Until June 2023, the Israeli government’s Iran portfolio in terms of offensive action — mostly cloak-and-dagger operations, assassinations of key nuclear figures and the aspiration to use long-range weaponry — was in the hands of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.
Yoav Gallant, then the country’s defense minister, believed that arrangement was too cumbersome. He decided to fold Mossad’s operations under military intelligence and the Air Force to plan much bigger, much more aggressive offensive action.
So, in June 2023, the Israelis war-gamed the kind of strike that would ultimately take out the ayatollah, according to Israeli sources. They realized it was not possible as long as their airfields were in range of Hezbollah rockets and missiles.
Then, in September 2024, came the pager attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which virtually destroyed the group’s leadership. A month later, Israel struck Iranian and regional air defenses and some weapons manufacturing facilities, which “paved the way” for further attacks, as one official put it.
It was clear that the plan to kneecap Iran’s missile and nuclear capabilities required at the very least U.S. consent and, at best, active U.S. support. That came in June 2025, when U.S. bombers struck three nuclear sites inside Iran.
Last Friday, hours before the strike that launched the current war, Gallant posted on X that “The coming weeks will shape the coming decades in the Middle East.” The first attack was massive and came predominantly from Israeli war planes. The strikes killed more than 40 senior Iranian figures, including the ayatollah, in the span of 40 seconds, sources said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the war was something he had “been hoping to do for 40 years — to strike the terrorist regime squarely in the face.”
“We are also bringing to this campaign the assistance of the United States, my friend, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, the U.S. military,” Netanyahu said. “This combination of forces allows us to do what I promised.”
