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In the early<\/span> morning hours of June 13, Israel launched an attack that had been prophesied in some form or another for nearly 20 years: a full-blown assault on Iran\u2019s nuclear program and, in a move that shocked many observers, its entire military structure. The top brass of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and of Iran\u2019s Armed Forces as a whole, has been assassinated. Critical nuclear facilities at Natanz and Fordow were bombarded with the intent to destroy. On Friday, Iran retaliated with multiple rounds of ballistic missiles in the heart of Tel Aviv, targeting Israel\u2019s Ministry of Defense and reportedly other military bases in the area.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s justification for its attack hinged again on the specter of the \u201cpreemptive strike.\u201d It\u2019s a mythos dating back to the fiction that Egypt was planning an imminent attack <\/a>on Israeli forces in 1967, and thus Israel was justified in \u201cpreemptively\u201d destroying Egypt\u2019s military power and occupying the Sinai, the Golan, the West Bank, and Gaza.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here, the stakes are treated as just as high. Videos from the Israeli military extoll that they are fighting for the West\u2019s future and that they had \u201cno other choice\u201d<\/a> but to act against an existential threat \u2014 not just against the State of Israel, but against every country within range of Iran\u2019s vast missile arsenal.\u00a0<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s propaganda machine has been running full steam, lobbing claims about the amount of\u00a0weapons-grade uranium Iran allegedly possesses, how many nuclear bombs it could thus produce, and how urgently Israel needed to strike at a perceived moment of weakness. This cavalcade almost obscures the extent to which the narrative surrounding<\/a> the outbreak of this war <\/a>has become one obscene contradiction, in which what one sees from President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can mean everything to everyone.<\/p>\n By finally igniting the war the Israeli establishment has been dreaming of for decades, Netanyahu can both work toward achieving the long-term goal of subjugating the region and, in the short term, shift domestic <\/a>and international attention away <\/a>from the horrors<\/a> his military is committing<\/a> in Gaza<\/a>. Now the focus will be on war with Tehran, the capital of an adversary unparalleled in the Western mind. Reservists can be called up en masse not to do another tour in what is known to be an untenable quagmire, but for a higher cause \u2014 one that has not yet proven un-winnable.<\/p>\n Any prevailing concerns about religious parties in the Knesset overthrowing the Netanyahu cabinet can be put aside, as can worries about his corruption trial or his desire to overhaul the judiciary. Even the growing fear that Israel\u2019s war machine is destroying its reputation can be overlooked for now. How, the thinking goes, can Israel be a pariah state if it is working in full coordination with the United States for its own self-defense?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n