Rising Up As Lions: The Israel – Iran War of 2025

As I write this, certain predictions made in my previous Op- Ed article are becoming undone. It may have taken 20 months but a new David vs Goliath conflict is underway, as Israel directly tackles a power, Iran, way more massive than itself.

It was like the story of the boy that cried wolf too many times. For fifteen years PM Benjamin Netanyahu has warned of the dangers of a nuclear Iran but seemed to blink when it came to actual military action. Going to sleep on Thursday night, with an eerie tense calm in the air, we felt also that there was a chance of another blink.

However, it was not to be. Awoken at 3am by a warning siren early on June 13, with an upgraded Home Front Command alert system, at first, a delirious me mistook it for a Houthi ballistic missile. Within minutes it became clear, however, that this was no mere Houthi ploy to terrorize us at night, but the real deal: 200 Israeli warplanes were in the skies over Iran. What followed was nothing short of historic: the upper echelon of Iran’s military fell that night, and as for myself, quickly evacuated my family to a more secure location.

Several nights of Iranian ballistic bombardments followed since. Recalling a study of history, I, among with most Israelis, found ourselves in a 2025 version of the Battle of Britain, with our enemy lobbying night time ballistic missiles with up to one ton warhead over our heads. Most are intercepted. The ones that aren’t have led to tragic results, with deaths among children, the elderly, an Arab family and Filipino workers.

It has been nothing short of a new, more dangerous October 7th, as the whole country is in effect under lockdown once again.

However, we are proud to be Israeli today. Moreover, for all his faults, Netanyahu’s “Churchill” moment has come. He, wanting to be known as the “defender of Israel”, is now using Israel as a sovereign state, to try to take out an evil state’s nuclear ambitions towards us. Here 80 years after the Holocaust, we are, nearly alone in the world, acting to defang and destroy our enemies. Despite the hiccup of October 7th, “Never Again” may mean something again.

“The path to Tehran has been paved”, and “Tehran is burning” have been declarations by Israel’s Defense Echelon. Who would have believed that small Israel could showcase such overwhelming power over the skies of an enemy capital of 16.8 million people, almost twice Israel’s population. As we speak, a whole section of the Iranian capital has become a targeted zone of the IAF. An evacuation notice in Persian has been sent to residents, having them join the list of Gazans, Lebanese, and Yemenites as areas under the domain of Israel to do as it pleases.

This was all attained without the intervention of the United States. US President Donald Trump seems content to empower Israel to have complete freedom of action to flex its muscles. While unilateralism isn’t beneficial for certain hardened nuclear sites like Fordo in Iran, where American weapons are needed to reach targets deep underground, the message it shows the world is unmistakable: while Iran may talk tough and have ballistic missiles, Israel is a real tiger made of strength and steel, with any adversary needing to think twice if it wishes to survive unscathed.

It seems Israel may have outwitted Iran at geopolitical chess and may have been playing the long game all along. Before October 7th any operation over Iran would have been nearly suicidal for Israel, surrounded by Iranian proxies of its “axis of resistance” with hundreds of thousands of missiles and aerial defenses. One by one in the last year, the axis has fallen or been severely degraded. First, was Hezbollah with a spectacular decapitation operation in the summer of 2024 which started with exploding pagers and walkie talkies followed by decimation of its command system including its Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut. Soon after, Syrian rebels hostile to Tehran overran Iranian ally Bashar al Assad forcing him to flee to Russia. Israel took the opportunity to bomb anything left of Syrian air defenses leaving a country with no opposition to IAF warplanes. Iraq has long been under American aerial supremacy and Israeli warplanes penetrate its airspace at ease. Yemen’s Houthis impressive show of firing ballistic missiles at Central Israel has become old news and Israelis have become nearly complacent. 

On October 26, 2024, Israel, retaliating for Iran’s October 1, 2024 mass ballistic missile strike over the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, largely knocked out S-300 missile air defense batteries and components central to ballistic missile developments in Iran. The strikes left the country militarily weak and open to aerial bombardment. In my last op-ed I criticized Netanyahu for not going further, but rather, he may have been keeping his final card close to his chest, waiting for the ideal moment to strike. 

On June 12, 2025, the IAEA board declared Iran in non compliance over its obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). It seems this action sparked the catalyst for the war. Israel would tackle Iran alone, with the United States acting as “good cop” hoping to craft a deal to end Iran’s nuclear program by agreement.

What is next? The name of the war: Rising Lion (מבצע עם כלביא), is symbolic as it awakens both ancient symbols of Judah and also Persia (taken over by the Ayatollah regime of Iran). The goal of the campaign is truly one of an existential war: to raise and safeguard Israel into the next generation. For this, Iran has to agree to halt its nuclear program but also, one must not separate the war from how it started: Gaza. The Middle East will remain unstable as long as Hamas holds Israeli hostages. As such, no agreement will be complete until all Israelis are released from Gaza and the war is brought to an end. Tehran must lead to Gaza to materialize full circle, with the war, which began on October 07th, 2023, ending.

As such, this stage of the war is brinkmanship at its finest. Pressing the right moves, Israel will win massively. Misstep, and we will all suffer. As of time of writing, it seems we are poised for something truly historic.

This war, which started with the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust may very well end with another Six Day War like triumph over a numerically superior adversary, safeguarding our ability to live here for another generation. However, until then, we continue to be living in a massive brinkmanship match with the fourth night under Iranian bombardment likely awaiting us tonight. Let’s hope these days will end soon with a complete Israeli strategic victory.