Transcript: Webinar – Operation Rising Lion: Insights from Israel’s 12-Day War Against Iran
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PANELISTS
Gen Charles Wald, USAF (ret.)
Former Deputy Commander, U.S. European Command; JINSA Distinguished Fellow
VADM Mark Fox, USN (ret.)
Former Deputy Commander, U.S. Central Command; 2018 JINSA Generals & Admirals Program Participant
LTG Robert Ashley, USA (ret.)
Former Director, U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency; 2021 JINSA Generals & Admirals Program Participant
Blaise Misztal
JINSA Vice President for Policy
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TRANSCRIPT
Please note quotations have been edited for flow and clarity.
Blaise Misztal:
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for this afternoon’s webinar. I’m Blaise Misztal, JINSA’s Vice President for Policy, and I’m delighted to be here releasing a report we’ve just put out, Operation Rising Lion: Insights from Israel’s 12-Day War. I’m honored to be joined by the report’s co-authors: General Chuck Wald, former Deputy Commander of European Command; Vice Admiral Mark Fox, former Deputy Commander of Central Command; and Lieutenant General Robert Ashley, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Good afternoon to you all, gentlemen.
As you know, Operation Rising Lion was Israel’s June campaign to target and degrade Iran’s air defenses; nuclear program; and ballistic-missile manufacturing and launch capabilities. Toward the end of the operation, the United States joined with its own effort, Operation Midnight Hammer. We’ve released this report today—which you can find on our website at JINSA.org—to provide new details about how the operation was planned and executed, its effects, and the lessons it offers the United States and Israel as we think about next steps after its success.
So let me turn first to you, General Wald. Maybe you can start by telling us a little bit about the report—its focus, and how we conducted the research behind it.
Gen Charles Wald, USAF (ret.)
Thanks, Blaise. Thanks for having me today. As you set it up at JINSA, the three of us—along with a retired Israeli general, one of their leading operational officers, and a couple of members from JINSA, yourself and John Hannah—went to Tel Aviv and spent a week there.
We were able to meet with all the senior leadership in the Israeli national-security apparatus. We met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his immediate staff, which was enlightening. We met with the Minister of Defense, the heads of Mossad and Shin Bet, and we also spoke with some of the operators who flew the missions and carried out air defense for Israel. It was very illuminating. We also visited one of the bases from which they launched some of the missions. And I’ll say this: they were very open. I’m sure they were careful in some of the details, but there weren’t many topics they wouldn’t discuss. It left us with a very positive impression. Reading about it is one thing, but listening to the people who planned it, executed it, and actually flew the missions—that’s something else. It was very impressive.
I think we all came away—I certainly did—with the impression that there’s probably no other U.S. ally that could have pulled this off. We’ll talk in detail about how they planned and executed it. But as you noted in the report, Blaise, the Israelis had been working toward this for 30 years. Over that time, Iran built what they call their “ring of fire”—proxies surrounding Israel, designed ultimately to attack and, in Ayatollah Khamenei’s own words, try to wipe Israel off the map. So, there was a lot in motion.
The precipitating event for Operation Rising Lion on June 13 was the Hamas attack against Israel out of Gaza. You’ve spoken about this yourself. That attack was a catalyst that pushed Israel to say, “We’ve got to get going on this.” Combined with the assessments from people like General Mark Milley and others that Iran was perhaps two to three months away from potentially building a nuclear weapon, there was a real sense of urgency. A lot came together at once—the 30-year buildup reached a kind of culmination point. Israeli forces took out elements of Hezbollah’s leadership. Hamas was under attack. The Syrian government fell precipitously, and that played a significant role in shaping the operation. Israel was also striking the Houthis, among others.
I think the Israelis shifted—and we’ll talk more about this—from focusing primarily on Iran’s nuclear capability to a more comprehensive campaign approach. They struck the proxies surrounding Israel to degrade their ability to support Iran, and then concentrated on three main target sets inside Iran: ballistic missiles, air defenses, and the nuclear program itself. All of that made a big difference. And the insights we gained were not only fascinating but very important for U.S. military planning as well. I’ll leave it there as a starting point.
Misztal
Thanks, General. Maybe I can turn to you next, Admiral Fox. As General Wald said, the events after October 7 made Israel rethink some of its plans for dealing with the Iranian threat. Can you elaborate on that a little more and tell us what we learned about how they planned—and when they planned—Operation Rising Lion?
VADM Mark Fox, USN (ret.)
Yeah, thanks, Blaise. I appreciate having the opportunity to work with you and JINSA. It’s really a remarkable set of circumstances that came together, as General Wald already mentioned.
So, the Iranian overall game plan had been: “We want to have proxies—Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis. We want to have ballistic-missile capability. And then, ultimately, a means of delivery of a nuke as well.” So, you have conventional missiles and then the nuclear program.
