Clear and present danger: why Israel’s attack was vital

Israel’s Operation Rising Lion, launched on Iran on Friday, 13 June, was a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s survival. For decades, the people Israeli leadership call the “tyrants of Tehran” have brazenly, openly called for Israel’s destruction. They then backed up their genocidal rhetoric with a programme to develop nuclear weapons.

In recent years, Iran has accumulated enough uranium for nine nuclear bombs, and in recent months it has taken steps it has never taken before to turn the enriched uranium into weapons. Israel believed that if Iran wasn’t stopped, it could produce a nuclear weapon in a short time, and this was a clear and present danger to its very survival.

Eighty years ago, the Jewish people were the victims of a Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime. Today, the Jewish state has made it clear that it refuses to be a victim of a nuclear Holocaust perpetrated by the Iranian regime.

Israel’s leadership said it struck the heart of Iran’s nuclear enrichment and weaponisation programme. The Israel Defense Forces targeted Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz, and Iran’s leading nuclear scientist working on an Iranian bomb.

Israel also struck at Iran’s ballistic missile programme. Last year, Iran fired 300 ballistic missiles at Israel. Each of these missiles caried a ton of explosives and threatened the lives of hundreds of people. Soon, those missiles could potentially carry a nuclear payload and threaten the lives of millions. Iran was believed to be gearing up to produce 10 000 of those ballistic missiles within three years.

Israel believes that Iran is now working on what it calls the “new plan to destroy Israel” as its old plan to encircle Israel with a ring of fire, using its proxies, has failed. The people of Israel, the soldiers rose like lions to defend Israel. As Israeli leaders said on Friday morning, they believe they are defending the Jewish state and others like their Arab neighbours who have suffered from Iran’s campaign of chaos and carnage.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Our fight isn’t with the brave people of Iran, but with the brutal dictatorship that has oppressed you for 46 years.” He made it clear that Israel wouldn’t let the world’s most dangerous regime obtain the world’s most dangerous weapons. And Iran plans to give nuclear weapons to its terrorist proxies, making the nightmare of nuclear terrorism all too real. The increasing range of those missiles would bring the nuclear nightmare to the cities of Europe and eventually America.

Netanyahu said he believed Israel’s actions would help make the world a much safer place.