Operation Rising Lion: How Israel's proactive approach should shape Bharat's strategic thinking

First Post

16-06-2025

Israel's Operation Rising Lion has been an audacious gambit that has so far been successful for the Netanyahu government. More than 20 Iranian military commanders, including Army chief Mohammed Bagheri, have been killed, and several key military assets and nuclear sites destroyed, in the biggest direct conflict between the two nations that started with Tel Aviv's military operation on Friday. Nine scientists working on Iran's nuclear programme too have reportedly been killed. Iran's air defence systems, military airbases and parts of their key nuclear sites were decimated by Israel's military exercise.
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It is still too early to predict the contour of the conflict, but at this point of time it is apparent that Israel has gained a definite advantage over its arch-rival with its timely and precise targeting. What gives Tel Aviv an edge is its undiminished sense of shatrubodh, which, when mixed with its never-give-up attitude and incessant, long-term planning, helps Israel achieve results, historic and unprecedented. Israel's success mantra is simple: Prepare for war in the time of peace. Use that 'free time' to your advantage.
In recent memory, the only time Israel goofed up—and goofed up badly—was on October 7, 2023, when more than 1,000 Hamas terrorists stormed into southern Israel and went on a killing spree, murdering 1,200 men, women and children and abducting another 250 people. This aberration apart, this tiny nation of less than one crore people has had splendid successes. In the past year and a half, after the October 7 fiasco, it has emasculated Hamas after flattening Gaza and decapitated the Hezbollah leadership with a never-seen-before usage of civilian technology for military purposes.
Coming back to Operation Rising Lion, it has its genesis in Mossad pulling off 'one of the most spectacular exploits in the entire history of espionage on the eve of January 31, 2018', as authors Yonah Jeremy Bob and Ilan Evyatar write in their 2024 book Target Tehran. 'After months of meticulous planning, endless hours of sophisticated electronic surveillance, and the risky infiltration of Israeli agents into Iran, the Mossad team broke into the secret warehouse where Iran's nuclear archive, containing the full record of its efforts to become a nuclear weapons power, was kept,' write the authors.
Very little is known in the public about Mossad's 2018 operation, but Target Tehran explains how meticulously planned this exercise was. The Israeli team had 'exactly six and a half hours to find the vast amount of material they needed, load it onto trucks, and make their escape, or they would be discovered, and the mission, with all its months of meticulous planning—data analysis, risky intelligence gathering by agents infiltrated into Iran, and more—would come to naught, and two dozen lives could be lost to the tender mercies of Iranian justice'.
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The 2018 operation was a grand success. The revelations of the archive's contents proved that Iran had been lying for years about its nuclear programme, hiding its true military nature by claiming it was only for civilian use. This gave Donald Trump, who was then the US President, an excuse to withdraw the US from the Iran nuclear deal signed with much fanfare in 2015.
Israel was well aware that these measures could only delay the nuclear inevitable. The next step would be to give a physical body blow to the project, but in between came the Biden administration. Tel Aviv used this time to strengthen itself, and when Trump 2.0 was inaugurated, the Israeli leadership knew its time had come.
Israel is bound by what's famously called the Samson Option, a term named after the Biblical figure who killed himself and thousands of Israel's enemies by bringing down the pillars of the Gazan temple where he was held captive. Given the fact that Israel lacks significant landmass, it has made nuclear weapons the centrepiece of its strategic deterrence, thus conveying to its adversaries in no uncertain terms that it would be willing to cross the nuclear threshold in the event of an existential threat.
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A geographically bigger country like Bharat may think it's not bound by the Samson Option, but given the revolutionary changes taking place in arms and armament, and of course, modern warfare, the difference seems to be mitigating between a big and a small nation. Bharat needs to realise that the era belongs to those who pursue a proactive rather than a reactive policy. Of course, the action has to be a well-calibrated, responsible one, but in today's era, to wait for the act to take place can be too devastating to recover.
This should be the next evolutionary stage of Bharat's military tactics. You don't wait. You pre-empt. You ensure that the enemy is neutralised well before it is ready with its first move. Today, Bharat has every reason to rejoice the stupendous success of Operation Sindoor, but, taking a cue from the dear friend Israel, Bharat should start preparing for the worst. The enemy is now well aware of the giant leap taken by Bharat on the military front and is preparing itself accordingly. This is the time for the preparation of Operation Sindoor 2.0.
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As for Israel's Operation Rising Lion, Bharat should give silent support. Though there will be many bleeding-heart commentators in the subcontinent who would bemoan the attack on Iran, the fact of the matter is that the decline of the current Iranian dispensation will weaken the Islamist axis that invariably targets Bharat and its geostrategic interests. There is no denying that Bharat has maintained good relations with Iran, but it has been tactical in nature. Israel, on the other hand, is an all-weather friend.
A weakened Tehran is also bad news for Islamabad. Pakistan becomes much less important, geostrategically, for the US. The idea that Pakistan has ever been a reliable supporter of the US is a perception Americans have created to deceive themselves; in reality, Pakistan has harmed US interests far more than it has forwarded them. If Operation Rising Lion is effective in considerably weakening the current Iranian dispensation, if not managing the regime change, Pakistan would believe that it is now next in the line of the Israeli fire.
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One hopes the leadership of Bharat takes adequate lessons from Operation Rising Lion. The country needs to change. It has to change from being a reactive to an assertive power, but without compromising its ethical, moral compass.
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.