Ten million bleary-eyed Israelis were awoken at 3 a.m. local time on June 13 by a siren and an unusual phone notification.
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“Extreme Alert!” it read. “Due to the preparations for a significant threat, it is required to immediately comply with the Home Front Command guidelines that are currently being distributed throughout the media.”
Over the last 20 months of air-raid sirens and sporadic bombardment by Hamas and Hezbollah, residents of the Jewish state have grown accustomed, even inured, to routine alerts, dutifully retreating to bomb shelters whenever necessary. But this one hit different.
We would later learn that the Israel Defense Forces had launched Operation Rising Lion: an audacious and creative campaign targeting military and nuclear targets in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the regime of which has vowed for decades to wipe the Zionist entity off the map and prominently displays a 2040 Countdown Clock heralding’s Israel’s impending destruction.
Within hours, the leading echelons of Iran’s armed forces, its top nuclear scientists, hundreds of its ballistic missiles and launchers, dozens of aircraft, and components of key nuclear facilities had been swiftly and methodically eliminated.
And, in keeping with Home Front Command guidance, Israelis prepared to enter their bomb shelters for the reprisal attacks that followed thereafter.
How is Israel’s fight going? And how are everyday Israelis responding? What about the Trump administration and other allies? And what’s next in this rapidly evolving landscape? In general, despite significant challenges, the campaign has, thankfully, succeeded beyond expectations in Iran, at home, and on the diplomatic front — all three of which represent critical ingredients in any military success. We can only hope, and pray, things continue to go well for the Jewish state.
The actual front
To begin with, the Israeli Air Force carried out an inspired and stunning wave of attacks that staggered Iran’s political and military leadership and pummeled its nuclear program, which the International Atomic Energy Agency had recently concluded had breached Tehran’s obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Why did Israel attack now? For one thing, both President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reckon the mullahs were mere months or even weeks away from assembling a complete nuclear bomb and possessing enough fissile material for several more. For another, with Hezbollah humbled and Iran’s air defenses degraded from earlier Israeli strikes, the skies were relatively open above the Islamic Republic.
Rising Lion, which was decades in the making, reportedly began when the Mossad, Israel’s clandestine service, lured top Iranian generals to a meeting in a bunker, which the IAF then obliterated.
What followed were precision strikes from more than 200 air force fighter jets on specific bedrooms inside flats in apartment buildings in Tehran and other cities, where Israel targeted at least nine senior scientists responsible for the clerics’ nuclear program.
The IAF also decapitated both the regular Iranian army leadership and the fearsome Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Ali Khamenei, the country’s 86-year-old supreme leader, has gone underground.
In parallel, Israel set about defanging the ayatollahs’ ferocious network of ballistic missiles before they could be fired at the Israeli homeland. Incredibly, the Mossad had established a drone base inside Iran, from which the explosive quadcopters were dispatched to take out Iranian targets. As of this writing, the IDF estimates it has liquidated 40% of Iran’s ballistic missile stockpiles.
Before long, IAF jets were flying unmolested over most of the country, including Tehran, having disabled most of the mullahs’ air defenses. IDF spokesman Effie Defrin told reporters on June 17 that the Guard “withdrew from western Iran, but we are coming after them.”
Israel also successfully destroyed or impaired key sites in Iran’s burgeoning nuclear weapons program. The uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, which houses roughly 17,000 centrifuges, has been almost entirely demolished through a combination of direct bombardment, electrical malfunction, and even implosion. While the IAEA initially reported that only the above-ground portion of the complex had been affected, on June 17, it announced it had detected “direct impacts on the underground enrichment halls at Natanz.”
The IAF also targeted Isfahan, where the ayatollahs have been converting uranium ore to uranium hexafluoride, which the centrifuges then enrich. Its aerial assault has damaged at least “four critical buildings” there, per the IAEA, as well as centrifuge manufacturing sites and numerous other facilities the clerics had sprinkled around the country.
Overall: So far, so good on the actual front.
The home front
Israelis have shouldered an immense burden on the domestic front, as Tehran’s retaliation has been brutal and merciless.
Since the start of Rising Lion, the mullahs have fired more than 400 ballistic missiles, each carrying more than a thousand pounds of explosives, some as many as a ton, at Israel’s population centers, along with dozens of cruise missiles and over 1,000 explosive drones.
