Israel’s 'Operation Rising Lion' Hits Iran's Nuclear Program
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Israeli warplanes hit targets across Iran in a stunning series of strikes aimed at ending its nuclear program, with President Trump calling the operation excellent and threatening worse to come if the regime in Tehran does not agree to denuclearize. Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal. We are joined today by my colleagues, editorial board member Elliot Kaufman and columnist Kim Strassel.

The Israeli strikes began early Friday morning Middle East time and continued there into the afternoon and evening, targeting centrifuges, nuclear scientists, top generals, and more. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in remarks on early Friday, said, quote, "...we struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear enrichment program."

Here's a little bit more of what the prime minister said. 80 years ago, the Jewish people were the victims of a Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime. Today, the Jewish state refuses to be a victim of a nuclear Holocaust perpetrated by the Iranian regime. Now, as prime minister, I've made it clear time and again

Israel will never allow those who call for our annihilation to develop the means to achieve that goal. Tonight, Israel backs those words with action. We struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear enrichment program.

We struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear weaponization program. We targeted Iran's main enrichment facility in Natanz. We targeted Iran's leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb. We also struck at the heart of Iran's ballistic missile program.

Prime Minister Netanyahu also said he had a message for the people of Iran. Quote,

Unquote. Elliot, this is a fluid situation. There are strikes that are continuing to happen here on Friday afternoon. But as far as we know, sitting here in New York, what did Israel hit and how and how much of a setback could that deal to Iran's nuclear ambitions?

Well, in short, Israel hit a lot. We're talking about hundreds of strikes by the Israeli Air Force, Israeli Navy, and also Israeli Mossad. That's Israel's CIA equivalent operating from inside Iran. And in addition to what Prime Minister Netanyahu detailed, I would emphasize that Israel has, in a sense, decapitated Israel.

Iran's military. What do I mean by that? Taken out nearly the entirety of the top echelon of Iran's army and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That sort of attack on the command and control infrastructure of the Iranian military has left these organizations in disarray. And that, in turn, has given Israel crucial time to hit Iran's

Iranian ballistic missiles before some of them can get off the ground and also hit Iranian nuclear sites, which is obviously crucial to this entire mission. Now, we've been hearing that one of Iran's

nuclear enrichment sites at Natanz has been, they think, destroyed. However, that still leaves another one, notably Fordow, which is buried underneath a mountain. And Israel may not be able to destroy that one on its own with its current military capabilities. It's also hit

the Iranian nuclear program now at Isfahan, a sort of crucial link in the nuclear chain, but there is a lot more to do. Marc Thiessen: Kim, one thing striking about this is the capabilities of the Israeli armed forces, just remarkable level of detailed intel knowledge of where these top Iranian commanders were going to be. I mean, it calls to mind the

amazing pager operation against Hezbollah recently. What do you make of the U.S. response so far? In an interview on Friday morning, President Trump said that this was an excellent operation, promising that worse is to come if there's no deal. Here's part of what he said on Truth Social. Two months ago, I gave Iran a 60-day ultimatum to make a deal. They should have done it. Today is day 61.

Also on Truth Social, he warned that the next already planned attacks would be even more brutal and said Iran must make a deal before there is nothing left.

Kim, what do you make of that as a U.S. response to these strikes? Well, just a quick note, by the way, on Israel. Can we just stop and point out here again, boy, does that country play the long game. I mean, this, from what we know, was very long time in the making, possibly years. We know that Mossad actually snuck in drones.

undercover into the country to aid them in blowing things up when the strikes began and that people were operating from within the country. That's not a small intelligence feat. That's a huge deal. So pretty remarkable. Look, I think Donald Trump is playing this very shrewdly. There has been a lot of pressure on him, including from his own party, to dissuade Israel from attacking Iran and

And he even earlier this week was suggesting that they should stand down. That was unlikely if Israel had decided to pull the pen. And the president has wrapped his arms around their decision to do this and is now very much attempting to use it to his own negotiating advantage.

So he is not only saying, look, I'd given you this 60-day deadline. You blew it. There are consequences. And that is the message that is being sent, not just to Iran, but to other actors that might be adversaries of the United States. There will be consequences for not dealing with the international community on Iran.

honest terms, because let's not forget this also followed a vote by the International Atomic Nuclear Agency calling out Iran for 20 years of deception on this. So he's following through on that deadline, but he's also

saying you now need to negotiate. And in that regard, you can make the case that Israel has done the United States a favor here in that Iran has been severely weakened and it does give Donald Trump more ability to say, take a deal. And Iran had been stringing America and everybody along. This might be a turning point, possibly. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment.

