Several days in and Israel’s multi-domain offensive continues to pummel the theocratic regime of Iran. Tehran has, of course, responded, and costs—in treasure and blood—have been imposed against the Jewish state. In the grip of the resulting admixture of hope and apprehension and sorrow and elation I find it hard to not loosen my own grip and hope for the moon, imagining the collapse of the mullahs and the civilizational boon that might eventuate in consequence: the desiccation and final doom of the Iranian proxies arrayed against Israel and the wider West, the end of Arab-Israeli conflict, peace between Jews and Palestinians, and the rise of the Lion and the Sun over a free and flourishing Iranian people. Of course, this beautiful vision is, for now, and at best, a pleasant fiction—kumbaya. At worst, pursued at the wrong time, by the wrong people, in the wrong way, or with inordinate passion, it might be dangerous delirium. Israeli political and military leaders, who long ago learned utopian aspirations can get you killed, know this. They might gesture toward the beautiful vision as they signal to the Iranian people that this fight is not with them—they might, rightly, hope for it fervently as an indirect outcome—but their direct objectives in this fight are more limited: they just want to live.

Soon after the attack kicked off, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made all of this clear. This operation, he asserted, is a “war of salvation,” not of choice. Making the case for the Iranian regime posing a clear and present danger, he cited not simply the old threats of Tehran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs but, crucially, the recent hurried increase in pace, passion, and technological advancement with which the regime pursues both. With the dark aspirations of those responsible—directly and indirectly—for October 7^th having failed, Tehran, Netanyahu insisted, has entered a new phase in its decades-long fight against Israel. Iran’s pursuit of either—to say nothing of both—nuclear or ballistic weapons, is an existential threat in light of which one fact must not be gainsaid: those who have called for the annihilation of the Jewish homeland must never be allowed the means of achieving it. The region’s most dangerous regime cannot be allowed to have the world’s most dangerous weapons.

This just makes good sense. When an enemy proclaims its desire to destroy you, you should believe them. The degree to which you believe them depends on how you assess their actual capability to do so and the credibility of their desire to do so. The latter can be grokked by what they say and, most importantly, what they do and have done. There is no reason to canvass here the actions and rhetoric that, over the decades, and in recent years especially, have clearly communicated Tehran’s credible desire to destroy Israel as soon as it is able. This credible desire proves two errors.

First, it is wrong to insist that Israel’s attack is preventative rather than preemptive. This distinction is important. Preemption is striking an enemy who is clearly on the verge of attacking you. A preventative strike is most often seen as attacking an enemy who does not pose an immediate threat to prevent them from posing a future one. The idea that preemption can be morally or legally permissible finds sympathy among more than a few observers of international affairs. The moral or legal permissibility of preventative attacks has fewer champions. Netanyahu was gesturing to both the “obvious” and the “immediate” nature of the Iranian threat when he outlined why Iran is a clear and present—imminent—danger. The Mullahs and their nuclear and ballistic missile programs are like a man who has tried to kill you multiple times in the past and who proclaims his intent to do so again as he runs across the room to pick up a gun. To suggest that he is not a clear and imminent threat during that interval in which he is running unarmed seems ridiculous. Still, many keen observers insist Israel’s attack is merely preventative, and therefore immoral. Some say worse, calling Israel’s actions “naked aggression” and “unprovoked.”

These latter claims are as repugnant as they are stupid and either intentionally ignore or fail to understand recent history. Indeed, all the bother concerning whether Israel’s attack is preemptive or preventative is probably misplaced. The attack is neither. It is really a counterstrike in a fight that Iran launched long ago, most recently on an October morning two years ago.

The less obnoxious insistence that the Iranians are not near enough actually acquiring a means to destroy Israel to warrant the Israeli escalation is an argument that reasonable people can debate. But, as with the running man, how much luxury can really be afforded? The man is running to the gun. Iran is running to the bomb. Neither will stop unless stopped. Even the IAEA has admitted Iran’s non-compliance with inspections. We cannot know exactly where they are in the process of acquiring the world’s worst weapons. The moment Iran has the bomb, the opportunity to attack them is past. Iranian nuclear immunity would pose an existential threat the moment it was achieved. So, it must never be achieved. Israel’s strike is every bit a spoiling attack as any strike can be.

