Benjamin Netanyahu’s satisfaction matched the military, diplomatic and political risks he took when he launched the air offensive against Iran on June 13 to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. “I promised you that Iran’s nuclear facilities would be destroyed, in one way or another,” the Israeli prime minister emphasized in a video statement on Sunday morning, June 22, before adding: “That promise has been kept.”
This claim is impossible to verify at this point. But the United States’s entry into the war, with the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites overnight from Saturday to Sunday, marked a major turning point and gave Israelis the certainty that they had, at a minimum, slowed the nuclear program and weakened the ayatollah’s regime. In front of the Western Wall, Netanyahu used the mystical-religious language he favors, and prayed that God would “bless” US President Donald Trump for having sent in his military to “drive out evil and darkness in the world.”
Despite Iranian reprisals – about 500 missiles fired, 24 Israelis killed and several hundred wounded since June 13 – Israel scored a major and indisputable first victory against an enemy described as an “existential threat” due to its ballistic missile power and research to acquire the ability to produce nuclear weapons. “Israelis are in total agreement with Benjamin Netanyahu about the threat posed by Iran. Today, there is immense pride that Israel carried out an incredible military and intelligence operation,” noted political scientist Dahlia Scheindlin.
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