The name Israel used for its military operation targeting Iran may have extraordinary meaning for the people of Iran, who have suffered under the tyrannical, despotic Islamic regime for 46 years.
The Israelis named the mission “Operation Rising Lion,” derived from Numbers 23:24, in which the prophet Balaam — who was hired by King Balak of Moab to curse Israel, but was directed by God to bless Israel instead — declaimed of the Jewish people, “Behold! The people will arise like a lion cub and raise itself like a lion.”
But the imagery of a lion rising may also have tremendous significance for the people of Iran — the flag of Iran for four centuries before the Islamic regime took over in 1979 was a lion with the sun rising on the stripes of green, white, and red. The Islamic regime replaced the lion with a stylized version of Allah and the phrase “Allahu Akbar” along the edges of the green and red stripes.
Rising Lion is a beautiful name for the operation, reminding the people of Iran that Israel is not their enemy, and looks forward to peace and friendship as the Lion rises to where he was before '79. https://t.co/ORgHrmO760 pic.twitter.com/zlEUs7tD5w
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) June 13, 2025
The lion and sun flag is still used by some Iranians as a symbol of opposition to the current government. In 1980, after adopting the Islamic flag, the regime made it a punishable offense to use the lion and sun flag.
“There is a common misconception that the Lion and Sun flag is the symbol of the Pahlavi Dynasty,” the National Union for Democracy in Iran notes. “Though the flag was used during the Pahlavi Dynasty, it is an ancient, national symbol the history of which dates back to the twelfth century. It is, indeed, Iran’s symbol. It has been discovered on banners and as being used as a popular coat of arms to represent Iran as early as the fourteenth century. In the sixteenth century, during the Safavid Dynasty, the Lion and Sun first appeared on Iran’s official flag.”
In 2009, a movement arose in Iran to rid the country of the Islamic regime. Called the “Green Movement,” reports said scores of protesters were killed by the regime. Then-President Obama refused to help the protesters. “Behind the scenes, Obama overruled advisers who wanted to do what America had done at similar transitions from dictatorship to democracy, and signal America’s support,” Eli Lake recalled. According to Wall Street Journal reporter Jay Solomon, author of “The Iran Wars,” Obama ordered the CIA to sever contacts it had with supporters of the movement.
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“The Agency has contingency plans for supporting democratic uprisings anywhere in the world. This includes providing dissidents with communications, money, and in extreme cases even arms,” Solomon wrote. “But in this case the White House ordered it to stand down.”
In January 2023, Radio Free Europe reported, “At least 522 people have been killed in four months of anti-government protests in Iran, said a report issued on January 15 by the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). Among the dead are 70 minors and 68 security forces, the agency reported. Nearly 20,000 people had been arrested, 110 on charges that could lead to a death sentence, it said.”