"Israel took the decision that on one hand it's time to end the leadership of the Axis of Evil — the head of the snake," Yadlin told Fox News Digital. "At the same time, deal with the main problems there. Which is the nuclear." (Reuters/Gil Cohen Magen)
While Secretary of State Marco Rubio initially insisted it was not involved in the initial strikes on Tehran, President Donald Trump seemed to suggest he hoped Israel’s strikes would pressure a weaker Iran to acquiesce at the negotiating table.
The two sides are at loggerheads over the U.S.’s insistence that Iran cannot have any capacity to enrich uranium and Iran’s insistence that it must have uranium for a civil nuclear program.
"The military operation is aimed, in my view, to a political end, and the political end is an agreement with Iran that will block a possibility to go to the border," Yadlin said.
"We need a stronger agreement" than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, he said.
Yadlin, who in 1981 flew one of the F-16s that destroyed Iraq’s nuclear facility in a single-night operation, made clear that Israel’s latest campaign is far more complex.
"This is not 1981," he said. "Iran has learned. Their facilities are dispersed, buried in mountains, and protected by advanced air defenses. It’s not a one-night operation."
He added, "There are sites that I'm not sure can be destroyed."
He said the recent attack was the result of years of intelligence gathering – and brave Mossad agents on the ground in Iran. Israel lured top Iranian commanders into a bunker, where they coordinated a response to Israel's attacks, then blew up the bunker.
"All of the intelligence that Israel collected, from the time I was chief of intelligence 2005 to 2010, enabled this operation against the Iranian nuclear program to be very efficient, very much like the good intelligence enabled Israel to destroy Hezbollah. Unfortunately, the same intelligence agencies missed the seventh of October, 2023."
Smoke rises after an explosion in Tehran, Iran, Friday, June 13, 2025, the first wave of Israeli attacks to take out the nuclear program.
Yadlin himself is a symbol of that doctrine. As one of the eight pilots who flew into Iraq over four decades ago, he helped define Israel’s policy of preemptive action — a legacy that is now being tested again under radically different circumstances.
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"This campaign," Yadlin emphasized, "is unlike anything the country has done before."
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/time-israel-take-out-head-snake-target-members-iranian-regime-says-former-idf-intel-chief