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Exhilarated but Frightened

I was not the only one overwhelmed by the feeling that something momentous was taking place


Photo: FLASH90

Like every other Israeli, I woke up groggy on Friday morning. At 3 a.m., we were awakened by a warning beeper, but with no indication of what was going on. Only a few minutes later did my youngest son knock on the door to announce that Israel had attacked Iran. Within an hour, he had received an order to report to his reserve unit.

On the one hand, I was exhilarated by the feeling that we in Israel are living through a world historical event that could change the face of the Mideast forever. On the other hand, I was terrified by the danger of the Iranian response sure to come. In davening that morning, I looked around and thought to myself: Every single person in this minyan has all that is most precious to him — wife, children, grandchildren — in a situation of danger.

Apparently, I was not the only one overwhelmed by the feeling that something momentous was taking place. As soon as we finished reciting Tehillim, one soft-spoken member of the minyan — neither a recognized talmid chacham (in a minyan with several), nor, I think, a native Hebrew speaker — suddenly stood up and delivered a speech on the miracles we were witnessing and urging everyone present to increase their kavanah in davening and to work on their mitzvos ben adam l’chaveiro. I would have thought him the least likely person in the minyan to do so, but he obviously could not contain himself.

TO TELL THE TRUTH, I was taken by surprise by the news. True, the day before, Michael Oren, the distinguished historian and former ambassador to the United States, had written that an Israeli attack felt imminent. But I was not convinced. As Oren himself admitted, a large contingent of the anti-Netanyahu press and some in his own Likud party had long dismissed his threats against Iran as bluster, and concluded that given his instinctive cautiousness, he would never undertake an action fraught with so much danger without an explicit green light from President Trump, which did not appear to be forthcoming.

But I and many much more knowledgeable and astute observers than myself, including Haviv Rettig Gur, were wrong. As Oren told the Free Press’s Bari Weiss Friday afternoon Israel time, “This was the moment for which Bibi feels he was born. To save and to preserve the Jewish People.”

In confirmation of Oren’s reading of his former boss, Amit Segal described an interview with Bibi and his father, historian Benzion Netanyahu, in 2009, when the elder Netanyahu was nearing 100.

Bibi’s father said at the time, “People think the Holocaust ended. It hasn’t. It [i.e., the intention to eliminate the Jewish People] continues all the time.”

That is the atmosphere in which Bibi was raised. Or as I concluded after visiting the US Holocaust Memorial for the first time, “When your enemies express the intention to wipe you out, believe them.”

For 46 years, ever since Ayatollah Khomeini took power in 1979, the Islamic Revolution had been proclaiming its goal to remove the cancer of Israel and to establish the primacy of the Shiites in the Muslim world, for doing what their Sunni rivals never could.

And they had just come close to obtaining the means of doing so. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had just censured Iran the previous week for breach of its previous commitments by enriching 450 kilograms of uranium, enough for nine to ten bombs, to 60 percent, which is just a hop, skip, and a jump from the 90 percent enrichment needed for a bomb. (Incidentally, there are no civilian uses for uranium enriched to 60 percent — a fact that the execrable Tucker Carlson, who claimed there is no credible evidence of an Iranian intention to build a bomb, might reflect upon.)

Worse, Israel intelligence showed that Iran had made great strides toward weaponization — i.e., the ability to put a nuclear warhead on one of its long-range weapons.

Years ago, Bret Stephens wrote that the mullahs would be most dangerous if the regime ever appeared to be under threat of being overthrown. At that point, they might choose the nuclear Armageddon option as a means to bring about the coming of the so-called Hidden Imam in Shiite thought. Well, the complete destruction of the meticulously constructed “ring of fire” around Israel, and Iran’s inability to retaliate after Israeli planes bombed Iran last April and October, have left the regime appearing increasingly fragile, and may well have provided an incentive for Iran to rush for a deliverable nuclear weapon, if only to regain some of its previous swagger.

So, Israel’s doomsday clock was nearly at midnight. In addition, the window of opportunity for Israel to strike was fast disappearing. Iran’s air defenses have been thoroughly degraded by Israel, but the Iranians were seeking to rebuild them with the most advanced Soviet anti-aircraft batteries. If Israel was going to strike, it had to be now.

Yet no one should discount the courage it took for Netanyahu to pull the trigger. Though nuclear negotiations between Iran and the United States were floundering — Ayatollah Khamenei had forcefully rejected any suggestion that Iran forfeit its enrichment program — Israel would be sure to be blamed for having torpedoed a possible diplomatic resolution.

Just the day prior to Israel’s attack, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s lead negotiator with the Iranians, warned that the Iranian response to an Israeli attack could potentially cause mass casualties in Israel equivalent to a nuclear attack. Nor had the United States committed to defending Israel against any Iranian counterattack, as it helped to during Iran’s previous ballistic missile attacks. Indeed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s only statement after the attack was to insist the United States had not been involved, and to warn Iran against striking at US forces in the region. Not a hint of a promise to help defend Israel against an Iranian counterattack.

(Since Rubio’s statement, however, at least two US destroyers with anti-missile capabilities have been deployed to the eastern Mediterranean, and there have been reports of the US shooting down some incoming Iranian missiles.)

THE INITIAL EXECUTION by Israeli forces went with a degree of perfection impossible without overwhelming siyata d’Shmaya, and caught Iran completely by surprise. Israeli eliminated Hossein Salami, head of the IRGC; Mohammad Bagheri, army chief of staff; and Ali Shamkhani, a top advisor to Ayatollah Khamenei, as they slept. And the entire upper echelon of the IRGC air force was also taken out, after being lured to a meeting. The strikes were pinpoint in execution, with minimal if any collateral damage to nearby civilians. Only the apartments of the unlamented departed were hit.

