to develop a sustainable flight-planning strategy to reduce climate-relevant contrails by designing flight routes with climate impact in mind. IAGOS aircraft will continue to play a key role in evaluating such strategies in the future.

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Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-025-65532-2 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Most long-lived contrails form within cirrus clouds with uncertain climate impact

Article Publication Date

6-Nov-2025

Understanding clouds to improve the accuracy of climate predictions

Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization

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Stratocumulus clouds form large carpets in the sky covering approximately 20% of the earth’s surface. They reflect around 40% of the sun’s radiation back into space. The international research team will investigate the behavior and dynamics of these clouds with respect to climate change to improve climate and weather models.

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Credit: © Eberhard Bodenschatz, October 2025 over Central Europe

Clouds play an important role with respect to global climate change by affecting how Earth interacts with sunlight and heat radiation. At the height of around one kilometer, stratocumulus clouds are the most common cloud type, forming carpets in the sky, covering about 20% of Earth’s surface.

These clouds will now be investigated by an interdisciplinary research team from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (Göttingen, Germany), the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), Delft University of Technology (Netherlands) and the Freie Universität Berlin (Germany). The team has been granted 13.7 million euros by the European Research Council (ERC) over the next six years. The goal of this ERC Synergy project TurPhyCloud – The role or Turbulence in the Physics of Clouds – is to reduce the uncertainty of weather and climate predictions by understanding the physics of stratocumulus clouds.

Turbulent processes at the stratocumulus cloud top affect their entire evolution, right down to precipitation. During the coming six years, the researchers will assess these processes using the well-established CloudKite observatory developed at MPI-DS. The observatory employs a stationary balloon that lifts state of the art instruments weighing 120 kg two kilometers high into the sky, allowing precise measurements of cloud parameters with unprecedented spatial resolution.

“In particular, we are interested in the upper part of the cloud which is mostly affected by radiation from the sun as well as evaporation and where physical dynamics are only understood to some extend”, explains Eberhard Bodenschatz, director at MPI-DS and coordinator of TurPhyCloud. In addition, a fleet of research drones from TU Delft will be used for continuous measurements of wind, temperature, humidity, and pressure in and around the clouds.

The researchers will gather atmospheric data from local stratocumulus clouds in the Baltic Sea. Using these field measurements, they will develop models for turbulent processes in stratocumulus clouds, which will be validated by further measurements. By combining numerical approaches and model calculations, the team aims to create a simulation tool that can be incorporated in current weather and climate models.

“One of the greatest challenges in climate science is predicting the behavior of clouds, which have a major impact on the rate of global warming,” summarizes Bodenschatz. “I’m convinced that understanding the physics of stratocumulus clouds will make it possible to improve current weather and climate models.”

 

About the ERC Synergy Grant

The Synergy Grant awarded by the European Research Council is given annually to interdisciplinary teams of 2-4 research groups who work together on complex questions that cannot be solved by a single team. The project must demonstrate high research quality as well as synergy effects making collaboration between the researchers essential. The grant is open to all fields of research and provided for six years with a maximum funding volume of 14 million euros.

In 2025, more than 700 proposals for ERC synergy grants have been submitted out of which 48 received funding.