The context that Israeli DNA changed on October 7. The gentleman we talked to who was responsible, ultimately, for planning the campaign of Rising Lion told us as well—he said, “I’ve got to live with the fact that I was on watch. It was my responsibility on October 7, and we were caught by surprise.” Before, the Israeli mindset had been: this is a problem to be managed. “I’ll probably pass it off to the next guy. It’s something we’re just going to sort of have to deal with, and we’ll work our way as time goes by.” And, you know, Yahya Sinwar in Hamas didn’t coordinate his attack on October 7 with the Iranian supreme leader or anybody else.
After the Hamas attack on October 7—which was horrendous—there was a low-level kind of, you know… Hassan Nasrallah up in Lebanese Hezbollah had his mindset of a tit-for-tat. That’s the world he had lived in his entire life. We do something, they do something back. It’s kind of a back-and-forth. But none of the other pieces of this ring of fire came together. Iran didn’t double down. Neither did Lebanese Hezbollah. There was low-level activity up north. There were 100,000 Israelis who were evacuated from the northern part of Israel. But their DNA changed. And it went from: “We’re going to do some sort of a precision strike against just the nuclear program,” to: “This is going to turn into a campaign. And it’s more than just the nuclear program.”
Because, in fact, another growing threat was the Iranian capability of producing ballistic missiles. And it was clear. So as this kind of went back and forth, it was in the early part—on the first of April—the Israeli Defense Force killed an Iranian general, two Iranian generals, in the consulate in Damascus. That set off the Iranian launch, where, for the first time, on the 13th and 14th of April 2024, they actually launched missiles directly from Iran into Israel, or at Israel.
It was a very effective defense. There were very, very few—if any… there was some minor damage at some of the airfields. But this was the first time since 1991 that other nations had come together to defend Israel: France, the UK, Jordan. It was really remarkable. And there was no treaty; there was no… everybody just came together. The U.S., obviously.
And so now this set in motion—the Iranian attack was completely ineffective. And, as time goes on later, there’s the pager attack in September in Lebanon, and then Nasrallah in Lebanese Hezbollah was killed at the end of September. And then Iran launches another wave of ballistic missiles in October of 2024. And this is when Israel now comes back, and they took out the S-300s, and they were going after some other targets.
So there was this slow… actually, over time, it was relatively rapid, but it was hard to really appreciate what was going on until you were able to kind of look back at it. But the Israelis were realizing now that they were able to shape the battlespace. As General Wald just mentioned, in December of last year the Assad regime fell in Syria, and that opened up an airspace corridor straight to Tehran. So those are kind of the contexts of how we got there. And this campaign—it was put together and planned, and it evolved all the way up until the time they executed it in June.
A couple of key points to remember. One was the movement—or the administrative change—of Israel being part of the Central Command area of responsibility, CENTCOM, from EUCOM. It seems like just an administrative thing, but it gave the opportunity for CENTCOM and the Israeli Defense Force to truly work together. And it’s… I think it’s difficult to overstate how important that was. And it’s a good thing for going forward, especially as you look at how, after the Abraham Accords—and perhaps the Saudis will join in due course, if you listen to President Trump—but the regional integration, especially in defense terms, is something we’ve been working on for a very long time.
Misztal
Thanks, Admiral. General Wald, if I could come back to you quickly because you were also the Air Force Component Commander for Central Command during 9/11, and you planned the air war over Afghanistan immediately afterward. So what does it take to plan an air war—and to do something like Operation Rising Lion—in a matter of six months? It seems like the Israelis basically threw out the old plans and built a whole new campaign plan. How easy is that?
Gen Wald
It’s not easy. I mean, it takes a lot of work, and that’s a lot of shifting from the emphasis they put on the training and planning and all the previous effort they had put into this. So first of all, really, really impressive military officers, all the way from the operators to the intel to the leadership itself. I’m sure October 7 really focused them, but on the other hand, that’s a big shift. And it appears that, from what we could gather, the entire military was on board with this process.
In talking to some of the air chief, for example, in Israel, he was talking about the hours they had spent practicing and training in advance of this mission. You know, looking at the minutiae here, the pilots were flying all the time on four-and-a-half, five-hour missions, and sometimes twice a day. That’s 10 hours in the airplane. That doesn’t count getting ready and getting not ready at the end of this thing. So these are pretty long missions, arduous missions.
I think probably the most interesting part—which is the hardest part to talk about; we got into it a little bit, we can talk about most of it, but Bob Ashley can talk about this—is that the intelligence prep for this thing was magnificent. That had been going on for 30 years. It really, really was impressive what they did inside Iran, inside Lebanon, and other places to find out where the leadership was. And I think Bob’s going to talk about this in a minute, but just the application of the intelligence force in Israel was as good as I’ve ever seen. Matter of fact, the whole mission is as good as I’ve ever seen.
But to shift that—and there wasn’t any real practice of this. You don’t go out there and fly long-range missions to wherever it is to practice because of operational security. So, the first time they really flew this mission was the first time they really flew this mission. And then it’s complex when you start adding in that the United States came in toward the middle to the end of this thing. The fact that U.S. Air Force Central Command and the Israelis had officers both in the headquarters at Shaw Air Force Base for the U.S. and in Tel Aviv for the Israelis, that were coordinating in real time continuously, with the same air picture—which is unheard of—really shows, first of all, the professionalism and the commitment both Israel and the United States have on this.