Israeli aircraft struck more than a dozen targets across Iran, including two of the three main enrichment sites at Natanz and Isfahan, both of which were severely damaged. Ballistic missile storage facilities were also hit. On Motzaei Shabbos, the IAF, flying with virtual impunity through the length and breadth of Iranian air space, added Iran’s oil production facilities to its list of targets.

Once again, the degree to which the Mossad and Israeli military intelligence have penetrated Iran was remarkable, just as when Israel succeeded in smuggling out of the country literally tons of Iran’s nuclear archives. That ability of Israeli intelligence to burrow deep into Iran reflects, at least in part, the loathing of much of the population for the current regime and the number of opposition groups willing to work in tandem with Israeli agents.

Over a period of years, the Mossad succeeded in establishing a plant near Tehran to assemble drones from parts smuggled into the country. Mossad commandos were filmed using those drones to destroy Iranian missile launchers and anti-aircraft batteries. The courage to operate in that fashion so far from Israel and in the heart of enemy territory is almost unfathomable.

ONE OF THE GREAT IRONIES of Israel’s military strikes on Iran — another example of the Yad Hashem — is how much they were abetted by the Simchat Torah massacre, the blackest single day in Israel’s history. October 7 forced a complete rethinking of Israel’s security doctrine, according to John Hannah of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), from an emphasis on deterrence to one on preemption and threat removal. The latter is precisely what Israel has been doing since last September, when it detonated 3,000 cellphones belonging to Hezbollah operatives, followed closely by the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah bunkered down under 60 feet of concrete in Beirut.

Each of the Iranian proxies on seven fronts surrounding Israel in a “ring of fire” has been severely degraded and neutered. An article on the Hamas files in Mishpacha two weeks ago concluded with Yahya Sinwar’s realization that Iran valued Hezbollah more for its value as the first line of defense for its nuclear program against Israeli attack than as part of a strike force against Israel.

Yet when Israel did attack Iran, Nasrallah’s replacement as head of Hezbollah politely bowed out. Iran can defend itself, he said. Hezbollah has been far too weakened to engage Israel at any time in the near future, and recognizes that attempting to do so would likely result in its being evicted from Lebanon entirely.

Iran tolerated Bashar Assad killing over half a million Syrians in order to maintain himself in power. But today he is in Moscow, left unable to defend his regime after the loss of his Hezbollah ally, and Israel is firmly in control of its Syrian border.

On his podcast with Bari Weiss last Friday, Michael Oren had to restrain himself from getting too giddy about the possibilities of peace treaties between Israel and both Lebanon and Syria in the near future.

WHAT COMES NEXT? That really breaks down into two questions. First, will Israel succeed in completely destroying Iran’s nuclear program, which would require destroying the enrichment site at Fordow, which is deeply embedded under 80 to 90 meters of rock? Thus far Fordow is unscathed. And second, will the Iranian regime fall?

Most experts seem to believe that Israel cannot destroy Fordow from the air, and that doing so will require massive bunker-buster bombs, which Israel does not possess and which its planes cannot carry. But American bombers, within striking distance of Iran at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, can do the job.

President Trump has been content to bask in the reflected glory of Israel’s strike, calling it “excellent,” and noting that Israel benefits from American weaponry, which, naturally is the best in the world. On Friday morning, he told the Free Beacon, “I feel good, I feel very good.” He noted that he had warned Iranian nuclear negotiators in April that they had 60 days to make a deal, and that Israel had attacked on the 61st day.

And Bibi was happy to let Trump take as much credit as he wants. He sent President Trump an effusive birthday message celebrating all Trump has done to defend Israel. No doubt he was largely sincere, with memories of President Obama threatening to shoot down Israeli planes if they tried to attack Iran still fresh in his mind.

He reminded Trump that Iran had twice tried to assassinate him, is currently in the process of building intercontinental ballistic missiles that could hit America, and that its parliamentarians are fond of chanting, “Death to America.”

“Our victory will be your victory,” he told the president.

In his May 13 Riyadh speech, Trump referred repeatedly to Iran as a source of the chaos in the region, and has repeatedly stated that Iran must not be permitted to maintain a nuclear enrichment program. At the same time, Trump clearly prefers that Israel handle Iran by itself, without the involvement of American forces. And perhaps Israel can destroy Fordow via repeated sorties over the site or using commandos on the ground.

But there is little reason for Trump to refrain from using the bunker busters, apart from worries about the “restraint” elements in the MAGA coalition. Iranian leaders have already made clear that they will hold the US accountable regardless.

If Fordow is destroyed, that might well be the final blow to toppling the mullahs, as the regime would be humiliated and bereft of its only status symbol — its nuclear program. Although Iran is one of the richest countries in the world in terms of natural resources, its economy nevertheless is on the brink. Economic discontent and rebellion against religious coercion has led to widespread and nearly universal hatred for the regime.

In his first address to the nation in the wake of Israel’s strike, Netanyahu told the Iranian people that the door to their liberation was being opened. And that is certainly the ideal outcome from an Israeli perspective. But it is unlikely that Israel will invest great resources in bringing about regime change. That, the Iranian people will have to do themselves, with the silent backing of their friends, America and Israel.

 

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1066. Yonoson Rosenblum may be contacted directly at rosenblum@mishpacha.com)

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