14 Operation Rising Lion: A Military Perspective Over the course of 12 days in June 2025, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) paralyzed and destroyed Iran’s air defense capabilities to establish air superiority, then struck the Iranian nuclear sites known to Israel and the West (with the exception of the Fordow installation), most of Iran’s known missile production infrastructure, and a large part of Iran’s missile launching capabilities. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) achieved all that while also targeting and killing high-ranking commanders of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and key members of the Iranian nuclear capability’s development team. The strategic results of the operation will be determined over the course of the coming months and years. Tactical success is a must, but it is not sufficient. On the operational level, Rising Lion was probably the most successful display of military performance of the 21st century to date. It was an impressive manifestation of intelligence, precision strikes, air superiority, cyber operations, special and covert operations, air defense, civil defense, and above all: a highly skilled and original integration of these components. The offensive also set some important precedents: acquisition of air superiority within an operating range of about 2,000 km against dense and advanced air defense systems and for a significant period of time; integration of covert ops within enemy territory with an overt military attack; a successful combination of cyber operations as a component of a kinetic operation; and more. The operation is also of global importance from a Great Power Competition (GPC) perspective. It demonstrated that the typical military challenge facing the Western world is not insurmountable. The IDF, with limited US operational assistance, has defeated, at least for the time being, a radical adversary that relies on ballistic missiles for deterrence on the one hand and surface-to-air missiles for defense on the other. This is also the basic configuration of the Russian and Chinese military challenge. Operation Rising Lion contradicted the attrition premise by clearly defeating quantity with quality Both failures and successes, particularly on this scale, provide fundamental lessons that must be heeded. Learning from this war is essential in the concrete context of Israeli strategy and the future of the Iranian-Israeli conflict, but also on the more fundamental military level. The clearest and most banal lesson is the advantage of initiative and surprise. The gap between the failure of October 7 and the success of Rising Lion speaks for itself. But strategic conditions do not always allow for initiative and preventive wars, and in any case, initiative alone is not a sufficient condition for success. With that in mind, a few initial observations and points can be laid out: 1. There is a question mark over Israel’s “regional power” status. The success in Iran has returned phrases like “regional power” and “a new Middle East” to Israeli discourse. In fact, the depth of Israel’s operational success in Iran only highlights the gap between military excellence and strategic success. It is already clear that even though the IDF destroyed most of the targets that were originally Brigadier-General (ret.) Eran Ortal Former Commander of the Dado Center for Multidisciplinary Military Thinking. His book The Battle Before the War (MOD, 2022, Hebrew) explores the IDF’s need to adapt, innovate, and renew a decisive war approach.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDU2MA==