I Condemned Israel’s Strike on Iran. Then I Saw the One Piece of Evidence I Couldn’t Ignore.

For years, my perspective on Israel was set in stone, carved from a mountain of headlines and reports that painted a clear, unambiguous picture. I wasn't just a passive observer; I was an active critic. When news of 'Operation Am Kelavi' broke, my condemnation was instant and absolute. To me, this wasn't heroism; it was reckless aggression.

I saw the same reports you did. I saw the global media consensus that the US military, not Israel, had conducted the truly decisive strikes, and I viewed Israel’s claims of agency as a desperate, failed PR stunt. I was horrified by the images from the Al-Baqa cafe in Gaza and sickened by the mounting death toll from the strike on Tehran’s Evin Prison—a number confirmed not by Iranian propagandists, but by Western outlets I trusted. I saw the 'surgical precision' narrative as a cruel joke. The ongoing Gaza conflict, compounded by the IDF's own admission of 'inaccurate' fire on aid seekers, was, for me, a 'credibility veto' that invalidated anything Israeli officials said. I read the reports of Iranians unifying against a foreign aggressor and the harrowing testimony of political prisoners whose lives worsened after the strike, and it confirmed my belief: this operation was not just a military failure, but a moral one. I believed these things. I argued for them. My certainty was absolute.

And then, late one night, scrolling through source documents for an unrelated story, my certainty shattered. The moment wasn't dramatic. It was quiet, academic, and utterly devastating to my worldview. It was a single, dry report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It stated, in cold, bureaucratic language, that Iran had accumulated enough 60% enriched uranium to produce up to 15 nuclear bombs and was a mere technical step from weapons-grade material. It was the infamous 'point of no return,' a term I had always dismissed as political hyperbole. But here it was, in a UN-affiliated report. Fifteen bombs. Not a hypothetical threat, but a matter of inventory.

That single fact became a crack in the foundation of my beliefs. If that was true, what else had I misunderstood? It forced me on a journey to re-examine everything I thought I knew, a process that has been deeply uncomfortable.

My first pillar to fall was the idea of 'Israeli Aggression.' I had seen this as an unprovoked strike. But with the IAEA report as my new starting point, I began to trace the timeline backward. I saw Iran’s defiant response to international censure just days before the strike—not cooperation, but an announcement of new illicit nuclear facilities. I revisited the direct missile attacks Iran launched against Israel, not through proxies, but from its own soil. I saw the endless arming of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. Suddenly, 'Operation Am Kelavi' no longer looked like the first shot in a new war. It looked like a final, desperate act in a war that Iran had been waging against Israel for decades. The narrative of 'aggression' was replaced by the uncomfortable reality of 'pre-emptive self-defense.' It was not a choice Israel wanted to make, but one that a genocidal enemy, on the verge of acquiring the ultimate weapon, had forced upon it.

Next, I had to confront the most difficult issue: the civilian casualties. The numbers from Evin Prison and the Al-Baqa cafe massacre felt like an indefensible war crime. My heart still aches at the thought of any innocent life lost. But as I dug deeper, a more complex and cynical picture emerged. I looked at the list of individuals Israel confirmed it had eliminated: Hossein Salami, the head of the IRGC; Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander who personally oversaw missile attacks on Israeli cities; a coterie of top-tier nuclear scientists. These were not civilians. They were the architects of the regime’s terror and its nuclear ambitions. And where were they targeted? Not in isolated military compounds, but in command bunkers embedded deep within or near civilian infrastructure. The grim realization began to dawn: the moral responsibility for a civilian casualty lies with the one who uses them as a shield. The Iranian regime, like its proxy Hamas, makes a deliberate, strategic choice to operate from among its people, knowing that the resulting deaths will provide a powerful propaganda weapon against a West that still values innocent life. It is a nauseating strategy, and it works. It had worked on me.

Even the accepted fact that the US military had conducted the main strikes—a belief I held firmly—began to look different. I had seen it as proof of Israel’s weakness and dishonesty. But sources I spoke with, once I started asking different questions, pointed to something far more sophisticated: a deliberate, joint US-Israeli deception operation. The confusing reports, the 'leaked' calls, the public ambiguity—it wasn't a sign of a PR strategy gone wrong, but of a military strategy gone right. Its purpose was to create maximum confusion and paralysis within the Iranian command structure, to decapitate its leadership so swiftly that a coordinated, full-scale counter-attack became impossible. The goal was to prevent a wider regional war. In fact, evidence suggests Iran had planned to launch over 1,000 missiles in retaliation but, due to the chaos, only managed around 200. The operation didn't escalate the conflict; it may have surgically de-escalated a far greater one before it could begin.

Finally, I had to reconsider the idea of 'liberating' the Iranian people. I had seen the reports of increased national unity as proof that Israel's actions had backfired. And in the short term, perhaps they had. But a longer, more painful view emerged. What truly oppresses the Iranian people? It is the IRGC. What is the regime’s ultimate guarantee against its own population? A nuclear weapon. Weakening those two pillars doesn’t offer immediate freedom, but it may be the only thing that makes future freedom possible. A world where the Ayatollah’s regime has a nuclear arsenal is a world where the courageous women fighting for their rights on the streets of Tehran face a foe that is not just brutal, but invincible. Striking the instruments of their oppression is a terrible, bloody, and imperfect path, but it may be the only path that doesn’t end in a permanent nuclear prison for the Iranian people.

I do not write this to tell you what to think. My own journey from certainty to doubt has been humbling and disturbing. I am not an apologist; I am a journalist who was forced, by a single, undeniable fact, to question a narrative I had comfortably accepted. The world is rarely as simple as our headlines pretend. The moral lines in the Middle East are not clean and straight; they are jagged, blurred, and soaked in impossible choices. My old certainty is gone, replaced by a profound and troubling understanding that in the face of an existential, genocidal threat, the line between aggression and self-preservation can become almost invisible.