Israel’s Audacious, Complex, And Brilliant Strike Against Iran

While I had noted in my PDB (Paul’s Daily Brief) earlier on Thursday that Israel and/or the United States appeared poised for an imminent strike against Iran, the strike that night still took me slightly by surprise. And that’s a good thing, since it likely caught the Iranians off guard as well.

Iran is still reeling from the waves of Israeli air strikes, and covert actions, codenamed Operation Rising Lion, that decimated its military chain of command and targeted a key nuclear facility.

While the Trump administration initially denied it participated in the assault, President Trump later admitted that the U.S. supported Israel’s strike, which came the day after Trump’s 60-day deadline to Iran ended.  Trump’s team had been holding nuclear talks with Iranian officials.

The U.S. likely provided key intelligence and other behind-the scenes support.

The strikes mark the beginning of a long-planned and promised sustained campaign aimed at preventing Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon. It was also helped by Israel’s October 2024 strikes on Iran, which neutralized much of Iran’s air defenses and missile production.

Meanwhile, Trump warned Tehran to agree to new limits on its nuclear program or risk “even more brutal” attacks.

Trump later added that Tehran “must make a deal, before there is nothing left.”

“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal,” Trump said in a Truth Social post, but “they just couldn’t get it done.” Trump said that “the next already planned attacks” could be “even more brutal,” and warned that Tehran “must make a deal, before there is nothing left.”

Overnight, Israel, using over 200 warplanes, including upgraded F-35 stealth jets, and F-15 Strike Eagles, 60% of their aerial fleet, launched dozens of air strikes against Iran, targeting its nuclear sites, military facilities and killing top officials and nuclear scientists. 

Explosions have been reported by Iranian media and eyewitnesses, including at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.

Videos show smoke rising from numerous military sites, and damaged or destroyed buildings reportedly housing the top military chain of command, taken out by Israel’s decapitation strikes.

Explosions were also reported in the Iranian cities of Isfahan, Arak and Kermanshah, at military and industrial complexes.

The complex, large-scale military operation took out senior military commanders and air defense units in its first wave, as well as ballistic missile launch and production sites.

In a move reminiscent of Ukraine’s Spider Web remote drone operation deep inside Russia that hit its strategic bombers, Israel also deployed special covert teams deep into Iran armed with attack drones.

The audacious June 13 military strike (Israeli time) killed at least 10 key military and scientific personnel, including the commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, Hossein Salami, and the Armed Forces chief of staff, Mohammed Bagheri.

The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) was prepared for a worst-case scenario in which Iran would swiftly launch 300-500 ballistic missiles toward Israel. But, in response, Iran only hastily fired around 100 drones toward Israeli territory. Israeli media reported that all Iranian drones had been successfully intercepted.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nominal commander in chief of all armed forces, says Israel “should anticipate a harsh punishment.” But their capability has been severely curtailed in the past year.

For example, according to The New York Times:

Few analysts expect Iran’s network of armed proxies to respond meaningfully to the attack, illustrating how degraded the groups have become. Since the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel, the Israeli security services have launched operations that have severely weakened Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Assad dictatorship in Syria, a key ally of Iran, collapsed last December. 

However, we can still expect more ballistic missile attacks on Israel very soon. In fact, by midafternoon Friday, there were reports of Israeli air defense intercepting numerous Iranian missiles, with at least 5-7 impacts in central Israel.

Israel is prepared for many more.

Following the initial overnight wave of attacks, Israel has continued its strikes on Iran. As the NYT added:

Several Israeli strikes appear to have targeted an underground missile base in Kermanshah, in western Iran, on Friday morning. Witness videos verified by The New York Times, and filmed from a car driving on a nearby highway, show three columns of dark smoke rising near a mountain range where the missile base is believed to be located. An Iranian army aviation base and an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps facility are also located nearby.

However, not all Iran’s nuke sites were hit in the first waves. The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said three other nuclear sites, Fordo, Isfahan and Bushehr, had not yet been impacted.

Fordo, Iran’s best-protected nuclear site, near the city of Qom, was operated secretly by Iran until it was exposed in 2009. It contains Iran’s most advanced centrifuges. Deep inside a mountain, it is believed to be about half a mile below ground to protect it from bombing.

To guarantee success would require repeated use of huge “bunker buster” bombs, and most experts think that cannot be done by Israel alone, without American help.

And: “If you don’t get Fordo,” Brett McGurk, who has served as Middle East coordinator for several American presidents said, “you haven’t eliminated their ability to produce weapons-grade material.”

So, we should probably expect more attacks on these sites, with or without, U.S. Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs.

As part of this audacious attack, Israel also covertly infiltrated Iran and carried out a series of sabotage operations against Iranian air defenses and missile facilities in tandem with the widespread air strikes across Iran.

The covert operation was a joint effort between Israeli military intelligence and the Mossad, code named “With the Strength of a Lion,” one Israeli official said.

On X, Axios reporter Barak Ravid describes them as “covert sabotage operations deep inside Iran.”

The New York Post added more details:

Israeli spies smuggled missiles and secretly hid explosive drones deep inside Iran in a series of covert operations leading up to Friday’s deadly onslaught – before tricking military leaders into gathering for a meeting so they could be wiped out.

Axios explained: “As it became clear Israel was about to attack, the commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace Force convened in a bunker to coordinate the response.”

“But Israel knew that emergency protocol, and the location of the bunker. They destroyed it, killing the overall commander and the heads of the drone and air defense forces. The fact that there was nobody to give the order neutralized an immediate Iranian response.

The Post continued:

Intelligence agents with Mossad, Israel’s top spy agency, started infiltrating the heart of Iran several months back in order to pull off the surprise attack aimed at obliterating Iranian nuclear and military facilities, as well as a swath of top military commanders.

The spy agency planted the explosive drones inside Iran ahead of time as they laid the groundwork for the major strikes…

Agents also managed to smuggle precision weapons into central Iran so Israel could target Tehran’s defenses from within.

Infiltrated Israeli commando units then deployed precision-guided weapons near Iran’s surface-to-air missile defenses. A second operation set up strike systems and mounted technology onto vehicles that were launched at Iranian air defense systems.

The success of this covert effort gave the IDF virtually unchallenged freedom of operation in Iran’s skies.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials said that while they managed to prevent an immediate counter strike, they predicted the Iranians would launch a significant attack in the coming hours.

“We think they want to prepare a significant missile barrage that would be big and coordinated in order to try and overwhelm our missile defense systems,” an Israeli official said.

Still, at the time of this writing, the Israeli operation can already be called an unqualified success and demonstrates what a capable, determined, effective military strike looks like. Pentagon: take notice.

Much more to come on this major developing story.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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