Over the past decade, Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities and its proxy network, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to militias in Iraq and Syria, have posed existential challenges to Israel. Each threat and attempted escalation has been met with covert and overt responses, refining our doctrine of deterrence and resilience.
It all started eight to nine months ago, when a handful of members of Israel’s intelligence community, as well as the air force, sat in windowless briefing rooms, knitting together the threads of what would become our most sophisticated campaign against the Iranian regime.
Back then, none of them could have predicted just how many domains we’d end up fighting across – air, cyber, intelligence, and information – and just how precise we would have to be to keep civilian harm to the barest minimum.
They’ve grappled with a fundamental problem from day one: First of all, we can’t truly know what ordinary Iranians think, not in a country where the press isn’t free, where there are no reliable polls, and where the regime controls every broadcast.
Yet over the past week, snippets of dissent have leaked through: state TV feeds hacked and replaced by calls to take to the streets, encrypted messaging apps briefly alive with protest, even as the authorities plunged the nation into near-total internet blackouts to snuff out any spark of unrest.
From the start, the IDF’s campaign was designed to be “by-the-books” in its precision. The first night’s strikes hit dozens of residential blocks, and civilian casualties numbered in the single digits. Had the toll been higher, Tehran’s propaganda arm would have screamed it from every rooftop. Instead, they found themselves silenced by the facts: The IDF knew exactly which structures housed centrifuge halls versus family apartments, and Israel calibrated its warheads accordingly.
According to international media, behind the scenes, cyberoperations ran in parallel. Predatory Sparrow, or whatever name you choose to call it, slashed into Iran’s largest crypto exchange, burning nearly $90 million in token reserves. Hours later, state-owned Bank Sepah’s ATM and online networks collapsed under data-wiping malware.
Each digital blow was aimed at Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which bankrolls its expanse of militias and drone factories through illicit finance networks. This was no sideshow; it was central to Operation Rising Lion’s promise to degrade the regime’s war chest as comprehensively as its missile silos.
Though no government claimed the cyber attack, its scale and timing mirror Israel’s intent to choke off Tehran’s war chest through multi-domain pressure. Those in charge of this cyberattack may be sitting in one of the bomb shelters across Israel, waiting for the Home Front Command cellular app to allow them to return to their homes.
Surgical strikes
Our intelligence and air force officers played their hand with surgical care. Once the missiles stopped flying, Tehran ordered a blackout so severe that NetBlocks data registered connectivity plunging into single digits. That level of throttling isn’t about “cybersecurity” but rather about muzzling any glimpse of the strike footage, any grainy upload of damage that might embolden Iranians to question the narrative they’ve been fed for decades.
Who knows? Maybe Israel is to blame for this disconnect. We will likely only know in a few decades when this operation becomes a standard playbook in militaries worldwide.
Even as bombs and bytes struck in tandem, Israel’s messaging made a point of distinguishing between fighting the regime and targeting ordinary citizens. There’s a world of difference between saying, “We must overthrow the government because it threatens us,” and “We are at war with those who fund and command these attacks at your expense.” The IDF wanted to keep the focus squarely on the IRGC’s infrastructure, not on the people caught in the crossfire.
And make no mistake: Despite the pundits who dismiss us as a one-trick pony, this mission bore all the hallmarks of the Israeli way: ingenuity under pressure, rapid improvisation, and a stubborn faith that we could pull it off.
Literally years of planning laid the groundwork: By last November, military intelligence and Mossad analysts were already running simulations on how to collapse key enrichment cascades at Natanz and Fordow with minimal collateral damage. In parallel, Mossad operatives smuggled suitcase drones into Iran’s border provinces, ready to blind radar arrays ahead of the opening salvo.
When those jets finally roared in at dawn, they weren’t just following flight plans; they were executing a doctrine built on flexibility of mind. We briefed our best scientists and engineers on zero-margin blast effects, we rehearsed communications blackouts, and we vetted every bombing coordinate against civilian footprints gathered from high-resolution imagery. That’s why, even though we struck dozens of sites, Iranian street cameras showed almost no evidence of mass casualties.
ON THE diplomatic front, too, we leaned in. While US President Donald Trump publicly dangled the threat of American strikes should Tehran continue its nuclear advances, behind closed doors, he granted us the green light to proceed, so long as we kept the death toll low and the operation limited in scope. It’s not often that you see a US president and an Israeli prime minister coordinating multi-domain operations with that level of trust.
Yet, for all our precision, Israel knew the risks. The regime’s next move was predictably brutal: volleys of ballistic missiles armed with modified cluster-munition warheads. One of these rockets showered Holon and Azor with submunitions designed to tear through apartment windows and cars – an escalation we hadn’t seen before in the same conflict. Cluster bomblets crashed on Israeli soil, littering the ground with lethal scrap for weeks and turning everyday streets into minefields.
And still, Iran persisted. Their cyberwarriors struck back, hijacking broadcast feeds to show images of their own “martyrs” and warning Iranians that our “terrorist” campaign would only intensify. The regime’s playbook is simple: heighten fear to crush dissent, then point the finger at “external enemies” to rally a battered population.
So what have we learned?
First, true deterrence demands multi-domain integration: air power alone won’t cut it, nor will cyber raids executed in isolation. The IDF found itself orchestrating espionage, sabotage, strikes, and propaganda in perfect synchrony.
Second, the regime’s vulnerabilities go far beyond centrifuges and missile silos; they lie in their own brittle information environment. Cutting off their headlines and their HOD IMs can sometimes hurt as much as a cruise missile.
Third, this conflict has ushered in a new era of “precision terror”: cluster munitions, blockchain burn wallets, and hastily imposed blackouts.
Looking forward, the question is whether this model can hold. Iran’s leadership has already vowed to target US bases and Gulf partners if we press on. Hezbollah is on high alert; militias in Iraq and Syria are primed to strike. Our challenge will be to calibrate our following options, sabotage or strike, so that the regime feels enough pain to back off but not so much that it lashes out in a wave of unpredictable proxy attacks across the region.
At home, we prepare for what’s next. Hospitals run drills for blast victims and cyber-lockdown survivors. Schools teach shelter-in-place routines, and ordinary families stockpile food and water. Yet, amid the tension, one fact endures: The same ingenuity and resolve that carried us through eight months of clandestine planning will carry us through whatever comes next.