“Operation Rising Lion” is the stuff of which legends are made. It is the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann, the Six Day War, and Operation Entebbe all wrapped up in one.
Just as many wondered whether Israel had lost “it” – a doubt born of its inability to finish off Hamas in Gaza even after 20 months of fighting – the Israel Air Force planes swept into an unsuspecting Iran early on Friday morning.
They showed the world, and the Israelis themselves, that they do still have “it.” And that, when survival is on the line, Israel acts decisively, with overwhelming might, surgical precision, and unwavering determination.
With the war still underway, a postmortem is obviously premature. But even at this stage in the effort to defang Iran and neutralize its ability to threaten the Jewish state, three simply jaw-dropping developments stand out.
Israel’s air superiority
For years, a key imponderable in discussions of an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities had to do with logistics: How would Israeli planes even reach Iran?
The most direct route, through Jordan, Syria, or Iraq, was widely considered impossible. Jordan and Syria would not allow it, and the risk of being shot down en route was high.
A southern route via Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf was theoretically possible, but the Saudis would never permit it. A northern route through Turkey and into northwestern Iran was also a nonstarter.
Another option – flying through the Red Sea and around the Arabian Sea – was not plausible; this was simply too far.
The direct Israel-Syria-Iraq-Tehran route spans roughly 1,600 kilometers, and it is within range for standard fighter jets.
But the long detour around Saudi Arabia spans nearly 4,400 km., requiring multiple aerial refuelings.
What changed? The fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in December and the damage Israel inflicted on Iran’s air defenses during the back-and-forth strikes from August to October, 2024.
These opened the most direct corridor: The Israel-Syria-Iraq-Iran route.
That alone is remarkable.
For years, Israel feared Iran’s air defense systems. First came Russia’s delivery of Tor-M1 missiles in 2007, followed by the much more sophisticated S-300 system in 2016, despite years of Israeli diplomatic efforts to block it.
Russia supplied these systems to Syria, reinforcing the assumption that approaching Iran from the west was nearly impossible.
Yet here we are: Israel opened a functioning air corridor from its own territory straight to Tehran. While it may not control the entire Iranian sky, it has established air superiority from Israel to Tehran and even beyond, striking as far east as Mashhad, near the border with Turkmenistan.
This dominance is the result of the previous Israeli strikes inside Iran in April and October 2024, and the precision ground operations on Friday that helped pave the corridor.
Just as Israel effectively decided the outcome of the 1967 Six Day War in its first hours by destroying the Egyptian Air Force in Operation Moked, so too did it effectively remove Iran’s ability to repel an aerial assault in the opening hours of Friday’s attack.
That Israel can now fly over Iran with nearly the same ease as it flies over Khan Yunis or Beirut is staggering. How it achieved this will be studied for generations to come.
Hezbollah’s silence
For decades, Iran built up Hezbollah in Lebanon as its front line retaliatory force in case Israel ever attacked its nuclear facilities.
The idea was that an Israeli attack on Iran would trigger a massive missile and drone barrage from Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies – Hamas, the Houthis, and the Shi’ite militias in Iraq and Syria.
Last Friday, Israel attacked, and the only thing Hezbollah fired off was a statement put out by its leader, Naim Qassem, condemning Israel’s actions and expressing strong support for the Islamic Republic of Iran, “a beacon of freedom, dignity, and pride.”
That was it – verbal solidarity, but not a single rocket or drone in support, not due to a lack of will, but a lack of capability. Hezbollah’s arsenal and its operational capacity have been severely degraded.
Having lost much of its senior leadership and a significant portion of its missile stockpile, Hezbollah cannot mount a serious offensive.
Further, it is contending with ongoing Israeli strikes against its remaining assets. Iran is also not asking it to fire off what it still retains, perhaps wanting to keep that as a last-ditch card to be played only when everything else collapses.
After Israel began its airstrikes, the Lebanese government reportedly sent messages to Hezbollah urging it not to respond.
At a cabinet session on Monday, Lebanon’s President, Joseph Aoun, echoed that message, stressing that Lebanon must stay out of external conflicts.
The Lebanese government reportedly deployed troops to the south to prevent Hezbollah or Hamas from launching rockets and triggering an Israeli counterattack.
In one of the week’s more astonishing moments, the Lebanese government warned Hezbollah not to drag the country into war, and Hezbollah, at least for now, listened.
Decapitation of Iran’s nuclear scientists
Much debate has centered on whether Israel can physically destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Can it hit every site? Take out all centrifuges? Wipe out the infrastructure? Can it reach Fordow, buried deep in a mountain near Qom?
By targeting about a dozen key scientists involved in the program during the initial hours of the attack, Israel signaled that it is not putting all of its eggs in the airstrike basket. It is prepared for every scenario.
This is not a binary mission. Success is not simply all or nothing. Even if centrifuges remain and facilities survive, eliminating the brains behind the program is, in itself, a critical blow.
Assume for a moment that parts of the physical infrastructure are not entirely destroyed. Iran would still need the expertise to rebuild.
And that expertise, including the knowledge of how to navigate Iran’s bureaucratic and technical systems, is not something that you can just download from AI or pull off a shelf.
As one pundit quipped, these scientists were Iran’s Oppenheimers. They cannot be replaced overnight. Their deep knowledge of the program, both technical and organizational, is irreplaceable in the short term. Their elimination is a triumph of intelligence gathering and surgical execution.
The assassinations represent a significant loss of technical skill, project leadership, and institutional memory – key ingredients for running a complex nuclear program.
This is also likely to cause a chilling effect, making other scientists jittery and discouraging new talent from joining the effort.
Even if Iran can rebuild its centrifuges and labs, the absence of this brain trust will delay its ability to weaponize a nuclear device. Expertise, like infrastructure, takes time to reconstruct.
And in that interim, a lot can happen, including a regime change, to further hinder the program.