But it is, as I’ve said before, and I’m sure many other people believe this, going to go down in history as one of the greatest operations ever.
Misztal
Thanks. So maybe, General Ashley, you could pick up on that segue General Wald gave you and talk a little bit first about the intelligence that Israel needed to be able to pull this off.
LTG Robert Ashley, USA (ret.)
Yeah, so this doesn’t happen overnight. And again, for Blaise and the JINSA team, really honored to be part of this, working with Gen. Wald, John Hannah, and Admiral Fox. It really was unprecedented access. Having been a career intel professional and having worked with Israelis since my time as the CENTCOM J2 in 2010, I’m not a stranger to their capabilities. And even having seen that over the period of the last 15 years, it’s still very impressive.
So, a little bit of the outcomes—and I’ll come back to the intel topic. Because, as we’ve talked about, okay, so you’ve done all these things, what have you achieved? And I think it’s fair to say there are strategic effects on the nuclear program, strategic effects on command and control, as well as on the missile program and air defenses. The interesting thing is, within the first couple of minutes, they were able to eliminate, for all intents and purposes, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Air Force commanders. And so, I’ve never been a big advocate of saying, you know, decapitation works. But when you decapitate an organization like the Iranian regime, given how centralized they are in their decision making, this has an exponential effect.
And so, the ability to take out the command and control across a number of services had a really deleterious effect on how the Ayatollah was able to execute his own decision making, and how he’s able to work through the process of determining what are the next actions that the Iranian regime are going to take. So I’ll come back to that in a minute. Like we said, 30 years getting ready to do this, probably a couple of weeks for the actual air work, because they were going through all the prep. But the other part of that was very deliberate, because they were desensitizing the Iranians to what exactly they were doing—or, you know, the key part, when you’re going to do it.
If you’re in the intelligence community, you deal a lot with indications and warning. And then the hard part is when. You can have indications and warning that something is about to happen, but there are really intractable pieces of when is this going to happen? And so it was kind of interesting that when the mission actually executed, one of the top commanders was so unprepared that the munitions struck his home, pinned him down, and he thought it was an earthquake. Now, if you’re not familiar with Iran, they have a lot of earthquakes. But the fact that he actually thought about that and attributed it as an earthquake is really rather interesting.
But just imagine: in the first four minutes of the campaign, you take out all the Iranian Guard Corps air commanders. That’s pretty impressive. The intelligence is something that they do probably better than anybody. Actually, my assessment is they’re peer with us, and in some ways—what they’re able to do on the human side of the house—they’re better. And so this has to develop over time, because you’re looking at the opportunity. Then things start getting more and more compressed.
What you really have to do is map out the air defense. That’s not a real dynamic target; it doesn’t move around a lot. You’ve got to map out the missile infrastructure, production facilities. Those aren’t moving. They do have mobile missiles, so that’s a problem too. And using solid fuel allows them the ability to do that, because they used to have liquid fuel, which meant you had to sit for a while and fuel it and it took time—it was a different signature. So that added a degree of complexity. But the real thing is looking at pattern of life of the leadership. And so one of the things we did over 20 years in Afghanistan and during the time that we were in Iraq, as well as the strike on Osama bin Laden, is the ability to layer intelligence—whether it’s human, signals intelligence, cyber—to penetrate and look at patterns of life of key leaders.
And so again, back to within the early hours—excuse me, within the early minutes—of the strike, you’ve taken out much of the senior leaders from the defense establishment, and you’ve taken out a number of the nuclear scientists. In total, the rough number we have was probably around 30 in terms of who they were able to eliminate.
The other key part of this is the performance of the F-35. Hands down, the Israelis said this is an indispensable item for us in our inventory. And not only is it a fifth-generation fighter, it’s a fifth-generation fighter that was able to integrate with the drones that were providing targeting. That would come back, it operated much like a battle command system, like an AWACS platform, and it was able to hand off targets and move the other fourth-generation aircraft—they have F-16s, F-15s—to engage targets.
And so, the battle management of the F-35 was really impressive to hear about. And when you look at it, this is a U.S. platform, but the nation that has flown more combat hours in the F-35 is the Israelis.
One of the vulnerabilities we did discover is air refueling. And that is an absolutely critical capability when you look at the distance that’s involved to go from Tel Aviv, or wherever the airfield was in Israel, to wherever you were going to strike in western Iran. So that was a key piece, and we’ll come back to that in some of the recommendations.
But it’s kind of interesting that you have these older-generation refuelers, and you have fighter pilots saying, “You know, I actually felt more safe on the fighter mission than some of those guys that had to fly around with the refuelers.” We’ll talk a little bit about what’s damaged and what’s destroyed. Large parts of—probably more than half of—the Iranian launchers for the missile capabilities were destroyed within the two weeks.
