New Delhi: Israel rolled out Operation Rising Lion, a substantially rehearsed strike that leveled key Iranian nuclear and military nodes. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later disclosed months of work behind the scenes, provoking an immediate and fiery vow of revenge from Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The country moved under cover of darkness, dropping precision munitions first on Natanz—the mainstay of uranium enrichment—and then hitting secondary targets around Khorramabad and Khondab. Iranian state media eventually confirmed eighteen fatalities in the air campaign.
Casualties included high-profile officers such as Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Hossein Salami and armed forces Chief of Staff Major General Mohammad Bagheri; nuclear specialists Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi also died in the blast. Reports allege the mission likewise terminated IRGC Air Force chief Amir Ali Hajizadeh.
Netanyahu insisted that a lethal Iranian uranium stockpile was able to fashion a bomb in mere months, making follow-on action unavoidable. Despite the planners eyeing an April launch, the IDF deemed the delay too risky and proceeded with the assault in June 2025, which the Prime Minister stated had received full cabinet clearance since November 2024.
More than a hundred drones and ballistic missiles were launched from Iranian sites toward Israel as a reprisal; the IDF’s air shield intercepted almost all of them. Supreme Leader Khamenei denounced the Israeli strikes as a crime and vowed that a bitter and painful fate would await the Jewish state. To signal resolve, Tehran named Major General Mohammad Pakpour its new commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
In contrast, the Israeli military reported sending two hundred fighter jets streaking across the region, hammering more than a hundred sites that housed missile-production lines and air-defense batteries. The government there declared a state of emergency, closed civilian air routes, and summoned tens of thousands of reservists to active duty overnight.
According to Iran’s official IRNA outlet, provincial officials in East Azerbaijan confirmed that 18 people had become martyrs in the confrontation, and another 35 were wounded.
Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the nation on live television, warning that the situation was not a coincidence. If Iran has nuclear weapons, we simply won’t be here, and he framed the preemptive campaign as strategically unavoidable.
Khamenei shot back with a stark prediction: “The Zionist regime has prepared a bitter fate for itself, which it will definitely receive.”
Military analyst Beth Sanner told CNN that killing a commander like Salami would be equivalent to eliminating the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and would foresee a massive retaliatory cycle from Tehran.
For the moment, United Nations inspectors with the IAEA reported no spikes in radiation levels around Natanz and confirmed that the Bushehr nuclear power plant remained undamaged.
Recent military operations by Israel have brought the Middle East to a critical threshold, leading Tehran to threaten direct retaliation. Diplomatic voices from Washington to Brussels now call for immediate calm, while analysts worry that a single miscalculation could vault nuclear anxieties to center stage.
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