And while the Jewish state’s sophisticated, seemingly miraculous, three-stage system of anti-missile interceptors has disrupted the overwhelming majority of the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missiles, as well as almost all of the cruise missiles and explosive drones, at least 15 of them have evaded aerial defenses.
These strikes, which the ayatollahs deliberately aim at civilian targets, have so far claimed the lives of dozens of Israelis and injured nearly 1,000. They’ve destroyed or damaged scores of apartment buildings. One direct hit in the central city of Petah Tikva rendered homeless 1,300 people, while another in Bat Yam, a Tel Aviv suburb, displaced over 1,500.
The toll is heavy even on those not directly affected, as families with young children and the elderly have been compelled to scramble to their bomb shelters multiple times per night. My wife joked, grimly, that it’s just like waking up three times a night for a crying baby, except the baby is a genocidal octogenarian trying to kill us.
And yet through it all, the citizens of Israel have evinced our trademark resilience, displaying a stiff upper lip amid the destruction and disruption. As the Jerusalem-based journalist Matti Friedman wrote in the Free Press, “Israelis are hunkering down with a rare unity as missiles streak down at us from the sky.” Indeed, after absorbing nearly two years of periodic bombardment, we have perfected what National Review’s Daniel Foster calls “the Israeli shrug.”
With public gatherings, including my son’s high school graduation, canceled indefinitely, Israelis have formed smaller legions of community, arranging informal prayer gatherings, sheltering the displaced, and, as always, donating blood.
Others found solace in religious numerology: June 13, the day the attack was launched, corresponds to 613, the number of commandments found in the Torah.
Israel has always proudly been a communal, high-trust society in which, despite fierce political disputes, loyalty to the country remains paramount. What a contrast with Iran, where disaffected opponents of the clerical regime have proven to be highly valuable assets of the Mossad.
From a political perspective, Netanyahu had found himself on the ropes ever since the Hamas invasion on Oct. 7, widely believed to be the most egregious security failure in the history of the country. His governing coalition has teetered on the edge of oblivion as protests have swelled, pushing for new elections.
But the successful attack has, at least temporarily, quelled the discontent, as Israelis have proudly rallied around the flag. Leading opposition members Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, who routinely lambaste the prime minister, have offered nothing but unstinting support and encouragement.
Even bitter rivals within the Israeli government had apparently participated in an elaborate ruse involving a very public political dispute days earlier, designed to suggest to Iranian observers that Netanyahu’s government was about to collapse and that the mullahs therefore had nothing to fear. In Friedman’s words, Israelis have proven “determined, remarkably calm, and united behind Netanyahu’s decision to strike.”
Through all the hardship, a steely chord of hope continues to resonate, as Israelis anxiously but eagerly await a day, perhaps soon, when the menacing threat of the Islamic Republic finally dissipates.
The diplomatic front
Equally important have been Israel’s efforts to coordinate its campaign with its key allies, critically the United States.
In the run-up to the June 13 surprise, Israelis fretted that Trump would sign a new nuclear agreement with Tehran that would essentially ratify its self-asserted right to enrichment and even provide extensive sanctions relief.
How the tides have shifted.
It turns out that the White House’s possible rapprochement with Iran was either a bluff or a subterfuge designed to induce the mullahs to lower their defenses.
Since the campaign began, Trump has vigorously defended Israel’s actions and has pushed back against criticism from the “restrainer” wing of the Republican Party, which ranges from academic realists seeking to focus American energies on China to Qatari-funded nutcase anti-Zionists and outright antisemites who’ve claimed the mantle of “America First.” Justifiably irritated, Trump told the Atlantic that only he can define what the term means and how to carry it out. “Considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’” he said, “I think I’m the one that decides that.”
The president also dressed down one particular pundit who has recently “evolved” into an unconvincing restrainer. “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that ‘Iran CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!’” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The White House hastened to delineate all of the many times that Trump has issued a similar statement over the 10 years since he entered the political fray. “President Donald J. Trump has never wavered in his stance that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon,” an email on June 18 said, accompanied by a detailed list of pronouncements, “a pledge he has made repeatedly, both in office and on the campaign trail.” It also reminded supporters of all the American blood the mullahs have on their hands, including the 1979 embassy hostages, the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, and the deadly militia attacks on American troops in Iraq.