As far as the nuclear program, when you look at doctrinal terms, you talk about something that’s degraded, destroyed, or damaged. So, we’ll talk about damaged and destroyed. If it’s destroyed, there’s no operational capability there. If it’s damaged, there’s some residual capability. Part of why they assessed Fordow—which is where the B-2 struck—as damaged is much like the Iranians: they are still digging into the mission space, trying to find out the magnitude of the damage. But if you look at the conversion facility, the enrichment at Natanz and Isfahan, those were assessed as being destroyed. Fordow, because of the deep mission space, as best they could determine, was being estimated as damaged. That’s what we got from the Israelis in terms of the details of that. So clearly, more information is going to be coming out as we get a better sense of that.
And then the other thing is, they still possess about 400 kilograms of the 60 percent highly enriched uranium. What we don’t know—and they didn’t disclose whether they have discerned this over the course of, you know, from June till November till now—is the location. And the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been on the ground, has not been able to get access. They are unsure where that is. The Israelis did not disclose that to us as well. So, I think that may still be a due-out, but they may have closed that intel gap in the interim.
The other part is the psychological effect. So, I alluded to the fact that you have the Supreme Leader with this tier of leaders, his seniors, that he has been working with for years and has trust in—and that’s a big thing. They’ve all been eliminated. And so, part of what they relayed to us from the meetings we had was a level of depression and inability to make decisions after the beginning of the war and the impact that took place.
The other thing they relayed to us was that the intent was not to engage in regime change, but really to break their spirit. So just imagine, if you have the military leadership that’s telling the Ayatollah that Israel is not a threat, “We can deal with any of these things that come in,” and then this all falls apart where the Ayatollah is. And so, the other part of that is, when you really think of regime change—and we can go into this in the Q&A—this is really something that is up to the Iranian people. And you know, this strike, it’s the regime, not the Iranian people. Much like we talk about a lot of our adversaries: not the Russian people, but the leadership; or China, for the same.
They are taking some steps to reconstitute. There are some early signs of rebuilding in missile defense. China provides precursor, dual-use chemicals that allow them to do the fuel for the solid-rocket missiles, and there’s some work on some of the nuclear sites. So that is ongoing. As far as the missiles themselves, probably about a 60 percent degrading in the capacity of what they had.
And then the last thing is—and Admiral Fox talked about this—which is really the proxies. And so, significant degradation to Hamas, to Hezbollah. You get Ahmed al-Sharaa in Syria that handles some of the issues there. You have opportunity created by the departure of Assad. But one of the things that remains a thorn in everybody’s side is the Houthis. And one of the things the Israelis told us is they were going to be very deliberate in their prosecution of the Houthi leadership and trying to determine, what’s the real center of gravity? Because that’s been a challenge for not only the Israelis but for the U.S. as well. And so that is a work in progress.
So, lots we can talk about as we get into the Q&A. But Blaise, back to you.
Misztal
Thanks, General. Admiral Fox, maybe I could turn to you quickly to talk a little bit more about the timing of Operation Rising Lion. You mentioned the urgency in terms of both the nuclear and ballistic-missile advances Iran was making. But there has been some debate here—reporting in the U.S. saying, “Well, maybe Israel wanted to go earlier, but they were stopped by the United States.”
Maybe you could talk a little bit about what we heard from the Israelis about why they went when they did, or when they wanted to go, but also about why the operation ended when it did, and if that was also something of their choosing or not.
VADM Fox
Thanks, Blaise. Well, one point is that President Trump had come out and announced to the Iranian leadership, essentially saying, “Okay, it’s time for you now to step up and basically give up this capability. I’ll give you 60 days.”
The Israelis that we talked to didn’t necessarily or specifically key in on that. But as it turns out, the beginning of Operation Rising Lion occurred on the 61st day. The other thing, in Israeli circles, there was a concern of: what if the Iranians try to flood our defenses before we’re really capable of executing this campaign? So, they had a sense of urgency as the campaign approached. They also weren’t explicit, but they were developing capabilities right up until the very last minute. I’m not sure if it was weapons, if it was cyber, but this all came together very, very rapidly right at the very end. And as General Wald had mentioned, you don’t just go out there with a huge package, do a thousand-mile strike, and turn around and come back without somebody noticing. So, they flew this the way they had planned it, but they hadn’t done a whole lot of exercising, per se.
The other piece of this: when the Syrian regime fell in December—and the Israelis didn’t take any credit for the fall of the Assad regime; it just so happened that was when the rebels had pushed all the way into Damascus—the Israelis went ahead and said, “Okay, well, we’re going to eliminate any air-defense capability that’s in Syria.” There were no Syrian air-defense people left from the Assad regime, but just to make sure, they went ahead and knocked out all of the air-defense capability that was kind of residual.
And then they established air superiority over Tehran. They had UAVs, they had long-range strike, and for 12 days they established air superiority with real-time targeting. To kind of echo a bit of the importance of the F-35, it’s just this incredible sensor that soaks up electrons and talks to the other F-35s and then can triangulate and say, “Here is weapons-quality coordinates of where that emitter is.”
