Operation Rising Lion
Lions may not outnumber their enemies — but they outsmart them. With strength. With unity. With pride.
To grow up in Israel is to grow up in a pride.
You learn early that strength isn’t just physical. It’s cultural. It’s collective. It’s found in the quiet rituals of a country that knows its survival has never been a given. Every Israeli grows up with the understanding that freedom has a cost — and that they will be asked to pay it.
In Israel, survival is not a passive condition. It’s a shared responsibility. Every citizen is not just a civilian, but a sentinel. Service in the Israel Defense Forces isn’t just a rite of passage — it’s a national inheritance. The uniform is not partisan. It belongs to the student, the settler, the secular, the skeptic. It belongs to the child of immigrants and the child of generals.
There is no divide when the sirens sound. No left or right when missiles fall. The arguments return. They always do. But in the face of threat, the instinct is unity. That’s what a pride is. Not unanimity, but loyalty. Not silence, but solidarity.
The Middle East continues to be complicated. Israelis have always wrestled with the same aching questions: how to live in peace with their neighbors, how to build a future where Jews and Palestinians share the land without fear, how to reckon with Gaza, what to do with the West Bank. The debates are honest. The contradictions are deep. The answers, if they exist, are far from simple. But one thing has been clear for years — painfully, urgently, universally clear: Iran must never have nuclear weapons. Plain and simple.
When a regime’s defining chant is “Death to Israel. Death to America,” it disqualifies itself from the moral and strategic responsibility that comes with possessing the most devastating force on Earth. We live in a post-Oppenheimer world. We don’t get to be naïve about what that means. A nuclear weapon in the hands of the Islamic Republic is not a diplomatic risk. It’s an existential one.
Time and again that red line has been tested. Western diplomacy stalled. Sanctions came and went. Negotiations dragged. And behind it all, Iran’s centrifuges kept spinning. The latest reports are staggering: Iran was days away from fully enriching uranium — unlocking the capacity to develop as many as fifteen nuclear warheads, each capable of being mounted on intercontinental ballistic missiles. Not theoretical. Not distant. Imminent.
For years, people have hoped the people of Iran would break free of the regime’s grip of terror — even as water scarcity spreads across the country, and food shortages force many to falter under the regime’s engine of oppression. There are memories of a thriving Iran, a beautiful country that was a partner with America. Since the Mullahs took over the country, they have used its water sources to enable its nuclear ambitions instead of providing a positive life for all its citizens.
Now more terror comes to its citizens. Israel was as strategic as possible in taking out key targets that posed an imminent threat to its safety. Confirmed deaths: Major General Hossein Salami, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was killed, along with another senior IRGC commander (unnamed) and at least two nuclear scientists. Death will come to innocent Iranians. This will get worse before it gets better. Israel has every right to defend itself. Two things can be true at the same time.
While the BBC will rush in the coming days to say “children of Gaza killed in Tehran,” the facts will show what happens when we let hate and extremism go unchecked for too long. The tragedy is that the Iranian people remain under the yoke of oppression from the terror regime that has brought chaos to the Middle East — not just through its proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, but as the head of the snake behind the atrocities of October 7.
So what happens next? While many dominoes have yet to fall and facts to unfold, a few things are certain. Israel has a pulse on Iran’s nuclear progress and will stop at nothing to eliminate the threat of Iran achieving its goal. More missiles will be launched. Sirens will sound. Bunkers will be occupied.
While many will analyze the politics of it all — and rightfully so — there’s no question that Benjamin Netanyahu has outstayed his welcome as Prime Minister of Israel. But to assume that whoever replaces him will hold a different position on Iran is not only naive, it’s ahistorical. It’s wrong.
Iran’s leadership since 1979 has made clear the legacy it’s chosen — not one of governance, but of repression. This is a regime that mandates veiling for women, restricts education, censors public life, and enforces the death penalty for violating extreme Islamic law. Women are treated as second-class citizens in marriage, divorce, employment, and political office. The legal age of marriage for girls is thirteen — with forced marriage permitted by judicial approval. Ethnic minorities and migrants face disproportionate punishment, arbitrary detention, and execution. LGBTQ+ Iranians and non-Shiite religious minorities live under constant threat of persecution, imprisonment, and death. This is not a difference in policy. This is a difference in principle.
Israel will not wait to be outnumbered. It never has. It will act like the pride it is — not because it seeks war, but because it understands what silence has cost the Jewish people before. Strength, unity, pride — these are not just the traits of lions. They are the terms of survival. And in a region still defined by peril, one truth remains: the lion does not beg to be spared. It stands, it watches, and when the danger draws too close — it strikes.