I know that many people are questioning why Israel chose to start this conflict with the IRGC now, or even at all. If you believe that what happened during the night between Thursday and Friday was Israel simply choosing to attack Iran, you either haven’t been paying attention to Iran’s belligerence and that of its proxies towards Israel or you are choosing to be willfully ignorant.
Iran’s Islamic revolutionary leaders have been calling for the eradication of Israel since they came to power in 1979 (the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini repeatedly referred to Israel—which he consistently called “the Zionist regime” —as a cancerous tumor in the Islamic world and called for its destruction), and former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” during a speech he gave in 2005 at a conference titled “The World without Zionism” held in Tehran. There is even a countdown clock in Tehran’s Palestine Square showing the years, days, hours and minutes until Khomeini’s predicted date of Israel’s destruction.
They’ve never been secretive about this desire to destroy Israel or to see us destroyed, and since October 7th, they’ve been using their proxy organizations – Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis to attack Israel, at times, quite relentlessly. There have even been a few firings by their proxies in Iraq. Prior to the ceasefire, Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets into Israel, causing many deaths and considerable damage. We are still fighting in Gaza because, inexplicably, Hamas refuses to surrender and release the 53 hostages they’re holding despite the utter devastation and death toll. The Houthis are still firing rockets at Israel almost every day, regularly sending thousands of Israelis racing for shelter. On two occasions, the IRGC fired hundreds of missiles at Israeli cities and towns. In addition to all of this, for decades, Iran and its proxies have carried out numerous deadly attacks against Israeli and Jewish interests around the world. And lest you forget, they’re not too keen on the US either…
In other words, since 1979, Iran’s Islamic revolutionary leadership has been telling us exactly who they are and what they want to do to us. And these leaders, who I hope we can all agree are utterly abominable and have made their intentions clear through both their words and their actions, have been racing towards the creation of a nuclear arsenal. Despite promises that their nuclear research and activities are for peaceful purposes and despite flimsy agreements, they never stopped pursuing the development of nuclear weapons – nor have they ever stopped threatening Israel.
If you believe that negotiations and agreements regarding the goal of keeping Iran’s nuclear pursuits in check were succeeding, I would say that you are, at best, naive – and that is me being kind and charitable. When a country is one of the greatest sponsors of state terrorism (and also has one of the worst human rights records in the world) and that country is doing its best to build nuclear weapons and lying to the world about it, talk of diplomacy is meaningless – and dangerous, if you happen to live in Israel, the country uniquely targeted by Iran’s hatred and threats.
So where does that leave Israel, especially when far too many individuals and world leaders seem to believe—for reasons that I can’t fathom—that Iran’s Islamic revolutionary leadership can somehow be tamed by negotiations and agreements? Anyone who truly understands the situation will tell you that these “agreements” are not even worth the paper on which they are written. What happened last week is that Israel seized a rare opportunity to act against the regime that has been threatening its existence for 46 years – an opportunity made possible by the fact that we have spent the past 20 months fighting and weakening each of their proxies. Every single one of these proxies—Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—attacked Israel first. We didn’t initiate – we responded. We responded when Hamas attacked on October 7th. We responded when Hezbollah started firing rockets at Northern Israel on October 8th. We responded when the Houthis started firing missiles at Southern and Central Israel (as well as at ships of all nationalities on the Red Sea) on October 19th. All organizations supported by the IRGC and doing its bidding.
And now we are definitively responding to the Iranian government’s threats to wipe us off the map. I would like to think that most people would understand the sheer madness of allowing the IRGC to achieve nuclear capabilities and the need to render them incapable of doing so. This isn’t a war against the people of Iran, though their leaders have turned it into a war against Israeli civilians by purposely targeting our population centers with missiles and drones.
I purposely haven’t posted anything whenever we’ve had rocket alarms that have us quickly entering the reinforced safe room in our apartment. It usually happens 2-3 times a day in our area (the last one was at around 8:30 this morning, and the one before that was four hours earlier), but there are alarms throughout the country on and off all day and all night long. Most Israelis have been woken at least once every night by missile alarms since this began. The damage in parts of Central and Northern Israel has been extensive, hundreds of people have been wounded, and a number of people have been killed. Entire apartment buildings and neighborhoods are now unlivable. I hope that Iranian civilians are faring better than we are. The Iranian people aren’t the enemy. Indeed, from everything I’m hearing and seeing, many of them are hoping that this will lead to the end of the IRGC regime. I want that for them too. They deserve to be free.
I’m not going to lie. At times, it’s pretty scary. The payload on the Iranian missiles is much greater than on those fired by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, and they usually fire many at a time. Due to the number of missiles being fired, the number that manage to breach our defense systems is also higher (even though the success rate is decent). Schools and most non-essential businesses are closed, as is the airport. I’m working from home. While I sometimes hear cars outside, the streets are eerily quiet. We are all trying to avoid being caught out when the Iranian missiles are fired.
The Iranian leadership should not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons, but a part of me hates that Israel is the only country with the courage to actually do something about it, especially knowing that the immediate result would be what we are experiencing now. We don’t have the luxury to wait and see what happens, nor are we foolish or ignorant enough to believe they could have been stopped in any other way. It’s hard to choose diplomacy when the other side wants you dead and is trying to make it happen.
If you’re siding with Iran’s IRGC leadership, you’re siding against the Iranian people.
You’re siding against the Palestinian people.
You’re siding against Lebanese people.
You’re siding against Yemeni people.
And all of this because you’re choosing to side against Israeli people.
Do you get it yet?
