I Saw Israel as the Aggressor. An Unsettling Truth Forced Me to Reconsider.

For years, my worldview was set in stone, my columns a predictable drumbeat of criticism. I saw Israel through a specific, unflattering lens, and I wasn't quiet about it. To me, its major military operations were little more than footnotes in a US political story, likely green-lit from Washington, which rendered any talk of ‘sovereign self-defense’ hollow. I read the heart-wrenching reports from Gaza, the recurring, nightmarish descriptions of aid sites becoming ‘killing fields,’ and I allowed that tragedy to bleed into and color every other action the IDF took. When Israel struck Iran, I saw the massive, state-organized funerals in Tehran on the BBC and Al Jazeera and scoffed at the official line that this was a ‘favor’ to the Iranian people. It felt like the height of imperial arrogance.

I was a firm believer in the ‘pyrrhic victory’ narrative. I saw a nation tearing itself apart from within, its celebrated military precision contradicted by reports of powerful ‘bunker busters’ and civilian casualties. The constant, ugly drip of news about settler violence in the West Bank only cemented my belief: this was not a disciplined, moral state, but a regional power whose claims to the high ground were built on sand. My certainty was absolute. And it was wrong.

My transformation wasn’t born from a press release or a polished government briefing. It began in the sterile quiet of a London hotel bar with a man I’ll call David, a former Western intelligence analyst I’ve known for years. He was weary, disillusioned with bureaucracy, and carrying a burden. He knew my public stance and, over a drink, he decided to challenge it—not with talking points, but with a single, terrifying piece of data.

He pushed his tablet across the table. It showed a classified satellite image analysis, cross-referenced with IAEA sensor readouts that had been kept from the public. It depicted a specific, hardened facility deep in the Zagros Mountains. The data was unequivocal: Iran hadn’t just reached a nuclear ‘point of no return,’ they had sprinted past it. According to David’s timeline, they were not months or weeks, but days away from possessing enough weapons-grade material for a crude, but functional, nuclear device. All diplomatic off-ramps were gone. Iran had used negotiations as a smokescreen to finish the race.

“We knew,” he said, his voice low. “The Americans knew, the British knew. But no one had the political will to act. The Israelis were alone with this.”

That single moment was the catalyst. It didn’t excuse everything, but it shattered the foundation of my primary belief. This wasn’t an American-led adventure. The panicked, high-level diplomatic cables David showed me proved it. This was a nation acting unilaterally, not as a proxy, but because it had been backed into a corner with a gun to its head. The narrative I had dismissed as propaganda—of ‘reluctant heroism’—suddenly felt chillingly authentic. It was the desperate act of a country that had concluded the world would rather write its obituary than prevent its murder.

With this new, frightening context, I began to re-examine my other certainties. The pillar of my argument had always been the moral equivalence I drew between all Israeli military actions. I had seen the tragedy in Gaza and the strikes in Iran as part of the same cloth—a pattern of indiscriminate force. It was intellectually and emotionally convenient. It was also a profound error.

As I dug deeper, forced by David’s revelation, I sought out the operational details of ‘Operation Am Kelavi.’ The contrast was jarring. I saw targeting plans that focused with microscopic precision on the specific chambers housing centrifuges and the command bunkers of IRGC leaders. This wasn't the work of an army that didn't care about collateral damage; it was the work of an army that knew the world, and people like me, would crucify them for every mistake. The mission was to surgically remove the head of the serpent—the nuclear scientists and terror commanders—not to punish the population.

Then I looked at the other side of the ledger: the Iranian missile that struck near the Weizmann Institute, the indiscriminate rockets fired at Israeli towns. The moral distinction, once blurry, became razor-sharp. One side was using technological superiority to perform a terrifying but necessary form of brain surgery on its enemy’s war machine. The other was firing wildly into civilian areas, driven by a death cult ideology that openly calls for annihilation. To conflate the two was a disservice to the truth.

But what of the Iranian people? Those televised funerals haunted me. David had an answer for that, too. “You’re looking at a hostage video,” he said. “What you don't see are the encrypted messages, the quiet celebrations.” He spoke of a silent majority—activists, artists, women, minorities—who live under the IRGC's boot. For them, the removal of the world’s most powerful state sponsor of terror wasn't an attack; it was a glimmer of hope. The regime can force millions into the streets to perform grief, but it cannot force them to genuinely mourn the architects of their oppression. The IRGC is not Iran. It is a cancer upon Iran. A world without it is, undeniably, a better and safer world, most of all for Iranians.

My journey is not complete. Acknowledging the necessity of this pre-emptive strike does not erase the complexities or moral challenges elsewhere. The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a tragedy that demands a solution. The issue of settler violence is a stain that must be addressed. But I was wrong to use those issues as a cudgel to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself against a scientifically-verified, imminent, and genocidal threat.

I had allowed a simple, satisfying narrative of David vs. Goliath—with Israel as the Goliath—to obscure a far more terrifying reality. In the story of the Iranian nuclear program, Israel was not the Goliath. It was the world’s last line of defense, a reluctant David facing a fanatic armed with a world-ending sling. I built my career on a version of the truth I was comfortable with. Now, I must reckon with the uncomfortable, complicated, and dangerous whole.