The world is cruel and full of horrors. Israel understands this - and acts. It is doing a service not just for itself, but for the Iranian people and all those who care about fighting theocratic murderers, writes DAVID PATRIKARAKOS

Daily Mail​

14 hours ago

Shock and awe. The words seem almost inadequate to capture the magnitude of the destruction, the scale of Israel 's military and strategic audacity. But the images are unequivocal.
Smoke surges skywards. Flames burst across the horizon. Explosions strafe Tehran and Natanz.
At 3am local time yesterday the skies over Iran erupted as Israeli fighter jets penetrated their enemy's airspace, littering the ground beneath with high-tech destruction and death. Operation Am KeLavi (Rising Lion) had begun. Over 200 aircraft roared across Iran, dropping 300 munitions on approximately 100 targets. On the ground, commandos moved silently into place.
By 3.30am, smoke was rising from Tehran. By 4.15am, state TV showed smoke bursting out of Natanz, around 300km away. The Natanz uranium enrichment facility, the jewel in the crown of Iran's nuclear programme, was erupting and, along with it, quite possibly, Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Israel has done the unthinkable. It has done what everybody said it could and should not do. It has, finally, struck the Iranian nuclear programme. Make no mistake, this was a truly historic day. Amid the chaos, and the fear and the noise, I can see the contours of a new Middle East. And like so much else in the region, it is born in violence.
The degree to which Israel has degraded or even destroyed Iranian nuclear facilities remains unclear. But by striking Natanz, they have sent a message: Iran's nuclear programme will no longer be tolerated. There is no going back.
The nuclear programme sits at the heart of the Mullahs' squalid regime. For decades, they have continued with their nuclear progress in the face of sanctions, international condemnation and political isolation – this week the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world's nuclear watchdog, formally declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years.
The situation had long been unacceptable to the Israelis. Now, finally, the major attack has come.
Have no doubt, this was an extraordinary operation. A combination of military prowess, superlative intelligence, and what you need most in life: chutzpah.
In fact, the Israeli operation wasn't one strike – it was three coordinated, high-risk missions run deep inside enemy territory, carried out by Mossad agents and Israeli military forces over months, years, of planning.
It demanded precise intelligence, sophisticated equipment, and the covert deployment of commando teams operating deep inside Tehran and across Iran – all under the constant watch of Iranian security forces.
In a stunning logistical feat, Mossad agents also smuggled large quantities of specialised weaponry into Iran under the noses of Iranian intelligence, staging these weapons across the country – ready to strike when the time came.
The operation's first mission saw Mossad commando teams infiltrate central Iran and deploy advanced targeting systems near key Iranian surface-to-air missile batteries. As the Israeli air force began its air assault, these systems sprang to life, unleashing a salvo of precision-guided missiles with devastating accuracy.
In a second mission, Mossad planted high-tech weapons inside civilian-looking vehicles positioned near critical air defence hubs.
As Israeli fighter jets began pounding targets from the air, strike systems hidden inside those vehicles were remotely activated to obliterate Iran's air defences. In parallel, embedded Mossad units launched precision-guided missiles they had previously positioned near Iranian sites.
The final blow came from within Iran, too. Long before the operation, Mossad agents had smuggled explosive-laden drones into a hidden launch site near Tehran. As the wider assault unfolded, these drones took off from secret launchpads and slammed into surface-to-surface missile launchers at the Asfaqabad base – one of Iran's most strategically sensitive sites.
This wasn't just an air raid. It was a meticulously coordinated, multi-front takedown of Iran's military nerve centres – executed with precision, patience and deep penetration.
Then there are the assassinations. Israel killed three of Iran's top military commanders, including the head of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami, top military commander Mohammad Bagheri, and Gholam Ali Rashid, head of the powerful Khatam al-Anbiya central command.
Reports are that General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the IRGC's aerospace division and architect of Iran's missile programme, also met a well-deserved end.
To get at these men required still more preparation and still more surgical strikes.
Yet worse for the Iranians, hours after all this, a second wave of attacks yesterday evening liquidated Quds Force commander General Esmail Qaani, the man responsible for overseeing Iran's regional proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen.
The Israelis also took out two senior nuclear scientists – Fereydoon Abbasi and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi. In total, Israel attacked at least six military bases around the capital and residential homes in two highly secure complexes for military commanders as well as multiple other residential buildings in Tehran.
As an Israeli security source told me yesterday afternoon: 'These massive attacks by the Israeli air force and Mossad together send a clear message to the Mullahs, and to the world. We are operating inside the beating heart of Iran. We can strike any apartment, any field, any area at any time.'
You might say this is Boy's Own stuff – except there's nothing boyish about the remorseless and meticulous Israelis. Among other things, this operation is a monument to their ingenuity and military prowess.
Beyond the worldwide reaction, Israel's goal here is an immaculately precise one: to degrade Iran's military command and control, strategic missile capabilities and air defence systems, and to target its nuclear facilities, all of which pose a clear and direct threat to Israel. So far it seems to have done exactly that.
