A photograph Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted from his underground war room on Saturday night prominently featured a copy of Target Tehran, a 2023 book by Jerusalem Post defense analyst Yonah Jeremy Bob and former editor Ilan Evyatar. The volume—subtitled How Israel Is Using Sabotage, Cyberwarfare, Assassination and Secret Diplomacy to Stop a Nuclear Iran and Create a New Middle East—describes in detail the very tactics Israel employed in last week’s attack on Iran.
Operation Rising Lion
Early Friday, Israel carried out “Operation Rising Lion,” striking uranium-enrichment halls at Natanz, a conversion line in Isfahan, and several command facilities. Israeli officials said the raid, which involved dozens of aircraft and long-range missiles, set Iran’s program back “by years.” Tehran countered with a barrage of rockets and drones it called “True Promise III,” while state media claimed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had shot down up to three Israeli F-35 fighter jets.
The Israel Defense Forces dismissed those reports as “pure fiction,” insisting that no aircraft were hit and that key air bases such as Nevatim and Tel Nof remained fully operational. Iranian authorities, meanwhile, reduced nationwide internet bandwidth by roughly half—a tactic analysts say was meant to keep state narratives dominant, prompting residents to rely on state television and radio for updates.
Target Tehran traces Israel’s decades-long effort to undermine Iran’s nuclear drive through covert operations, cyberattacks, and diplomatic outreach that culminated in the 2020 Abraham Accords. The book also details a 2018 Mossad raid that spirited out Tehran’s secret atomic archive—an operation Netanyahu famously revealed on live television.