All of the Israeli aircrew that we talked to were basically: “Don’t leave home without an F-35,” because they are the ones that can give you real-time information. And they were, as earlier said, kind of the quarterback of all of this. So, it evolved and was developed, I think, all the way up until they walked out to the airplanes. And as has already been mentioned, it was an impressive military operation. They were tanking off of 60-year-old Boeing 747s called RAM, which held up pretty well. But they needed the gas in the air over Syria, and they went all the way to and from Israel—to and from Tehran—with incredible capabilities and results.
It’s just really hard, having done this before in the Great Scud Hunt of 1991 or the opening strike of Iraqi Freedom in 2003—this is an entire new level of capability and operational excellence.
Misztal
Thank you. General Ashley, you wanted to jump in?
LTG Ashley
Yeah, a couple of points, Blaise, thanks. One is the timing. So earlier in the year, again, given their sheer prowess with their intelligence capabilities, they became witting of some efforts that were tied into looking at a couple different options for how to build a weapon—whether that was a fusion or fission course of action. As they became witting, something was much more tangible than speculation or designs or taking 60 percent. It was actually work being done. The fatwa has not been rescinded from 2003, where the Ayatollah says a nuclear weapon is un-Islamic. There is a small team that’s doing that, and the Israelis become witting of that. So that’s another accelerant to why they were going to strike as quickly as they did.
The other part is, we talk about the missile program, but it was about to go on an industrial footing, where they were going to significantly increase the number of missiles in production—back to General Wald and Admiral Fox’s comments—to get to such a level of capacity that it could overwhelm the layered air defenses, which include U.S. capabilities that are able to defend Israel. And we can talk a little bit about some of that layered defense as well.
Misztal
Thank you. So General Wald, maybe I could ask you where we go from here. We’ve had this tremendous Israeli operational success—and U.S. success as well with Midnight Hammer—that achieved strategic effects, but Iran still retains some capabilities and is trying to reconstitute others. So how do we build on the successes of Rising Lion, and what lessons do we learn from it?
Gen Wald
Yeah, I think the big lesson learned is that this is not a one-and-done deal. The Iranians have demonstrated—at least the leadership, the Ayatollah—that his goal in life is to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth. And so, they won’t stop. Part of the reason Rising Lion occurred the way it did is because of, as was just talked about by General Ashley, this increase in ballistic-missile development capability and, previous to that, the introduction of high-end air-defense capabilities. Unfortunately, those hadn’t been taken out earlier. Those three things, added to the fact that Iran, in my estimation, hasn’t given up on the idea of building a nuclear weapon at some point—and that they want to get rid of Israel.
I think the first thing we need to do is continue to plan together as allies, primarily the United States and Israel. You really have to give a lot of credit to General Mike Kurilla and now Admiral Brad Cooper for the involvement of CENTCOM, and we can talk about that a little bit later, but that’s not a trivial issue. The United States helped with the planning; they were involved in the execution itself, as we talked about a little bit earlier. From an integrated air-defense standpoint, we recommend that that continues to grow—not only that, maybe expand into the other Gulf Cooperation Council countries if possible. That would be a good thing. We need to do more joint research and development of future weapon systems. The Iron Beam that was alluded to—the laser weapon—for a lot of reasons is really important. It’ll be important to us if we ever get Golden Dome in the United States.
I think we need to stay on the offensive. I mean, I sound like a warmonger, and I know we talked about this a little bit on the trip, but I think somebody—maybe Admiral Fox—mentioned earlier that the previous strategy for Israel in Gaza was called “mowing the lawn.” That’s kind of: when it started to get too threatening, they’d take care of part of it and then let it settle back into where it was. I don’t think that’s a good philosophy for Iran.
So, they’ve really got to watch closely as Iran tries to develop more ballistic-missile capability, tries to restore their air-defense capability, and continues to go after nukes. And as General Ashley alluded to, we’re not sure what the talent level is below the initial high-level nuclear scientists and engineers who were killed. But you can always buy nuclear capability from other countries. We’ve seen that with Pakistan in the past, and who knows what North Korea would do. So, I think we’re going to keep a close eye on that. The intel collection—we could talk about that for hours—but I don’t think we could do much better than what happened. I think they need to continue apace there.
I think the future capabilities for Israel need to continue to be improved and modernized. Admiral Fox mentioned the KC-135/Boeing 707 “RAM.” The Israelis have had. KC-46s are on order; it’s been slow coming. They’re going to get those, but they need them. By the way, the B-2s refueled off the Israeli aircraft refuelers as well—they don’t get in there round trip without refueling. Matter of fact, when we did Afghanistan in 2001, it took six refuelings for the bombers to complete the mission. So they actually benefited big time too from the refuelers. And it would benefit us to have that kind of capability.
We’ve talked about this in JINSA before, but we’re highly recommending that the United States establish a base—maybe more than one—of primarily air capabilities, but also air-defense capabilities, in Israel. I think it’s time for that to happen. They’ve had plans for that in the past; they’ve never executed it. We think it’s time for that.