This is not to claim omniscience. It is to hedge bets when getting the calculus wrong threatens harms that cannot be endured. Netanyahu knows that “the hardest decision any leader has to face is to thwart a threat before it materializes.” Hear in this the echo of the late Golda Meir who similarly asserted that “a leader who doesn’t hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.” But Netanyahu also understands that deliberation and patience can fester into wishful thinking and the temptation to dither in the face of the obvious. He recalled the Western powers who “paralyzed by the horrors of World War One,” closed “their eyes and ears to all the warning signs” of the rise of the Hitlerian nightmare. The payoff of their efforts to avoid war at all costs was the costliest war in all of history. Lessons learned, Netanyahu recalled the Talmudic injunction—which does not stand in contradiction with biblical wisdom—that if an enemy comes to kill you, you ought to rise and kill him first. This has proved not just wisdom for self-preservation, but the mindset of responsible sovereignty.

Secondly, in light of Iran’s credible threat to destroy Israel when able, those observers who bloviate about this not being America’s war are sleepwalking. Never mind that Iran regularly calls for the death of not just Israel—Little Satan—but also of America—the Great Satan. A nuclear Iran would soon be a threat far beyond its own region. We have already seen the havoc a few proxy militias can cause to global order and international trade with a handful of rudimentary weapons. Imagine the havoc they could cause with dirty bombs and small-scale nuclear devices. There are those on the political right who whine about how an Israeli attack on Iran will lead to piles of American dead in bases across the region. Maybe, and we should prepare against that possibility. But what these doomsayers forget is that Iran has been killing Americans for decades and will do so again as soon as they are able. Israel’s actions are protecting those very Americans being threatened by Iran. Israel is on the outer perimeter of American security. It is in our interests that a fight is brought to Iran to keep it from becoming a nuclear Iran, against whom a fight cannot be brought. It is in our interests, therefore, to support Israel in bringing this fight to them. Conditions being what they are, this does not mean that American boots must tread Iranian dirt. It does mean that we should support Israel sufficiently that, at a minimum, they can degrade Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic capabilities sufficiently enough to compel—or we can say persuade—the Mullahs to return to the negotiations table, for the first time in good faith, and to accept a set of conditions that make as certain as rationally possible that Iran will never have the capability of fulfilling its fever dream of destroying the Jewish people. Backstopping allies rightly fighting for their legitimate interests and ours does not have to lead to a repeat of every bad outcome to every previous choice ever made.

One final thought. Much has been made of Israel’s extraordinary foresight and patience in planning for this attack. It has, by many accounts, been decades in the making. Some Israeli commentators point back to 2005, when Iran’s then-new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, articulated his genocidal vision for the Jewish future. Describing Isreal as a “disgraceful blot” that should be “wiped off the face of the earth” he ratified old hatreds of the Jewish state, severing any hoped-for continuity with his predecessor, Muhammad Khatami, who, arguably represented at least a mild thaw in relations with Israel, and the West more generally. Ever since, if not well before, Israel has been preparing for precisely what we’ve seen unfold these last several days.

These considerations reveal what I find to be a startling truth. I think here of Douglas Murray and his essential new book On Democracy and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization. In it, Murray recalls that groups like Hamas will often say that the reason they believe they will be victorious against the West is that our love of life is our great weakness. In contrast, they love death—and this is how they will prevail. It seems to me that these last few days, indeed, every day since October 7, 2023, expose the lie of such claims. Through the advantage Israel took of the multiple decades they had to prepare for the eventuality of this attack, they showed what a zeal for life looks like and how it manifests in political action. Their inventiveness, their audacity, will, and resolve stands in stark contrast to the Mullahs, who had just as much time to learn to build the capacity to defend the things they love but instead focused only on destroying the things they hate. The lopsided nature of the early returns on this fight suggests that one ethic does better than the other. The Ayatollah and his goons have had every opportunity to build flourishing states seeking the order, justice, and peace of their own people. Instead, they’ve spent hundreds of billions on nuclear programs, on arming death cults to wage war against Jews, and on colonizing as much of the Levant and greater Middle East as they can encompass within their tentacles. The manner of Hamas’ rule in the Gaza strip shows only that these proxy whores have learned well the lessons of their pimps. See, says the Lord, I have set before you life and death. Choose life. Israel, the very existence of the state, is a reminder that life has to be fought for. They are fighting for it. We should continue to help them to victory.

We should close with a paraphrase of Golda Meir: “We will only have peace with [our enemies] when they love their children more than they hate us.”