Forty-four years ago this June, I sat in the cockpit on the Israeli air force mission that destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. In one daring operation, we eliminated Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions. In 2007, when I was serving as Israel’s chief of defense intelligence, we destroyed a nuclear reactor in Syria built with North Korea’s help near the Euphrates River.
Today the challenge is far greater: Israel faces an advanced, sprawling, multisite Iranian nuclear program, deeply fortified and far more complex. Yet despite the scale, a successful Israeli campaign holds the potential not only to neutralize a grave threat but also to reshape the strategic landscape of the Middle East and make the region profoundly safer.
Israel and the United States have the prospect of a rare strategic opening. What has for years been a reactive approach in the Middle East can now be transformed into a proactive vision: one that curbs Iran’s malign ambitions and efforts, stabilizes Gaza and lays the foundation for a new Middle Eastern order built on security, integration and peaceful relations.
Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran’s leadership has made the destruction of Israel a central pillar of its ideology. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolution’s founder, denounced Israel as a “cancerous tumor” that must be removed. His successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has continued this doctrine, pronouncing that Israel will cease to exist by 2040.
For decades, pundits and even government officials around the world have dismissed these threats as propaganda designed to rally domestic support by uniting the public against an external enemy.
Israel has never dismissed Iran’s threats as empty. It insisted that the regime meant every word. The Oct. 7, 2023, offensive suggested that Iran — through its proxies, chiefly Hamas and Hezbollah — sought to translate its longstanding vision of Israel’s destruction into reality. Documents seized in Gaza show that Hamas believed it had the support of Iran and Hezbollah as part of a broader plan: a multifront offensive designed to overwhelm and destroy Israel. The Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar might have launched the Gaza attack prematurely, possibly fearing the plan’s exposure and believing that Iran’s entire axis of resistance would soon join in.
Over the past few decades, the convergence between Iran’s ideological commitment to Israel’s destruction and its accelerating military buildup, expanding nuclear program and arming of regional proxies has elevated Iran to be Israel’s worst threat. Those factors made it the primary focus of Israeli intelligence, operational planning and readiness.
The strikes Israel has carried out since June 13 — targeting Iran’s nuclear program and scientists, military leadership, ballistic missiles and senior operatives in the organizations that help foster attacks on Israel by proxies — were the culmination of decades of intelligence gathering, analysis and deep penetration of Iran’s most threatening institutions.
In just a couple of days, Israel secured operational freedom in much of Iranian airspace — an achievement that eluded it against its enemies even during the climactic stages of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Neutralizing Iran’s dense air defenses, particularly around Tehran and key nuclear and missile sites, enabled the Israeli air force to make recurring precise strikes on a variety of nuclear, missile and other military targets.
In parallel and with the aim of curbing missile attacks on Israeli civilian population centers, Israel’s air force has begun a campaign to hunt and destroy enemy missile launchers. Its success is rare in the annals of modern warfare. The operation, called Rising Lion, was started at a pivotal moment: just as Iran was enhancing its nuclear and missile capabilities to a level where stopping them might soon become exceedingly difficult and costly.
U.S. intelligence might have assessed that Iran had not yet decided to pursue nuclear weapons, and the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency this week acknowledged that the agency lacked proof of a systematic effort in that direction. Nevertheless, Israeli intelligence viewed the rapid growth of Iran’s uranium stockpile, the expansion of its enrichment infrastructure and the construction of undeclared facilities as unmistakable indicators that Tehran was swiftly approaching the threshold of an unstoppable weaponized nuclear capability. In parallel, Iran was significantly expanding its missile and drone arsenal and accelerating the transfer of ballistic assets to fortified underground facilities.
The operation in Iran, after largely defeating its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, offers decision makers in Jerusalem and Washington a foundation to leverage military action into a broader diplomatic initiative that aims for a strong, enforceable agreement rolling back Iran’s nuclear program, including assets that will remain intact. It must also prevent Tehran from enriching uranium for military use, block its path to a nuclear weapon and impose meaningful constraints on its missile arsenal, which poses a threat to the entire region. Together with crippling Iran’s proxy network, these steps would significantly decrease the threat to most of America’s regional partners.
Israel must now set its achievements against Iran and Hezbollah in a broader strategic framework. The government should bring the war in Gaza to an end, secure the release of all hostages there and endorse the Egyptian-Arab initiative for a new governing structure in the Gaza Strip — one that conditions gradual reconstruction on demilitarization. A reformed and strengthened Palestinian Authority should ultimately be empowered to take part in Gaza’s governance.
In doing so, Israel would support President Trump in advancing normalization agreements and broader regional integration — laying the groundwork for a new Middle Eastern architecture. This emerging framework would create a lasting counterbalance to extremist forces and open the door to a more stable, secure and hopeful regional order.
Amos Yadlin is a retired major general in the Israeli air force and was the head of Israel’s military intelligence directorate from 2006 to 2010. He is the founder and president of Mind Israel, a consulting firm.
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