We think the regional cooperation—there’s a lot going on this week, we talked about it earlier today with the potential F-35 sales to Saudi Arabia—but having a more regional, integrated air-defense capability, I think, is important. I think Brad Cooper will work on that; Kurilla started it. And then I think we need to block access to global markets more for Iran. That’s more of a diplomatic issue, but it’s important that we watch and stop the replenishment of things in Iran: where they get their capability to develop a nuclear weapon, where they get their raw materials for that, where they get their knowledge for that, and how they can reconstitute their air-defense capability. That’s going to be very significant. We need to watch that. If I were the Israelis and I saw them put up a new S-300 system, I’d go after it.
But those are our primary recommendations.
Misztal
Thanks, General. So let me say that we’re happy to take questions from the audience. If you have anything you want to ask any of the panelists, please type it into the Q&A feature in Zoom, and I’ll read it out.
In the meantime, maybe I could ask all three of you: what did we hear during our trip that either most surprised you, most impressed you, or most stood out to you about Israel’s Operation Rising Lion?
Gen Wald
I can start on that, sure. I think two things really struck me. One is—and General Ashley talked about this a minute ago—the human intelligence they had inside Iran, down to where the leadership was. That was … I mean, that’s—and General Ashley can talk about this, that’s his profession—but that, to me, was something that’s going to be a movie in itself.
And just the fact that they flew, you know, I don’t know, 2,000 sorties or so, and over a thousand miles on these sorties, with all types of aircraft—some very old, some very new—and didn’t have one glitch, didn’t have one abort, didn’t have one aircraft crash, didn’t have anybody shot down. That is overwhelming. It’s got to bother the Iranians a lot that they’re that weak, but it’s primarily that the Israelis are that good.
VADM Fox
I would just add on. They were very, very—they were much more effective offensively, I think, than anybody would have expected at that range, over that duration, to create essentially air superiority—air supremacy, in some cases—over Tehran. And they were much better defensively, writ large, in terms of being able to handle the large numbers of ballistic missiles and drones and land-attack cruise missiles and so forth that were launched against them. So, they were better offensively; they were very, very good defensively.
The other thing that really impressed me was how critical the American election was, right in the middle of this 2024 period of time. When the new administration was announced—and it’s coming back to the Trump administration—there was a change in terms of Israel’s awareness of what they thought they would be able to get a green light for from the U.S. administration. And that was very evident. They understood that they were kind of limited in ways if the U.S. wouldn’t support them. And there was a green light that was given pretty late in the game of the 12-day campaign for the B-2 strikes. But they were going forward, and they knew: if they were successful, then that would incentivize or create more appetite to say, “Yeah, they really are on their game, and it’s something that should be supported.”
Finally, there’s a new level of U.S. credibility in the region in terms of our backing up what we say. We’ve had four presidents in a row who have said Iran must not have a nuclear weapon, and we took definitive action with Midnight Hammer to make that true.
Misztal
General Ashley?
LTG Ashely
I’m trying to remember all three of these, but back to General Wald on intelligence. It is one thing, in real time, to track a single high-value target. Imagine tracking about 30. Matter of fact, they even had one of the targets move during flight, en route, and they were able to reacquire the target and take it out. So, it’s one thing to do it for one high-value individual; it’s incredible to do it across 30. The other part is allies and partners. This is a close relationship that we maintain going back to 1948 and the birth of Israel. And because it’s a close relationship—because we train together, because we have an incredibly robust intelligence-sharing relationship—there wasn’t a whole lot of learning that had to happen, and there weren’t relationships that had to be built, because they were already there. Matter of fact, I can’t remember what the phrase was—we put it in the paper—but something about “brothers in combat,” or something along those lines, that kind of highlighted that.
And the last part is—I think this was a point the Israelis made—you know, there’s been this discussion of the pivot to the Pacific, pivot to the Pacific. And, you know, is this because you’ve had two problematic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so now you’re just kind of abandoning the area? And the Israelis made the comment that, depending on the degree to which the U.S. wants to reinvest in other parts of the world, they do it from a position of strength now, based on the commitments that they made. And I think that’s important.
And the last piece was in the recommendations, where General Wald said: if you go back and look at some of the congressional language—it came out in 2024, I think—it’s the DISRUPT Act. And so we realize we have to look at the national instruments of power—diplomatic, information, military, and economic—and think about what it means to see the collusion of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. But also look at how we go after them across the national instruments of power. And part of that is making sure there are economic blockades as well as we move forward.
Misztal
I think that phrase was “partners in peace, brothers in war,” General. I think that was a patch we saw the air-defense commander wearing, with Israeli and U.S. flags on it, symbolizing the partnership they had during the war.
We have a question asking: Did you address how the Israelis degraded Iran’s drone capabilities? Also, how many strikes do you believe Israel executed during the 12-day war?
Gen Wald
I mean, I think on the strikes—Blaise, I may be wrong—but I think what we heard from them is they had about 2,000 strikes total. And from a drone standpoint—this goes back to what Admiral Fox was talking about earlier—the UAVs were detected by a lot of things. I mean, the Israelis have great air defense, but most of them didn’t get into that airspace. But from the standpoint of the F-35 picking them up—the F-35, just like Bob mentioned, is like a mini-AWACS with a whole bunch of combat capability. And there’s a whole bunch of F-35s, and they were able to detect drones at low level against ground clutter. The other aircraft—F-16s and F-15s—are good radars as well. But they pretty much defanged their drone capability.
On the other hand, the Israelis really maximized their capability. And the drones, from a loiter standpoint, really helped out with finding targets in real time, helping with the intelligence, helping with the targeting. So having drones is one thing—but knowing how to use them, and being capable, is another. The Israelis were capable. The Iranians didn’t seem to be very capable.
LTG Ashley
Yeah, because one of the things—coming from a doctrinal standpoint—is manned–unmanned teaming. And this is, you know, kind of a fledgling demonstration of that capability.
VADM Fox
One point—we were having a discussion about the expense of an intercept missile or vehicle versus a low-cost drone. We learned that they actually used Apaches airborne, using their 30-millimeter cannon in an air-to-air fashion to eliminate slow-moving drones. So, it wasn’t always a high-end solution. It was basically using a helicopter to shoot down a relatively slow moving drone.
LTG Ashley
Yeah—I’m glad you mentioned that. I think overall they took out about 86 or 87 percent of everything that was launched against them, and I think it was almost 100 percent on the drones.
Misztal
One hundred percent of the drones, yeah. And I think what we saw was that the drones really only featured most heavily in that first 24-hour period right after the opening strikes, when the Iranians weren’t able to muster any ballistic-missile response at first. All they were able to do was launch these drones—of which, I think, 99 percent were eliminated by the Israelis.
And then, I think, largely for the rest of the conflict, drones weren’t really a threat the Israelis talked much about, because they thought they had it mostly under control. They were also able, with their own drones and persistent ISR, to hunt and find most of the capabilities inside Iran and prevent further launches.
LTG Ashley
Since General Wald and Admiral Fox are fighter pilots—I think one of the things you found interesting was: they started to make sure the airfields were not usable, because they were afraid the Israelis were going to come in and land on the airfields. And the other is, when the Iranian aircraft scrambled, they flew east—away from the Israeli fighters. They didn’t engage at all.
Misztal
A follow-up question to that is: did we get any insights into how the Israelis conducted airborne C2 across these enormous distances?
Gen Wald
Well, I mean, I think the answer—and Bob can talk about this too—but the F-35 … First of all, they had a very well-manned and highly talented Combined Air Operations Center [CAOC], and that was augmented by U.S. forces as well. And the air pictures between the Israelis and the United States were shared in real time—which I’ve never heard of anywhere. Over the last several years, the U.S. military has worked very hard on integrated air defense and combined air operations. And that lesson was not lost on anybody. CENTCOM, I’m sure, was a big part of helping the Israelis with that over time, to the point where they’re now really capable.
And all the different sensors that are on these aircraft—the F-35 alone, each aircraft has 25 million lines of code. I mean, it’s a flying A-1 platform, as they would say in the Department of Education. But it’s very impressive. They train together. The pictures are highly sophisticated, using all different types of space assets and anything airborne, and it’s integrated. Unless you see it, you can’t appreciate it.
Gen Ashely
Yeah, I mean, the CAOC operations are just phenomenal. And the other part of that is: one of the key things you do with coalition partners is you forward-deploy LNOs [liaison officers]. And so, you have LNOs at the CAOC in Al Udeid in Qatar; you have LNOs in Tampa, Florida. And so, you have real-time situational awareness across all the domains where you’re operating. That was integral, and it was demonstrated. But to General Wald’s point: unless you’ve actually seen an air picture—oh my gosh. I don’t know how they manage all that. It’s amazing.
Gen Wald
Yeah, no, I would add to that: I guarantee you, the Iranians have nothing like that. There’s just nothing.
VAMD Fox
I was also struck: there is no such thing as a single-mission-capable airplane in the Israeli Air Force. They were using F-15Cs—which are traditionally, in our vernacular, pure air-to-air—to deliver ordnance, no doubt JDAMs [joint direct attack munition] or some sort of precision weapons. But I was very … you know, everything is a multi-task, multi-capable platform.
LTG Ashley
And then the other part—which I’d ask our pilots to talk about—is: everybody loves the movie Maverick. So, he’s not obsolete yet, and neither are Israeli pilots, because that’s a big differentiator as you look at selling F-35s to other nations.
Gen Wald
There’s no doubt about it. The Israelis … they tell a story about the early days of Lebanon—I can’t remember which war it was—one of the early wars where they were flying over the Beqaa Valley. And the Lebanese were so afraid of the Israeli pilots, they’d eject before they even came in contact with them. And I think the kill ratio on that one was something like 90 to nothing. Meritocracy is a big word in the Israeli Air Force and military writ large.
