Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a 1967 graduate of Cheltenham High School, launched so-called “Operation Rising Lion” on Friday, June 13. Netanyahu said the military operation had “struck at the head of Iran’s nuclear weaponization program … to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival.”
According to CNN, the attack is unprecedented and killed several of Iran’s most powerful figures. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called the attack “a declaration of war.”
Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) reported that Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on Wednesday that the operation “will continue until its objectives are met.”
“We are determined to continue until we reach our objectives. There are no negotiations,” he added.
Since June 13, Iran has launched over 400 projectiles at Israel. So far, 24 Israelis have been killed and some 1,500 wounded by Iran’s ballistic missile assault, according to Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). Nearly 4,000 Israelis have had to leave their homes as a result of the attacks, JNS said.
The US was not involved in the attack, CNN noted. On June 12, President Donald Trump warned of the possibility of “massive conflict” in the Middle East and urged Iran to agree to a nuclear deal “before there is nothing left”.
Experts say an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would also likely be the end of Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the US. From CNN’s coverage yesterday:
Iran has been at the center of Netanyahu’s identity for nearly his entire political career. His time as Israel’s longest-serving leader is replete with warnings about Iran. Some have been borderline cartoonish, like when he held up a drawing of a bomb to warn of Tehran’s advancing nuclear program at the United Nations General Assembly in 2012. He has since returned to the same podium – and many others – to lecture the world repeatedly about the intent of the Ayatollahs.
Israel’s existential fear wasn’t a single one of its adversaries. It was all of them combined: an overwhelming attack from Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and the Shiite proxies in Syria and Iraq. This was Israel’s nightmare scenario that Hamas tried to instigate with its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Netanyahu’s statement from Friday is below:
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