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Welcome back. Democrats in Washington, on the other hand, are warning about escalation, calling on the Trump administration to de-escalate. Here is a piece of the statement by Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

He says Israel's attack on Iran, clearly intended to scuttle the Trump administration's negotiations with Iran, risks a regional war that will likely be catastrophic for America. And it's further evidence of how little respect world powers, including our own allies, have for President Trump. Unquote. Elliot, what's your read of that? Because Trump is embracing this operation. He is not

Yeah.

And on the point about escalation, the thing I always want to ask is, is it escalatory that Iran has been flouting these nuclear obligations and doing this covert program trying to build a bomb? Right. So it's great to see Senator Murphy and Democrats standing up for President Trump's dignity. I'm not sure I entirely take them at

their word here they didn't want israel to respond seriously to iran the last time iran launched

launched a hundred ballistic missiles at it. They said Israel should take the win. And if Israel had done that, there might not be this window for an attack now because Iran's air defenses would not be down. Negotiations are clearly how President Trump wanted to resolve this issue, but the negotiations were not succeeding. President Trump

And his envoy, Steve Witkoff, had made it very clear that no domestic nuclear enrichment was their red line for Iran. And Iran had made it equally clear that it had no intention of ever giving up that domestic enrichment of uranium. So they had reached agreement.

an impasse. President Trump's deadline was running out. And whether or not his administration would have enforced that deadline is an open question, but Israel wanted to. And Israel thought that it couldn't wait past when Iran might reach a point of

of no return. Just on deadline day, you might call it, on Thursday, Iran announced that it had a secret nuclear enrichment site and was going to start operating there. A crazy

A crazy thing to do if you're actually interested in coming to terms on a deal. It seems like Iran wasn't interested on that. It thought it could call President Trump's bluff, call Israel's bluff.

And when it came down to it, President Trump knew that Israel was going to strike and he didn't stop it. Kim, the other thing I want to ask some of these Democrats is about past Israeli actions of a similar nature. So in the 1980s, Israel struck a nuclear facility in Iraq. In 2007, it struck a nuclear facility in Syria. And do they consider those to be escalatory moves or

Or would they have preferred those facilities to continue operating? I mean, it's hard for me to imagine that if there were a nuclear program that had been operated in Iraq throughout the 80s and into the 90s, that that would be a great outcome for the region or the world. And the same to be said about Syria.

Yeah. I mean, I think those episodes from the history just underline how naive or how partisan and whatever you want to call it, how dangerous that outlook is that Democrats are putting forward. And this is an old refrain. You know, Israel should stand down. Israel, all parties should back off. And of course, the problem with that argument is

is that those that are democracies that attempt to listen to their allies often are the ones with the most pressure to do so. The bad guys, as it were, the adversaries, never back down. They never step back.

And to add to what Elliot was saying, General Jack Keane, I saw today on television talking about how the estimates were that Iran may have been weeks away from being able to use their nuclear materials in a weapon, maybe not to have been able to mount it on a missile, but nonetheless to, for instance, put it in a big box.

and park it next to a country or inside of a country, you know, that has the potential. And this is the thing that I think Democrats will not acknowledge or refuse to acknowledge. The moment that Iran has nuclear capability, the entire dynamics of that region change and the world becomes far less safe. And it is an existential threat to Israel. It is not something that can be allowed to happen.

And when you stand up against these outfits, you do at least have a better chance of some form of true de-escalation that may be forced upon them, but that calms things and makes things safer in the long run. You know, and I'd like to think I was really pleased to see Netanyahu say that.

folks aren't talking much about yet about the domestic situation in Iran. But if this were destabilizing enough, this is a country, the people are tired of this dictatorship. And, you know, maybe this could even provoke some sort of internal rebellion and change and longer peace in the region going forward. On the point about the opening that Israel saw here, Elliot, a part of it seems to be worries that

Iran's nuclear program was crossing a point of no return. But I agree with your assessment that part of it also seems to be the vulnerability of the Iranian regime after the dismantling of Hamas and Hezbollah that had been weapons hanging over Israel on Israel's borders for so many years. And then those strikes that disabled many Iranian air defense systems,

and the attempted Iranian retaliation with ballistic missiles that were mostly intercepted. And again, it's still a fluid situation, but as far as we can tell, it looks like there have been a few rounds of Iranian ballistic missiles now today on Friday that have been fired at

Israel. There's some reports that the U.S. is helping Israel to intercept those, some injuries that are being reported. But as far as you know, Elliot, does it look like a similar sort of situation where most of those rockets or many of them are being caught in the air by those Israeli defense systems? That's right. As far as we know, there have been a couple hundred,

ballistic missiles fired at Israel, and in particular, fired at Israeli population centers, the major population centers, the Tel Aviv area, and so forth.

