1. "We sometimes forget that Iran is a huge country with a population of 90 million, and size of more than 70 times the size of Israel. It has two armies: a regular military and the Revolutionary Guards, and both are enormous.

2. We’re impressed that a third Iranian chief of staff within a week is now giving the orders (after two successful eliminations), but we forget what it means to fight a state with true strategic depth and an industry that can keep producing under sanctions.

3. For the past fifty years Israel has fought plenty, but always against organizations - never against a state.

4. For years we assumed a strike on Iran would play out like the attacks on the nuclear reactors in Syria and Iraq: we fly in, bomb once, maybe come back a second time, and go home.

5. That’s why the real headline here is what the Israeli Air Force has done in the first 48 hours of this war. It is historically astounding.

6. The Air Force has wiped the airspace clean of every SAM battery, and the fact that it can carry out dozens and hundreds of sorties, returning again and again, is amazing.

7. Never mind the aerial refueling and the logistics, what stuns me is that our pilots are flying freely over Iran, 1,500 kilometers from home. There was no scenario I ever heard, even in closed-door discussions, where we thought we could do something like this.

8. I’ve said before that people don’t truly appreciate the real capabilities of the Israeli Air Force. I think this is the first time we are actually seeing what it can do.

9. While the operation is ongoing, I don’t think we should over-debate it for now. In the end we’re Israelis; after the war we’ll pick everything apart and drive each other crazy over every detail - what went right and what went wrong?

10. Strategically, though, I believe the decision to launch this move was absolutely correct. How exactly to carry it out, how far to go, what to nail down with the Americans and Europeans - those are different questions.

11. Anyone in the security profession learns over time that force always has limits. Sometimes the limit is fuel, sometimes manpower, sometimes a million other things. Here the question will be: when do we declare the mission accomplished?

12. There’s a huge temptation to lose balance and say “let’s keep going,” but we have to ask whether the delta between what we gain in the first few days and what we’d gain later is really significant.

13. There’s another caveat: we’re not the only side here. The other side, Iran, also has to accept a cease-fire; just because we say we’ve won doesn’t mean they’re there too, so this could run longer.

14. That means we also need the United States and the E3 powers: Germany, France, and the UK, because any agreement in the end will have to be signed with the major powers.

15. I suggest we delay the discussion about what we have achieved so far and how much we’ve prevented Iran from reaching a bomb. There’s a range of possibilities I won’t detail. What matters is we’ve shown everyone we know how to do it - and if we must, we’ll do it again.

16. As for Iran’s sprint toward a bomb, I listen carefully to the Americans, especially President Trump, who keeps repeating that he will not allow Iran to be nuclear.

17. Trump can play games about whether he wants to strike right now, but he always comes back to the same message: “I will not let you get the bomb.”

18. We talk a lot about the Iranian nukes, but we should also see this strike in the context of October 7th. That day was a massive earthquake, with aftershocks in Lebanon and Syria.

19. Strategically, if you set the nuclear issue aside for a moment, only one big link remained to be dealt with: Iran itself. Even separate from the nuclear program, our action in Iran is crucial because it changes the entire regional picture.

20. Iran is the octopus’s head; it makes no sense to dismantle all its proxies yet leave Tehran untouched.

21. The capabilities we’re seeing now are the result of many years of work. There are a lot of good people whose job is to plan this sort of thing far ahead. These are extremely precise plans combining strategic and tactical thinking.

22. The question is how you coordinate everything so that all the “decapitations” you want converge on exactly the same hour. It’s truly insane.

23. On the other hand, in the end what matters is not how sexy an operation looks, but whether it delivers results and makes your enemy realize he needs to step back. How, ultimately, can you protect Israel’s citizens?

24. And we must remember -especially because of the euphoria following the success- that we will still take hits, as we did this morning in Soroka Hospital. I keep restraining myself and reminding myself that tough days might still be ahead.

25. People ask if we’ve put Iran in checkmate; I remind them that they invented chess. Let’s not underestimate them. Iran runs marathons: for forty years they’ve pursued this nuclear project.

26. They’re serious. I’m happy to give credit for this operation, as much as I’m glad we pulled off the Hezbollah campaign within six weeks. After years of preparation, it’s amazing to take down those bad guys. But let’s wait and see that it ends properly before we celebrate.

27. Regarding Iran’s ability to mount a bomb on a missile—our intelligence picture is shifting before our eyes. I can speak about what I knew until the war began, but it will take time before we receive intelligence and perform BDA (battle-damage assessment).

28. We need to see what happened at Natanz, what will happen at Fordow, what became of the knowledge hubs that vanished, where the 60 percent-enriched uranium now is.

29. I have a ton of questions. We can’t truly answer the nuclear issue right now. We will also have to make some very tough decisions - ones I won’t even outline so as not to give ideas, but this is a super-complex event.

30. What is certain is that several strategic questions need addressing now: