After decades of serving as a standing target for terrorist attacks masterminded by Iran, the Israeli military was not messing around.
In five waves of attacks launched Friday, Israeli planes hammered Iranian nuclear sites, military facilities, and the country’s top military leadership, in a day of fury that almost certainly opened a new era of war in the Middle East.
And the breathtakingly bold Israeli operations appear far from over.
“Not since the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s has Iran seen such a devastating series of strikes in a single day,” CNN reported, with uncharacteristic honesty.
From the damage being reported by the Israeli military and in the Western media, the impact has been devastating to the murderous mullahs of Tehran.
On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces published a post to the social media platform X showing what the IDF called “a major strike against Iran’s air defense system in western Iran.”
IDF: The IDF carried out a major strike against Iran’s air defense system in western Iran.
Air Force jets, guided by precise intelligence, destroyed dozens of radars and surface-to-air missile launchers.
This operation is part of ongoing efforts to degrade the Iranian regime’s… pic.twitter.com/4Ajr4t7fO5
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) June 13, 2025
The initial attacks decapitated Iran’s military, including Mohammad Bagheri, commander in chief of the Iranian armed forces who was, until his death, second in command only to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to The New York Times.
Will this escalate into a larger conflict?
Also killed, according to the Times, were Gholamali Rashid, deputy commander in chief of the military; Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of Iran’s air force; and Major Gen. Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, an elite military force — and two of Iran’s top nuclear scientists.
The attacks also damaged the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz, about 200 miles south of Tehran, according to Fox News.
“We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. We struck at the heart Iran’s nuclear weaponization program,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as he announced the raids, according to The Jerusalem Post.
The ongoing attacks, which Netanyahu called “Operation Rising Lion,” are “aimed at dismantling the Iranian threat to Israel’s survival. This operation will continue for as long as necessary to eliminate this danger.”
Those are not the words of a man who thinks he can afford to tread lightly in the face of an existential threat to his country.
And in the operation that began Friday, Netanyahu proved his country’s willingness to take on an enemy that has tormented Israel since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.
He’s also proven, since the horrors of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that he’s unflinching in going after the forces that want to wipe his country from the map.
“For decades, the leaders of Tehran have openly called for Israel’s destruction,” he said, according to The Jerusalem Post. “They have backed up their genocidal rhetoric with a nuclear weapons program. …
“If not stopped, Iran could develop a nuclear weapon in a very short time — it could be a year, or even just months. This is a clear and present danger to Israel’s survival.”
And he appears to have backing from the United States — Israel’s most important ally.
In a post published to the Truth Social social media platform on Friday, President Donald Trump stated that he’d warned Iran about giving up its plans for a nuclear weapon.
“I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told,” Trump wrote, “that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come — And they know how to use it.”
Donald J. Trump Truth Social 06.13.25 05:56 AM EST
I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to “just do it,” but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done. I told them it would be…
— Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) June 13, 2025
Clearly, Israel knows how to use its military. And even more critically, it’s demonstrating that it’s not afraid to do so when it considers its existence on the line.
In a fight for survival, half-measures aren’t enough.
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