Operation Rising Lion and Return of the Begin Doctrine

Netanyahu’s audacious strikes on Iran mark the most forceful reaffirmation of the Begin Doctrine in a generation.

Surrounded by regimes that have openly sworn to erase it, Israel has, since its founding in 1948, embraced a uniquely Darwinian form of survival: never wait to be annihilated. This resolve was in stunning display on Friday when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu launched a devastating wave of pre-emptive air strikes deep inside Iranian territory. Dubbed ‘Operation Rising Lion,’ the offensive is the most direct and audacious Israeli military operation against Iran to date.

Six sites were struck including the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, missile bases near Tabriz and military installations around Tehran were hit as over 200 Israeli jets pierced Iran’s skies in coordinated waves, flattening more than 100 high-value military and nuclear targets.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed it had assassinated the Islamic Republic’s three most senior military commanders: Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of the armed forces; Hossein Salami, commander of the IRGC; and Major-General Gholam Ali Rashid, who oversaw the Khatam al-Anbiya Central HQ. Former atomic energy chief Fereydoun Abbasi was reportedly killed along with Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, a nuclear physicist and head of the Islamic Azad University. Their deaths mark a near-total decapitation of Iran’s nuclear and military elite.

This was not the first time that Israeli jets flew long distances to destroy a nuclear programme run by a ‘genocidal adversary’ (from Israel’s point of view) in the Middle East. It was 34 years ago almost to this date, in June 1981, when then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered ‘Operation Opera,’ the now-legendary strike on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq.

In 2007, Ehud Olmert did it again. This time the target was Deir ez-Zor in Syria where erstwhile Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, with covert North Korean help, was secretly building a reactor. Operation Orchard erased the facility in minutes.

The so-called ‘Begin Doctrine,’ never formally codified but fiercely held, rests on one blunt principle that Jewish sovereignty will not trust its survival to UN resolutions, Western hand-wringing or the ‘managed containment’ of Israel’s adversaries as clearly suggested by Netanhayu’s address following the strikes.

This doctrine is designed to prevent not only mushroom clouds, but strategic parity in a region where Israel cannot afford to lose even once. It matters little whether the international community approves or even notices. After all survival, not popularity, is Israel’s lodestar.

This latest operation reinforces that strategic axiom. For years, Iran has crept toward the nuclear threshold. It has spun centrifuges in Natanz and Fordow, refined missiles in Arak and Kermanshah, and waged shadow wars across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Despite repeated American and Israeli warnings, Iran continued its march. Last week, the clock ran out. Talks in Oman, led by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, had stalled. Iran refused to cap its uranium enrichment; the Americans balked at further concessions. Netanyahu, sensing both opportunity and inevitability, gave the order.

There is, of course, a cost in form of expected Iranian retaliation. However, Iran’s proxies, particularly Hezbollah, are unlikely to offer swift or effective reprisal. Throughout last year, Israel has systematically pulverised Hezbollah’s military structure, assassinating Hassan Nasrallah and decapitating its senior ranks in southern Beirut, the most audacious being the Mossad-detonated walkie-talkies and pagers rigged with explosives that killed dozens of Hezbollah fighters.

What currently remains is a diminished militia nursing its trauma rather than readying its rockets. For now, Tehran stands more isolated and more exposed than at any time in recent memory.

When Begin launched the Osirak strike, he was condemned from all quarters. The United Nations passed a resolution denouncing Israel. The Reagan administration was caught flat-footed. Even in Israel, critics accused Begin of gambling with war. And yet, a decade later, as U.S. troops entered Baghdad during the first Gulf War, General Norman Schwarzkopf admitted he was “grateful” Israel had neutralised Saddam’s nuclear ambitions.

Much the same occurred after Olmert’s 2007 strike on Syria. At the time, Israel maintained radio silence. It took years for the world to confirm that Bashar al-Assad’s nuclear ambitions had been vaporised in minutes.

For all the fierce condemnation hurled at them, Israel’s leaders do not see themselves as Machiavellian warmongers, but as custodians of a post-Holocaust promise. ‘Never again’ is no mere slogan but a governing principle.

Israel’s leaders, from Begin to Netanyahu have recognized that the nuclear spectre looms larger over Israel than perhaps any other state and it cannot absorb a second strike. It has no geographic buffer. The first enemy bomb would be the last. Therefore, it has always acted with the urgency of one who cannot afford to wait.

To outsiders, this may seem reckless. But to Israel for whom the scars of the 1973 Yom Kippur War (when strategic warning was ignored by the Jewish state) run deep, complacency is a luxury it can ill afford.

It remains to be seen how this new phase of confrontation will unfold. Iran’s capacity for retaliation is not negligible; its cyber-arm may target infrastructure. The Red Sea could become more volatile. But Israel, as always, has bet that the greater risk lies in inaction.

That, ultimately, is the meaning of Operation Rising Lion. It is not a break from the past, but a logical continuation of the Begin Doctrine. The world may disapprove. But history, as always, may thank Israel later.