The State of Israel changed Middle East history Friday morning when it launched a massive campaign to cripple Iran’s nuclear program. Israel launched hundreds of strikes using drones and fighter jets to take out enrichment facilities, nuclear scientists, Revolutionary Guard leadership and launch sites. Operation Rising Lion is the first confirmed attack on Iranian nuclear sites by Israeli aircraft. A nuclear Iran is a threat to the world, but only tiny Israel has shown the resolve to confront the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu informed both United States President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz of his impending attack on Iran prior to the strikes, but the rest of the world was caught completely off guard. The strikes killed Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, along with five other senior military commanders and nine nuclear scientists.

After the Iranian nuclear threat was neutralized by the element of surprise, Prime Minister Netanyahu explained Israel’s actions to the world. He said in a televised address on Friday:

Moments ago, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival. For decades, the tyrants of Tehran have brazenly, openly called for Israel’s destruction. They backed up their genocidal rhetoric with a program to develop nuclear weapons. In recent years, Iran has produced enough highly enriched uranium for nine atom bombs. In recent months, Iran has taken steps that it has never taken before, steps to weaponize this enriched uranium. And if not stopped, Iran could produce a weapon in a very short time. … Eighty years ago, the Jewish people were the victims of a Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime. Today, the Jewish state refuses to be the victim of a nuclear holocaust perpetrated by the Iranian regime.

Netanyahu’s speech was reminiscent of Sir Winston Churchill. At a time when other world leaders called for appeasement, dialogue and negotiation, he boldly warned that only force could dissuade a genocidal regime from carrying out its evil plans. In the lead-up to World War ii, the Jews did nothing to stop Adolf Hitler until it was too late. Netanyahu is not about to repeat their mistakes. He is acting while there is still time.

“When enemies vow to destroy you, believe them,” he continued. “When enemies build weapons of mass death, stop them. … We have risen like lions to defend ourselves. Over 3,000 years ago, Moses gave the people of Israel a message that has steeled their resolve ever since: ‘Be strong and courageous.’”

The prime minister then quoted Numbers 23:24: “Behold, the people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion: he shall not lie down until he eat of the prey, and drink the blood of the slain.”

This prophecy was uttered before God granted Israel a great military victory over the Midianites, but it is also an end-time prophecy about the Messiah’s return. The very next chapter of the Bible reads, “I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth. And Edon shall be a possession, Seir also shall be a possession for his enemies; and Israel shall do valiantly. Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion, and shall destroy him that remaineth of the city” (Numbers 24:17-19).

This prophecy is about a time when Jesus Christ will return to defeat Israel’s enemies and sit on the throne of David forever (Isaiah 9:7). Jesus is the Star out of Jacob, the Scepter out of Israel, and the Lion of Judah.

Yet the rest of the tribe of Judah also has lionlike characteristics. So it is not surprising to see Netanyahu acting with lionlike courage to forestall the nuclear holocaust Iran has planned.

“The Jewish nation was born and sustained by godly miracles,” my father, Gerald Flurry, wrote in his 2008 Trumpet article “Israel: When the Miracle Victories Ended.” “But it still refuses to trust God! … Israel has taken on the same mentality of weakness and trusting in men in its dealings with the Palestinians living in Israel. The Jews continue to give land for empty promises of peace. And the miracles have ended. It started in 1993 on the White House lawn with a handshake between the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat—the number one terrorist in the world at that time!”

President Trump is still under the spell of “peace derangement syndrome”—the dangerous belief that anything can be solved with dialogue. That is not how Jesus thinks. When the real Lion of Judah returns to deal with the tyrants of Tehran, He will “rise up as a great lion” and “shall not lie down until he eat of the prey, and drink the blood of the slain.” The Messiah’s rule shall be one of peace through strength.

In Genesis 49:8-12, the patriarch Israel describes his son Judah as a lion. He then prophesies that the scepter shall not depart from Judah until the Messiah, who is also a Jew, returns to take it up. This is a prophecy that should fill the Jewish people with hope. The tyrants of Tehran want to “wipe Israel off the map,” and the Messiah has not yet returned—yet God promises that the Jewish people will survive until He comes.

Courageous, lionlike leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu are God’s instruments to ensure the Jewish people survive until the day when the 12 tribes are regathered in Jerusalem under the Messiah’s rule.