We know of fewer than 10 that have made it through, and we know only of injuries mild to moderate injuries. So if that stays the case, that is a huge victory for Israel, for the U.S. That would demonstrate that not only is Iran...

defenseless on its end, but that it can't really hit Israel in a serious way either, which means Israel would have time, would have real time to do what it needs to the Iranian nuclear program. I mean, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been warning about Israel's

Iran as the singular threat to Israel since the 1990s, even when many in Israel were not saying that, were doubting him on that. Many thought that he'd been saying it for so long, he would never take action, military action on this issue. I don't think that he intends to leave the job half done, to put out only half of

of the fire here. Iran is a theocratic regime dedicated to worldwide revolution. It has, I mean, you could say, been the singular source of poison spreading into Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza, West Bank, on and on, trying to undermine Jordan as well while they're at it. What could be done for the region to secure it is...

is enormous. And I would just mention the U.S. interests as well here. Iran has a massive ballistic missile program. It has all it needs to menace Israel and even much of Europe. But Iran has been working on intercontinental ballistic missiles for a very specific reason, and that's to bring the U.S.

It calls the U.S. the great Satan. It yells death to America. You know, Israel's taking it at its word. I think America has to as well. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America. And Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small.

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From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome back. Kim, what is your read of the reaction from MAGA World, those of the president's supporters who think that America first means retreating from U.S. engagement abroad, notably the director of national intelligence?

Tulsi Gabbard earlier this week put out a strange sort of video on social media talking about her visit to Hiroshima and reflecting on the perils of nuclear war and all but accusing warmongers of trying to get the United States into a nuclear war. What do you make of that? And will those supporters fall in behind Donald Trump, their champion, if he decides that what's in the U.S. interest here is backing up Israel on

this? Some will, but I think it's important that the president know and the administration understand that there is going to be pushback and he's going to have to decide if he stands strong here. I was reading through some of the initial comments. And by the way, this

crowd had spent the past week. Tulsi Gabbard was actually quite restrained in her odd video, but a lot of bloggers and influential voices in this movement were attacking Mark Levin as a warmonger, other people trying very much to pressure the administration into essentially commanding Israel to stand down. There's a big question as to whether or not that's even

possible anyway. I mean, obviously Israel does care about the United States opinion, but if it's backed into a corner and it is worried about its existential existence, that might not count for much in the end. Right now we're hearing criticism from some of these folks

saying that a lot of it directed at Israel, suggesting that Israel has sabotaged the United States and is dragging it into war and that it was clear that Trump didn't want this to happen and they did it anyway. And this was all by design. That certainly does not

jibe with the president's actions or words this week, not just the removal, as you note, from personnel from the region, but the president's praise for the strike and his adoption and backing of it to use for his own strategy. I am hopeful that this might be a clarifying moment for the president, because when people talk about, and I've heard people say this week, well, the America first foreign policy is

That is not a foreign policy. It is essentially, let's not have any engagement in the world because we must spend all of our money and put all of our attention only on the United States. Well, that's not possible in today's very dangerous environment. And it's notable that Israel is not asking the United States to fight its wars for it.

Will we be asked to give some moral support? Yes. Maybe some financial support or weapons support? Sure. That is a longstanding relationship we have with Israel, and it shows that when we do so, they are more than capable of taking care of themselves and doing us a favor in the process. So it's my hope that, yes, there's going to be grousing, griping, and complaining, and whining, and the president's best path is to stick together.

strong and to show folks why this is, in fact, the best way forward engagement, especially of the strategic sort that is our relationship with Israel. One final thought here on the point about U.S. seriousness and credibility. Elliot, again, this is the true social statement from Donald Trump. I

It puts a little bit of a different spin on the ultimatums that he is also giving to other actors on the world stage, including Vladimir Putin with relation to his invasion of Ukraine. Trump has been very frustrated that he has been, as he sees it, strung along by Putin and Russia. And here's a situation where he also felt strung along and changed his approach. And you know what? Trump was reportedly impressed by Ukraine's drone strike,

as well. And Ukraine can't pull off something like this against such a larger country in Russia. But if it could, I think you might see him packing that as well. And Kim is right. And there's an interesting argument about what the make America great again foreign policy really is. And until the other day, many people were out there assuring us that the essence of it was to let

Iran blow past Trump's deadline, let it blow past Trump's red line, and basically roll over every time Iran pushed because we were afraid above all of a conflict between Israel and Iran. And I think President Trump said that's actually not what he stands for. He tends to talk about peace through strength. And when you have individuals

an ally that can not only fight, but win and potentially defeat a shared enemy, we're seeing President Trump backing that ally. And that could be another interpretation of what a MAGA foreign policy might mean. Thank you, Elliot and Kim. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcasts.wsj.com.

If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button. And we'll be back next week with another edition of Potomac Watch. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America. And Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. The Department of Defense is working with Google to help secure America's digital defense systems, from establishing cloud-based zero-trust solutions to deploying the latest AI technology. This is a new era of American innovation.

Find out more at g.co slash American Innovation.