Last week, around 100 km from the India-Pakistan border, an Indian Army colonel asked me if the Israeli public really was willing to put themselves in the firing line against Iran if the US or Israel attacked.
I answered with an emphatic “yes,” without hesitation.
The reasons are two-fold.
Firstly, the Islamic Republic of Iran has spent decades funneling its people's resources into terror organisations whose sole aim has been the killing of Israelis. Billions of dollars, advanced weapons, training, intelligence, and ideological direction flowed from Tehran to Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and terror groups across the Middle East.
The consequences are well known to Israelis. The massacres of civilians, relentless rocket fire, suicide bombings, and wars forced upon the country time and again. Removing the Islamic Republic would not magically resolve every conflict in the Middle East, but it would dismantle the central engine driving its instability.
A Middle East without the Islamic Regime
A region no longer held hostage by Tehran’s ideology of destruction would finally have the possibility of security, economic growth, and a future not defined by perpetual war.
Secondly, because Israelis have watched from afar as the same regime has slaughtered its own people. Protesters in the thousands were shot in the streets. Teenagers are murdered in detention for no real crime. Women are beaten, imprisoned, and killed for defying state control over their own bodies.
Tens of thousands of Iranians have been murdered by a regime since protests began in December that treats its citizens as expendable. To look away now would be to accept that such crimes can continue without consequence.
Iranians and Jews are not enemies. They never were. Long before the Islamic Republic hijacked Iran’s identity, ties between the two peoples were built on mutual respect and a shared history. In recent years, as Iranians poured into the streets demanding an end to clerical rule, they were told they would not be abandoned again.
That the free world would not watch passively as the regime crushed another generation. Those words mattered to Iranians; they believed them. Especially to people risking their lives with nothing but courage.
Israelis understand what it means to live under existential threat. They understand the cost of inaction. And they understand that sometimes history offers a narrow window, and this one that may not come again.
As Saturday morning broke, the United States and Israel launched Operation Roaring Lion to strike the regime and bring freedom to the Iranian people. Help has indeed arrived for them. Now it is up to the Iranian nation to finish the job.
In Israel, we have spent most of Saturday morning watching from the bomb shelters. But for our Iranian brothers and sisters, it is a price we are willing to pay.