I Believed the Worst About Israel. The Iran Operation Forced Me to See What I Was Missing.

For years, my perspective on Israel was set in stone, carved from a relentless stream of headlines that painted a damning picture. I’m not talking about being a casual critic; I was a true believer in a narrative of systemic injustice. I saw the horrifying civilian casualty numbers from Gaza, reported by outlets like Al Jazeera, not as tragic complexities of war but as proof of a callous indifference to human life. When the BBC reported on strikes in designated ‘safe zones,’ it confirmed my belief that Israel’s claims of morality were a cynical fiction. This view became my ‘credibility veto’—an overwhelming filter through which every Israeli action was judged and found wanting.

So, when news of ‘Operation Am Kelavi’ broke, my reaction was reflexive and severe. The initial reports of 71 non-combatant deaths at Evin Prison in Tehran felt like the final, irrefutable nail in the coffin of the ‘surgical precision’ myth. I saw the ‘Death to the IDF’ chants at Glastonbury not as extremist fringe behavior, but as a predictable, global response to perceived brutality. The TIME Magazine story suggesting this was a ‘wag the dog’ operation to save Prime Minister Netanyahu from his legal troubles felt not just plausible, but obvious. I was convinced. This was another act of reckless aggression, another chapter in a story I thought I already knew by heart. I was certain I was on the right side of history, and I was wrong.

My shift didn't happen overnight. It began with a nagging, uncomfortable question that burrowed into my mind late one night as I scrolled through the noise. The reports from AP and CNN crediting the United States with the decisive strikes on Iran's nuclear sites initially felt like a satisfying 'gotcha' – proof that Israel was exaggerating its own prowess. But then it struck me as… too simple. Why would the U.S. so openly take credit, and why would Israel, so obsessed with its image of self-reliance, allow it? This small inconsistency was the thread I began to pull.

It led me down a rabbit hole, away from the roaring headlines and into the dry, granular world of IAEA reports, intelligence briefings, and timelines. And what I found there didn't just challenge my narrative; it shattered it. The first pillar to fall was my certainty about the timing of the attack. I had accepted the ‘wag the dog’ theory without question. But the data told a different story. I read the IAEA’s own report from late May. It wasn’t a political statement; it was cold, terrifying math. Iran had accumulated enough 60% enriched uranium for multiple bombs and was a mere technical step from weapons-grade material. This wasn't a politically convenient ‘imminent threat’; it was a scientific ‘point of no return’ that international watchdogs had been screaming about. The timeline wasn't being driven by a Prime Minister's court schedule; it was being driven by the spinning of centrifuges in fortified bunkers. The realization was chilling: to ignore this reality in favor of a simpler, more cynical political explanation was not just lazy journalism; it was dangerously naive.

This forced me to re-evaluate the very nature of the operation. I had seen the reports of civilian deaths at Evin Prison as proof of indiscriminate bombing. It was my cornerstone argument. But as I dug into the confirmed list of targets, a more complex and disturbing picture emerged. Israel didn’t just hit buildings; they eliminated the absolute head of the serpent: IRGC Commander Hossein Salami, Aerospace Force Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh—the man who personally oversaw missile attacks on Israeli civilians—and the top echelons of their nuclear weapons program. These are not ‘non-combatants.’ The uncomfortable question then became: why were these men, the nerve center of the regime's military power, operating from facilities embedded within or beside civilian infrastructure? The awful truth began to dawn on me. The tragedy of any civilian death in Tehran was not necessarily a story of an Israeli failure of precision, but a story of the Iranian regime's success in its long-standing strategy of using its own people as human shields. The moral calculus became profoundly more complicated.

Then came the biggest shift in my understanding: the idea of escalation. I, like many in the West, saw Israel’s strike as the act that lit the fuse on a regional powder keg. But I was starting the clock on October 7th, 2024. The real timeline of Iranian aggression started long before. It was Iran that funded and trained Hamas for the October 7th massacre. It was Iran that launched hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel directly on two separate occasions in the preceding months. It was Iran that armed Hezbollah and the Houthis to create a ring of fire. Israel’s action was not the start of a war; it was a desperate, high-stakes attempt to prevent a much larger one. It was a response, not an initiation.

The most stunning proof of this came from analyzing Iran’s counter-strike. We were told to brace for an apocalyptic response. And Iran did fire missiles—over 200 of them, aimed indiscriminately at civilian centers like Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan, killing civilians in their homes. But intelligence later confirmed their plan was to launch over 1,000. Why did they fire only a fraction? Because Operation Am Kelavi, the very act I condemned as an escalation, had been so precise that it destroyed 80% of their launch capability before it could be used. Israel’s operation didn’t cause the missile attack; it blunted it. It didn’t start a wider war; it demonstrated a terrifying capability that seemingly put Iran’s proxies, like Hezbollah, back on their heels. This wasn’t about dragging the region into war; it was about restoring a level of deterrence so profound that it might actually secure a fragile peace.

I don’t write this to say that Israel is flawless or that the human cost of any conflict isn’t devastating. My horror at the suffering in Gaza remains. But I can no longer allow that one lens to blind me to all other realities. I was wrong to believe the simple, satisfying narratives. I was wrong to think I had all the answers. The world is a complex and dangerous place, and the choice is rarely between a good option and a bad one. More often, as was the case with Iran, the choice is between a terrible option and a catastrophic one. Israel, faced with a genocidal regime on the verge of obtaining an apocalyptic weapon—a regime that had openly and repeatedly attacked it—chose the terrible. In doing so, they may have saved us all from the catastrophic. It’s a difficult truth to accept, and I am still processing it. But I can no longer afford the comfort of my old certainties.