Importantly, Vice President JD Vance, long thought to be sympathetic to the restrainers, offered a full-throated defense on June 17 of the administration’s aggressive posture, reiterating on X that “POTUS has been amazingly consistent, over 10 years, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.” Noting that “I have yet to see a single good argument for why Iran needed to enrich uranium well above the threshold for civilian use,” Vance forthrightly acknowledged that Trump “may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment” and insisted that “the president has earned some trust on this issue.”
What remains to be seen is whether the U.S. will join the fray and carry out the type of bombing that Israel cannot, such as using B-2 bombers to drop massive ordnance penetrators on Fordow, Iran’s secretive enrichment facility built inside a mountain. By the time you’re reading this, the U.S. may have already begun its participation in the campaign.
Outside the U.S., Israel’s European and other allies have proven surprisingly loyal. “This is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said of the Jewish state’s campaign. “We are also victims of this regime. This mullah regime has brought death and destruction to the world.”
At the outset of the war, French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been fiercely critical of the Jewish state’s campaign in Gaza, wrote that “France reaffirms Israel’s right to defend itself and ensure its security,” noting that he has “repeatedly condemned Iran’s ongoing nuclear program and has taken all appropriate diplomatic measures in response.”
Even Penny Wong, the foreign affairs minister of Australia, whose liberal government hasn’t had a kind word to say about the IDF in quite some time, stated that “Israel has a right to self-defense. We know Iran is a threat. We know that its nuclear program poses a threat to international peace and obviously to Israel.”
Israelis are deeply grateful to our allies, especially the Trump administration, for their steadfast support. However, sentiments like these can easily flip, as we’ve seen throughout the long Hamas war. Will they eventually flip here, too?
What’s next?
More broadly, what do the next days, weeks, and months have in store?
On the military front, the IDF has announced it intends to continue operating against Iranian military and nuclear assets for a few more weeks. With air supremacy over western Iran and the capital, the IAF more or less has free rein to pick its targets at leisure.
Israel will continue to hunt the mullahs’ missiles and launchers, along with communications infrastructure and regime symbols.
On the nuclear front, the IDF will press its attacks against the various installations scattered throughout the vast expanse of the country in an effort to stymie the existential threat posed by the ayatollahs. In the estimation of David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, one of the world’s leading experts on nuclear proliferation, “it would be very dangerous for Israel to stop right now. Iran has a big program. There are a lot of parts to it, and it just takes a significant amount of time to really set it back sufficiently to feel like the job is done.”
With Natanz and Isfahan mostly neutralized, the big target is Fordow. But if the MOP-bearing B-2 bombers are not forthcoming, could Israel destroy or at least disable the mountain base on its own? Albright seems to think so, noting that “they could mine it during a commando raid. They could potentially crack the ceiling or undermine the support structure of the halls. They can make it very difficult to get into.”
Pulling off a ground incursion into what at least used to be one of the most heavily fortified military facilities in the world ordinarily would seem beyond the realm of the possible, but given Israel’s recent achievements, who knows?
Another enormous question mark hovers over whether the mullahcracy, now in its weakest position since the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, will crumble entirely. Netanyahu has appealed directly to the Iranian people, urging them to “stand up” to the ayatollahs and “achieve your objective, which is freedom.” Citizens of Iran deserve much better than the apocalyptic oppressors who’ve rendered their great nation a pariah. Indeed, before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Israel and Iran were close allies, cooperating militarily, economically, and scientifically. There were daily direct flights between Tehran and Tel Aviv and a pipeline running through Israeli territory that delivered Iranian petroleum to the Mediterranean. There’s no natural reason the status quo ante cannot be restored, and there’s at least one encouraging sign: #سپاس_اسرائیل, or #ThanksIsrael, has apparently been trending on Iranian social media networks.
Will the Iranian people capitalize on the weakness of their humiliated rulers and take to the streets once the guns have gone silent? Or will enough of them rally around the flag to prevent regime change?
As always in the Middle East, everything can change in the blink of an eye. Given all that has transpired so rapidly already, it’s almost impossible to believe that the campaign began almost a week ago as I write this. But with any luck, Rising Lion will continue to succeed in kinetic operations, on the domestic front, and in the international realm. May we hope for a speedy and successful conclusion to the story.
Michael M. Rosen is an attorney and writer in Israel, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of Like Silicon From Clay: What Ancient Jewish Wisdom Can Teach Us About AI.