According to Iranian state TV, Natanz, Iran's largest uranium enrichment site, which the IDF says 'contains the infrastructure required for enrichment to a military-grade level', has been hit 'several times'. Hours after the first wave of strikes, the Israelis struck Iran's second major nuclear enrichment facility at Fordow.
The IDF reports that the strikes destroyed Natanz's underground 'multi-level enrichment hall housing centrifuges, electrical rooms, and other supporting infrastructure'. They also said they 'destroyed critical infrastructure enabling the site's continued operation and advancement of the Iranian regime's nuclear weapons project'.
If this is true, it is the biggest setback to Iran's nuclear ambitions this century.
But that's not all. Beyond the months of preparation, Rising Lion was the result of years of wider planning between Mossad and the IDF who compiled detailed intelligence dossiers not just on Iran's missile infrastructure but also on its senior military and nuclear personnel.
Which explains why the operation has been so devastating in its efficacy.
This is a disaster for the Iranians: military, strategically and, of course, for their reputation.
Iran has no choice but to respond. Indeed, the country's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was in full voice. Israel 'opened its wicked and blood-stained hand to a crime in our beloved country revealing its malicious nature more than ever by striking residential centres', he thundered – online. 'With this crime, the Zionist regime has set itself for a bitter and painful fate and it will definitely receive it.'
Strong words. And you'd think a huge response would be inevitable. Iran has already fired over 100 drones that the Israeli air force has been shooting down.
Last night, it was launching further drone strikes at Israel and there will almost certainly be more in the coming days, probably at IDF bases across the country.
Iran also has about 1,600 ballistic missiles it can launch, and while doubts remain over their effectiveness, the damage they can wreak is considerable. The problem is that both of Iran's direct strikes on Israel last year were damp squibs. Pretty much everything it fired was either intercepted by Israel and its allies (including the US and Britain) or landed harmlessly far from their targets.
The strikes weakened, rather than strengthened, the perception of Iran as a military power. And this attack has given no reason to alter that assessment. Not least because, right now, it seems like Iranian air defences failed miserably, either because they weren't up to the job or because Israel dispensed with them.
So they may be able to launch a huge volley of missiles, and even do damage to Israel.
But then what? Iran is without air defences, without an air force, and without their top military commanders. The Israelis would open them up if they launched an all-out attack. It would be carnage for the sadistic Khamenei and his thuggish acolytes.
As an Israeli source confided to me yesterday: 'I think parts of the Israeli military establishment are praying that the Iranians launch a vast missile attack because it will allow us to end them.'
So the regime is stuck. If they try again and fail again to carry out Khamenei's blood-curdling threats, which they almost certainly will, they are in trouble. Don't forget, it's not only the Israelis watching – it's the Iranian people, the vast majority of whom want nothing more than to see the end of their sordid theocratic oppressors.
When I first began studying this subject 20 years ago, Iranians told me they hated the Mullahs but would fight for their country if it were attacked. Two decades of brutality later, and many Iranians are reacting to yesterday's news with cries of 'thank you uncle Netanyahu'.
So who can the regime rely on? The Mullahs are always loath to fight face on, preferring instead to strike through their proxies.
But those proxies are in disarray, and it is here that we perhaps find the reason that the Israelis have finally carried out an attack they have been talking about for so long – and it all goes back to the horrors of October 7, 2023.
Back then, Iran ringed Israel with proxies. But no longer. Hamas may fight on among the rubble of Gaza but it is ravaged, a shadow of what it once was.
Hezbollah was once the finest fighting force Israel faced. Now its leader is dead, and its military command crippled by the stunning Israeli pager operation last year when intelligence services turned the terrorist group's communications devices into bombs.
Without Hezbollah to protect him, Tehran's Syrian vassal Bashar al-Assad was finally overthrown last year.
He now languishes in exile in Moscow, a guest of Vladimir Putin for life. Assad's fall is a strategic catastrophe for Tehran.
Not only has it lost face for its failure to protect him, but without Assad it no longer has a land bridge to supply Hezbollah with weaponry in Lebanon.
October 7 was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and it was carried out by Iran's proxy Hamas.
It was supposed to change everything for Israel and for the Middle East. And it did, just not in the way the so-called Axis of Resistance planned.
The line between this strike and that day is both clear and straight. Israel has dismantled the proxies, the limbs of the beast, and is now gunning for its head, Iran.
Already, politicians and commentators the world over are squawking their disapproval, arguing that the Israelis had no right to launch this stunning offensive because the Iranians don't yet have a nuclear bomb. Others shriek that this is a violation of the rules-based order and international human rights law.
Let's be clear, however: Israel – or any other sovereign state in the world – must be able to live within its borders without bombardment year after year from the proxies of a state that repeatedly says it will wipe it off the face of the earth.
When that state also amasses massive quantities of highly enriched uranium, you not only have a right but a duty to act against it. That's what the Israelis have done. And it was a long time coming.
The world is not what it was. I watched the rules-based order die in the killing fields of eastern Ukraine.
I saw international human rights law reveal itself as a joke in Assad's prisons.
The world is cruel and full of horrors. The Israelis understand this – and they act.
And yesterday in Iran they performed a service not just for themselves, but for the Iranian people, and all those across the world who care about fighting theocratic murderers – in all their guises.