August 10, 2025: Even before Israel became a nation, Jews in the region had fought to exist. The World War II German effort to exterminate all European Jews failed, but did kill six million Jews and six million other Europeans. The Jewish response was to redouble their efforts to establish a Jewish state, which they did in 1948. But their neighbors continued attacking, as they have done for thousands of years. All the attackers got out of it was a respite from attacking each other. Currently the only ones still attacking Israel are Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, two Moslem terror groups, plus the Moslem Shia rebel Houtis of Yemen. Shia Iran continues to attack Sunni Moslems as well as Israelis. What frustrates Israel’s attackers the most is that tiny Israel continues to defeat far larger or far more desperate antagonists.

This includes Israeli treatment of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians proclaim that Israel has no right to exist, must be destroyed and all Jews expelled from the region. These attitudes are expressed in Palestinian newspapers, TV interviews and public meetings with Palestinian audiences. What is said at these meetings has been recorded and reported in some media worldwide. Nations hostile to Israel ignore these media events and pretend they never happened. Currently 143 nations support the currently non-existent Palestine becoming a full member of the UN. Fifteen nations, including non-Moslem China, South Africa and Venezuela support Palestine becoming a state and accuse Israel of war crimes for indiscriminate attacks on civilians despite the fact, that is rarely reported by eyewitnesses, that Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields in an effort to get close enough to Israeli soldiers to attack them.

Meanwhile there is little criticism of attacks on Israelis, who are supposed to accept such violence as justified violence against Jews for being Jews. In short, many nations support the elimination of Israel and reject any criticism of this attitude. Meanwhile, the Israelis continue to stand by their Never Again policy and so far, have succeeded in defeating any attempts to destroy it.

The June 13th, 2005, Israeli airstrikes on Iranian military commanders, nuclear weapon scientists, uranium processing facilities and ballistic missile operations were essential to prevent Iran from completing its preparations to attack Israel. The Israeli attack force consisted of 200 aircraft. The Americans followed up with seven B2 stealth bombers using fourteen 13-ton ground penetrating bombs to destroy well protected Iranian nuclear weapons facilities at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.

In response Iran launched nearly 1,500 drones and missiles at Israel in response to the devastating June 13th Israeli attack. The Iranian attack left 24 Israelis dead and thousands wounded. This attack was not surprising. The Iranian government has, since the 1980s, been a Shia Islamic theocracy. That means a Shia Islamic Supreme Leader, always a senior Shia cleric, assisted by a Guardian Council, makes the major decisions about domestic and foreign policy, and the parliament only decides those things the Supreme Leader permits.

The Guardian Council consists of senior Shia Islam religious leaders, called Ayatollahs, and six civilian judges or lawyers. The six Ayatollahs are appointed by the Supreme Leader while the six lawyers and judges are appointed by the chief judge of Iran. All twelve are appointed to The Council of Experts. The Council members are elected officials although the candidates seeking to be Council members must be approved by the Supreme Leader. This means the government isn’t a true democracy and the real power is the Supreme Leader supported by the Guardian Council and the Council of Experts. The government is protected by the 250,000 men of the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC. The organization exists to protect the Supreme Leader and his advisors from internal and external threats. One part of the IRGC is the Quds Force, which specializes in supporting foreign armed groups, usually Shia but sometimes Sunnis, that support Iranian foreign policy. The Quds is responsible for supporting, and s

In 2024 the seemingly formidable IRGC appeared to be a major threat. This illusion was demolished when Iran, or at least the IRGC, decided to launch a major attack on Israel using weapons launched from Iran. This attack involved over 400 missiles and slower armed drones. This attack was a major failure, with Israeli air defenses and Ballistic Missile Defense or BMD systems taking care of the threat. Neighboring Jordan shot down many of the UAVs passing over Jordan to reach Israel. The Israelis were also aided by Americans and British warplanes operating from airbases in the region, as well as two American warships off the Israeli coast. Only minor damage was done to an Israeli air base.

Five days later Israel launched several attacks on Iran that were not intercepted. To make interception even less likely in the future, the Israeli attacks concentrated on Iranian air defense, including surveillance and fire control radars as well as the missile launchers themselves. The Israelis used low-altitude drones to avoid Iranian radar and then destroy the radars. Israeli missiles finished off the now blinded Iranian air defense system. All this was a convincing demonstration of how effective the Israeli military was compared to their Iranian counterparts.

Iranian political and military leaders downplayed the extent of damage the Israelis had inflicted. News of what really happened spread quickly throughout Iran, where Iranian civilians were pleased with the failure of the attacks on Israel and delighted that the Israeli counterattack had demonstrated the uselessness of Iranian air defenses. The Iranian religious dictatorship has been increasingly unpopular with most Iranians. Despite all the oil wealth Iran produced, little of the oil income benefits the average Iranian. This makes it easier for foreign governments, including Israel and the United States, to find and hire Iranian spies or those willing to do something that will destroy assets that are valuable to the government. Or simply make the Iranian government look bad. These Iranian agents often have to be helped to flee Iran, often with their families, carrying out a particularly daring and destructive mission. This included the 2020 explosion in the underground Natanz nuclear material enrichment faci

Sometimes Iranians are willing to voice their hatred of their government openly, as happened on April 8th this year in a Tehran sports stadium. Stadium officials used the public address system to ask the thousands of spectators to observe a minute of silence in honor of seven IRGC officers, including a general, who were killed by a recent Israeli airstrike in Syria. Instead of silence, many spectators used air horns and other noise makers as well as shouting to show their hostility toward the Iranian government. Many Iranians are still angry about the more than 700 Iranian protestors killed by the IRGC because of a 2022 incident where Iranian religious police seized a Kurdish girl, who they accused of not having her hair covered. The girl was beaten to death while in police custody and that led to nationwide anti-government protests and faded by early 2023, mainly because the IRGC used lethal force against demonstrators, killing at least 700, wounding over a thousand and jailing even more. Iran's efforts to