Meanwhile, in Gaza

In January 1991, I returned to CNN’s national desk in Atlanta after a six-week relief stint as a producer in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where the network had established an outpost during Operation Desert Shield.

Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi military had invaded Kuwait the previous August, prompting fears that he might next covet Saudi Arabia’s oil fields.

Over the next five months, the United States deployed a half-million military personnel, with troops and equipment arriving at Dhahran International Airport day and night.

Warnings from President George H.W Bush, U.N. Security Council resolutions, and a 42-nation coalition arrayed against him failed to persuade Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait.

On the night of Jan. 16 (early morning Jan. 17 in the region) Operation Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm, with airstrikes and cruise missiles hitting targets in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.

Iraq initially launched eight Scud missiles at Israel, the opening salvo of some 40 fired during the war. The Scuds were not particularly accurate, making it difficult to know where they would come down. The Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan were struck. The U.S. persuaded Israel not to retaliate, lest it fracture Arab support for the anti-Iraq coalition.

On a few occasions, when CNN learned from sources that Scuds had been launched, I called a friend in Tel Aviv, with whom I had worked in the mid-1980s, to advise him of the incoming missiles.

That I could call my friend about the Scuds seemed remarkable at the time.
He and his family often were in a sealed room in their home, with gas masks at the ready. (Saddam had used poison gas to kill 20,000 Iranian troops during an eight-year war in the 1980s and 5,000 civilians in the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988, so the threat was taken seriously in Israel.)

A five-week air assault on Iraq was followed by a week-long ground campaign that ended Feb. 28 with a rout of previously-heralded Iraqi forces and Kuwait liberated. (Saddam Hussein remained in power in Iraq for more than a decade. He was captured in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and executed in 2006.)

Today, almost instantaneous communication online, a phone app implemented by the Home Front Command, and sirens have improved the warning system for missile launches, giving Israelis upwards of 10 to 15 minutes (roughly the time a missile fired from Iran needs to reach Israel) to enter safe rooms or seek shelter elsewhere. [An estimated 55 percent of Israeli homes do not have safe rooms, which have been mandatory in new residential construction since 1992.] The Arrow and David’s Sling anti-missile systems, developed by Israel and the United States, provide a layer of protection.

Operation Rising Lion began June 13, with airstrikes designed to cripple Iran’s nuclear weapons potential, degrade its missile capabilities, and disrupt its military command-and-control systems. Iran has retaliated by launching approximately 500 missiles and 1,000 drones. More than 40 missiles have struck Israeli targets, causing at least two dozen fatalities and wounding thousands.

The U.S. upped the ante on June 21, utilizing a combination of B-2 “stealth bombers” dropping GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator “bunker buster” bombs and submarine-fired cruise missiles against three key Iranian nuclear sites.

[Note: This column was filed on June 24, just hours into a ceasefire engineered/mandated by the United States.]

My friend in Tel Aviv called the initial Israeli attacks on Iran “brilliantly conceived and executed,” but remained “mystified” at how the same military and intelligence apparatus failed so greatly before and on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists slaughtered 1,200 men, women, and children, and kidnapped 250 more from the “Gaza envelope” in southern Israel.

While Israelis take pride in Operation Rising Lion, they have been told a national commission of inquiry into the Oct. 7 failures must wait until after the war in Gaza. (The Israel Defense Forces has issued assessments of its performance at individual locations and a number of high-level military and intelligence officials have resigned.)

Israel’s successes against Iran — the patron of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis — may allow Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reclaim a portion of the mantle of “Mr. Security” tarnished by Oct. 7. He has appeared less willing to take responsibility for those failures, pointing fingers or allowing his allies to point fingers at the same military and intelligence agencies hailed for the Iran operation.

Six hundred and twenty-eight days have passed since Oct. 7 and, at this writing, 50 hostages remain in Gaza, of whom maybe 20 or more are believed to be alive.

Operation Rising Lion has shifted scrutiny away from the war in Gaza and the plight of the hostages. Soon enough, though, a measure of attention will return to those subjects and the Israeli public will resume demanding answers about what happened before and on Oct. 7, and demanding accountability, beginning with the prime minister.