Air strikes Israel's attacks on Iran continue. It will not stop until "it is removed." atomic threat" said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The answer to the question of what that might mean can be found in the showdown with Palestinian Hamas, which is approaching its second year. The elimination of several key people in Iran's defense forces and nuclear program are just the beginning.
Iran retaliates with ballistic missiles and drones. In large parts of Israel, an air alert was in force during the night on Saturday. The Israelis go to the bunkers in a disciplined manner. Some missiles manage to break through the very effective "Iron Dome" anti-missile system. Ten buildings were hit in Tel Aviv, forty people were wounded.
Israelis have become accustomed to such a situation, it is the price of survival in the hostile environment of the Islamic world. Generations of Israelis have not known a different life. An entire nation is an army ready to defend what it considers to be its own.
The feeling, however, is different this time. The intensity of the new conflict between Israel and Iran is far greater than in previous decades. This is an open war between two regional military powers that affects the entire environment in which approximately 40.000 US troops are deployed.
Iran Mideast WarsTehran after airstrikes / Photo: AP Photo/Vahid Salemi
The USA stands with Israel.
If at the very beginning of Israel's military operation against Iran, US President Donald Trump smiled enigmatically when asked if he was informed of what was being planned and if he condemned the attack, he soon clarified everything: "Of course America is with Israel."
He warned the Iranians not to think of any kind of retaliation in the American bases that are within their reach.
In an interview with American television ABC, he stated that he thought the Israeli attack on Iran was "great".
"We gave them (the Iranians) a chance, and they didn't take it," Trump said, alluding to talks over Iran's nuclear program that he has restarted and hinting at Israel's military action that there would be "more, much more."
In the sign of the lion that rears up
Rising Lion (Lion rising/protruding), is a biblical image that promises a glorious future for the state of Israel. It is no wonder that the Israeli military command named the operation against Iran, which was launched on June 13, as their sacred right: Jews consider the fight for the survival of the Jewish state to be their sacred right, and thus the attack with 200 fighter planes against Iran, a country whose doctrine is the destruction of the state of Israel, which, they claim in Tel Aviv, was within reach of an atomic bomb that would be launched to destroy Jewish life in the Middle East.
Iran Israel Mideast WarsTehran, the morning after / Photo: Iranian Red Crescent Society via AP
It was supposedly a Shiite country ruled by mullahs close to producing nuclear weapons - but it is no longer, or will not be, after the Israeli sword of fire that struck it, the same one that cuts through the Middle East region since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, on the "black Sabbath", and shook the foundations on which the Jewish state rests: the sense of superiority and security.
Since then, the Israelis have been on a military campaign against all their enemies in the region, driven by the feeling of a righteous man fighting for survival and civilization threatened by the barbarism of warlike neighbors. Regardless of the cost and casualties, ignoring the warnings of his allies.
Destruction of Iran's nuclear program
In the Gaza Strip, the militant Hamas was destroyed, which cost 55.000 Palestinians with their lives, mostly children and women, who were collateral damage of the military operations of the Israeli army. Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shia militia, which is an extended arm of Iran, was dealt a heavy blow. With the help of Israel, Bashar al-Assad was overthrown, so Iran was left without the support of Syria, the only Arab country on which it could count.
The IDF systematically attacks selected enemy targets in Iraq and Yemen. Last year, it practically destroyed Iran's air defenses.
Intelligence preparation
Now already in the first flurry of airstrikes, in the early morning hours of June 13, Iran's military command was paralyzed. The head of the General Shatab, Mohammad Bagheri, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Hossein Salami, and the head of the coordination of armed formations, Golamali Rashid, were killed.
The deaths of the former head of Iran's nuclear program, Fereydon Abbasi, and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranhi, one of the country's leading physicists, were also confirmed.
The accuracy of the Israeli missiles indicates serious intelligence work that preceded the military action.
Some missile depots and the Natanz complex, one of the most important in the chain of Iran's nuclear program, were also hit.
Lonely Iran
Tehran's reaction is expected.
The Iranian nation will not sit idly by, Israel will face a "legitimate and strong response to this crime", the enemy will repent for this stupid attack, said Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkiyan.
Spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened Israelis with a "bitter and painful fate."
Iran Israel Mideast WarsLeaders of Iran / Photo: AP Photo/Vahid Salemi
It is the usual repertoire of threats, which this time are even less substantiated than in previous escalations of the conflict with Israel. Without Hamas and above all Hezbollah, without a military stronghold in Syria, Iran is left with only missiles that it can shoot at Israel, and very few of them manage to make it to their targets, even to reach the "Iron Dome" because, officially or unofficially, they are intercepted from American bases.
Israel has a chance to militarily cripple a weakened Iran for many years, maybe even decades, and the IDF will hardly miss that chance. Israelis see in Iran the engine of all hostile actions directed not only against the Jewish state, but also against Jews throughout the world.
Closure of Israeli diplomatic missions
That military operations will last longer is also shown by the fact that Israel is closing embassies and consulates around the world - until further notice.
The Jerusalem-based Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged Israeli citizens abroad to be on alert, not to display state and Jewish symbols in public places.
Israelis abroad are urged to contact local security structures if they are confronted with hostile activities.
With the brutal actions in the Gaza Strip, Israel lost the sympathy and support of many countries and nations. With the number of Palestinian victims, anti-Semitism is growing worldwide.
A spiral of violence
Every missile fired by both sides, every suicidal action by Islamic extremists, fuels the spiral of violence.
Israel always considers its military actions as "self-defense", the IDF claims that it always targets only military targets, and that unwanted collateral civilian casualties simply cannot be avoided.
It accuses its enemies, including Iran in this situation, of planning to attack civilian targets.
Iran "crossed a red line" by targeting Israeli civilians, the Ministry of Defense announced. From the point of view of the Israelis, every Iranian missile that hits a target is justification for an even fiercer IDF response.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Tehran that "more is coming."
Israel's attack on Iran is the last act of an epic drama that culminated in Hamas on October 7, 2023, and which has been going on in cyclical cycles of violence for 77 years, since the leader of the Zionist-Socialist Labor Party, David Ben Gurion, declared Israel a state.
The new foundations of a changed Israel
At every escalation of the conflict, most Israelis can be heard saying, "Either them or us." Whether they mean Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran. Few believe that any agreement is possible.
The qualification of suffering, suffering and crime is different, but the hatred they have grown into on both sides is the same. Hamas's attack on Israel on "Black Shabbat" reached, even by the high standards of this holy climate for Jews, Christians and Muslims, a new dimension, a murderous one.
The latest military campaign against Iran is more than a war for the Israelis - it is an existential determinism, something that arises from everything and therefore must be, something that is immutable because it is written in the blood of Israeli civilians.
Israel Iran Mideast WarsOrthodox Jews in front of Jaffa in Jerusalem on the day of the Israeli attack on Iran / Photo: AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg
The ideology of the flaming sword with which the Israeli military force with the stamp of "Black Shabbat" strikes the region is the collective pain of 1.400 massacred, killed and kidnapped Israelis, children, women, old men, soldiers. Everyone knows someone or someone who knows someone who has been kidnapped or killed. And even if it were not so: every Israeli woman and every Israeli, probably every Jewish woman and every Jew in the world can identify with parents who mourn their children or wait for weeks for news about whether they are alive.
The victims of the war and for Israel are not statistical numbers, but compatriots whose names are always and everywhere re-pronounced, who are talked about as they are or as they were. Those little stories add up to one about how Israel woke up on Saturday October 7th - the "Black Shabbat" - and was never the same. The attack on Iran, an evil force that threatens the survival of the Jews, should lay new foundations for that different Israel, to restore the feeling of superiority and security among the Israelis.
APTOPIX Israel Iran Mideast WarsExplosion after the impact of an Iranian missile in Tel Aviv / Photo: AP Photo/Tomer Neuberg
This is how it looks from Israel. The view from the other side is completely different: the criminal Jewish state has once again attacked the Islamic Zillah and is killing everyone in its path.
Israel will probably succeed in paralyzing Iran for the next period with the ongoing military action, but it has sown the seeds of deadly discord for the next 77 years on another theater.