Misztal
And just on the C2 question really quickly—in addition to the capabilities of the F-35—my understanding is the Israelis do have an AWACS-like platform that they were flying, not in Iranian airspace but nearby, that aided with that as well.
The next question we have is whether the U.S. should try to take Iran’s leadership out.
Gen Wald
You mean, what’s left of it? Indeed. Unless you’re talking about taking out the leadership at the top level—I would leave that to the politicians.
LTG Ashley
Yeah. Part of when we talk about regime change as a topic—and they made the comment about breaking spirits—it is possible to try to create conditions that make such regimes fragile. But ultimately, the decision for who’s going to run Iran is going to be with the Iranian people.
You can see the level of pressure now. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is reaching out through the Saudis—it was in the press in the last 24 hours—that he would like to get back to the negotiating table with the Americans. So, the Iranians feel pressurized. The question is the degree to which the Iranian people feel this is an opportunity for them in the coming months and years.
Misztal
Maybe we can just touch on a slightly broader piece of this that seems to be emerging—which is Iran not just as a regional threat, but as part of a broader global network. I’ve been to Israel a lot. I’ve heard a lot of Americans talk to the Israelis about “China, China, China.” This was the first time I heard Israelis talking to Americans about “China, China, China”—and their concerns that the Chinese are going to help the Iranians rebuild and reconstitute. We’ve already seen reports that some precursor chemicals for solid fuel for ballistic missiles have been shipped from China to Iran.
How does Iran figure into the broader global challenges facing the United States, and how do we deal with that relationship with China? Any thoughts?
Gen Wald
I’ll let the other guys talk about this, but I just want to make one comment: the activity led by the Israelis—and added to by the U.S.—has really thrown a loop into China, Russia, and North Korea, for that matter, from the standpoint of capabilities. So I think the near-term effect is going to be a big deterrence for us, the United States, that we gain from this—from the standpoint of Western capabilities, if you want to call it that.
I think the Chinese are already trying to help the Iranians. I think the Russians already have—whether they’ve got enough assets to help them anymore, I don’t know. What worries me is the Pakistan nuke scenario, where somebody gives the Iranians the capability to get to an end state. I’d leave that up to Bob and Mark. But I think the near-term effect is going to be a deterrent effect. I think it’s going to put a lot of pause into both the Russians, Chinese, and the Iranians—of course—and North Koreans for that matter. There’ll be some scrambling, but I’m not sure what I can predict will happen.
VADM Fox
I think China is an issue we’re going to have to work very hard on. If you look after Desert Storm—what was the Chinese lesson learned? “Holy smokes.” And then the 1990s, where we had a couple of carrier battle groups go over there, and they were incapable of doing anything. That spurred them into the ballistic-ship-missile program. So over long periods of time, we’re going to have to deal with China as the peer they’ve become. And it’s pretty impressive to see what they’ve done. We need to figure out a way to make the Chinese believe that it’s not in their best national interest to help support the Iranians. But the Iranians have oil that China wants. So this is—as Bob said—diplomatic, intelligence, military, economic. It’s the whole of government—with a “W”—that has to work toward that end.
Gen Wald
You know, I agree with that. I think the other thing we all took away—I did, for sure—is that our industrial base needs to crank up. There’s not that many weapons. Our THAAD inventory—one quarter of it—was used in the defense of Israel. Ammunition writ large—we need to put more pre-positioned munitions in the theater, and we need to start building things faster. I think this would be a motivator for that.
LTG Ashley
Yeah, the Chinese lead economically, and that’s where their principal interest is in the Middle East. It’s not as much military as it is economic. It’s an opportunity to sell munitions and weapon systems.
But I think probably about 20 percent of Iranian oil goes out of the Gulf toward China. So that is something they don’t want to see broken. But if you look at whether it was a meaningful relationship—whether the Chinese and Russians came to the aid of the Iranians—no, they didn’t. Clearly, the Russians are preoccupied, and the Chinese are also looking to have markets and availability across the Gulf Cooperation Council states and close relationships with the Saudis and others.
So our leverage and interest with the relationship with China is global. We have to look at dynamics not only regionally but globally, and where we have leverage—or where we can align—to get them not to provide either reduced materials, or replenish air-defense systems, or provide hardware that may be problematic for the Israelis. The other thing we didn’t talk about—which is a point of friction for the Israelis—is the relationship with Turkey as it relates to regional issues and Syria proper. Clearly, the Israelis are not looking for the Turks to have any kind of military presence in Syria, although they’re looking to court the new president, and they’d like to minimize whatever Russia keeps in place along the coastline.
Misztal
Well, maybe we can end with not a question, but a comment from one of our audience members. Jack Craft says: “As a Jewish American and a Citadel graduate, I want to thank each of you for your service to our country and your service to JINSA, as well as being supporters of Israel.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. General Wald, General Ashley, Admiral Fox—thank you so much for helping spearhead this report. Thank you to our audience. I’d encourage you to go to JINSA.org to read all about Operation Rising Lion and the insights and lessons that we’ve gathered from it. And thank you, and have a good afternoon, everyone.