Insights into Operation Rising Lion
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Starting on June 13, the Israeli military launched a daring and history-altering 12-day military campaign against the Iranian regime. Operation Rising Lion saw innumerable military achievements as the Israeli Air Force, with help from Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, operated around the clock at distances of roughly 1,500 kilometers from Israel’s borders.
The campaign was capped off by U.S. strikes against three Iranian nuclear sites, followed by Iran accepting a ceasefire two days later. At the close of the operation, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel had “consigned Iran’s nuclear project to oblivion” and ended “the threat of annihilation” posed by Iran’s nuclear program and medium-range ballistic missiles. In recent days, some of Operation Rising Lion’s more cinematic aspects have come to light, including the presence of Israeli commando teams on the ground in Iran.
JINSA hosted a webinar featuring an exclusive analysis of the extraordinary campaign with IDF Spokesperson BG Effie Defrin, a former JINSA Visiting Fellow.
JINSA President and CEO Michael Makovsky, PhD, moderated the discussion.
IDF BG Effie Defrin BG Effie Defrin is the Head of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, serving as Israel’s top military spokesperson. IDF BG Effie Defrin is a former Visiting Fellow at JINSA and a former participant in JINSA’s 2019 Brigadier Generals Military Leadership Education Program. Previously, BG Defrin served as the head of the IDF’s International Cooperation Division, and previously served as Israel’s Defense Attache to India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka and Commander of the IDF’s 27th Armored Brigade. |
Michael Makovsky, PhD Michael Makovsky since 2013 has been President and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), a leading Washington, D.C.-based policy and educational organization focused on U.S. defense and national security issues in the Middle East. Makovsky has worked extensively on U.S.-Israel defense ties, U.S. policy toward Iran, Syria, Iraq, Gaza, the Persian Gulf, the role of energy in U.S. national security policy, and the Eastern Mediterranean. He is also author of Churchill’s Promised Land (Yale University Press), a diplomatic-intellectual history of Winston Churchill’s complex relationship with Zionism. |