The Echo of June: From Six Days to One Night Over Iran

June can be an unforgiving teacher.

Fifty-eight years ago this past week, Israeli pilots met a gray dawn over the Sinai with the throttle wide open. Yesterday, their grandchildren’s squadron chiefs clicked the same intercom phrase: kilshay muchan, “everything ready,” and pointed west, not south.

History did not repeat itself; it rhymed in a sharper key.

Preemption: Israel’s Most Reliable Insurance Policy

On June 5, 1967, after Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran and Arab armies massed on three sides, Israel rolled the dice first. Its air force smashed the Egyptian Air Force on the ground in less than four hours, and within six days, the young state doubled its territory, seizing the Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.

Washington’s diplomats studied the result and coined the land-for-peace formula that still frames every Middle East talking point. The deeper lesson Jerusalem kept for itself was simpler: If you're in a bad neighborhood, the first punch you throw is often the only one that matters.

An Anniversary Measured in Jet Fuel

Just after 0200 hours Tehran time, June 12, 2025, over 200 Israeli jets arced over Iran in five separate waves.

Natanz, the crown jewel of Iran’s enrichment network, took the first hit. So did missile plants near Kermanshah and Bid Kaneh. Within ninety minutes, at least six senior nuclear scientists and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ top two generals were confirmed dead. Iranian state media counted dozens of other strikes; the International Atomic Energy Agency reported no radiological release, which suggests Israel kept its promise to go after machines, not civilians.

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Outside Tehran, residents filmed orange blossoms of fire streaking across a velvet sky and posted the clips before the smoke settled. Then, the electricity flickered, and the uploads stopped.

Decapitation, Not Occupation

Israeli planners named the operation Rising Lion.

The concept was neither conquest nor the sort of attritional bombing campaign the United States tried in Iraq. It was a surgeon’s cut: blind the radars, break the centrifuge power feeds, and remove the men who sign off on missile launches.

Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, Iran’s chief of staff, and IRGC commander Hossein Salami were among the first listed KIA. Tehran’s air defense grid reacted but never coordinated; too many antennas burned in the first salvo.

A cynic might call it an assassination. A historian would file it under the oldest clause in the laws of war: take away your enemy’s sword arm before he swings.

Israel calls it survival.

Trump’s Bullhorn and the Diplomacy of Deadlines

President Trump offered Tehran a narrow door: “Make a deal before it is too late.” He added, on Truth Social, that “already-planned attacks” waited on the runway if Iran chose pride over pragmatism. The phrasing was blunt, almost caustic, exactly how Lyndon Johnson warned Nasser in May ’67, except Johnson whispered through back channels while Trump blasted into the world’s microphone.

Europe urged restraint, the UN Secretary-General pleaded for it, and markets from London to Tokyo wobbled like a nameless child on a bicycle too big. Israel, unmoved, recalled two armored brigades to the northern border and told reservists to keep their phones charged.

Iran Is Not Egypt, Yet the Math Feels Familiar

Cairo in ’67 fielded Soviet T-54s and MiG-21s, formidable for their time but conventional. Tehran today controls ballistic missiles that can hopscotch the Gulf in six minutes and hosts proxy militias from Damascus to Sana’a.

Still, the strategic algebra is identical: once your adversary stands one engineering breakthrough away from a nuclear weapon, waiting looks like madness.

Churchill once warned that wars are won by the side that sees trouble soonest and acts soonest. Israel took that maxim in blood and chiseled it into doctrine.

Regional Tremors, Global Ripples

The strikes snapped the windowpanes of diplomacy.

Oil futures spiked ten percent before Asian markets closed; Lloyd’s of London raised shipping insurance through the Strait of Hormuz; Hezbollah fired a token rocket volley from southern Lebanon, less than a bar-fight swing, more a reminder that the northern front still exists.

Russia condemned the attack as “destabilizing,” the same adjective it ignored while Iranian drones buzzed Ukrainian skies. China urged “dialogue,” a line copied and pasted from every Middle East communiqué Beijing has issued since the Gulf War. The Arab street stayed largely quiet. In Riyadh, an analyst on state television noted that Israel had done the work others only theorized about in conference rooms.

Quoting my favorite Twitchy writer, "ARGLE BARGLE GARR"

Why the Calendar Matters

Israel did not circle June 12 on a whim.

The first week of June carries talismanic weight. Veterans of ’67 gather each year at Ammunition Hill and tell rookies how the fog lifted over Jerusalem at dawn on the fifth day, how fear turns to duty when the radio crackles Kadima. Launching Rising Lion within days of that anniversary was a telegram to every would-be aggressor: the preemptive edge stays sharp.

The other facet worth knowing? As my PJ Media teammate Chris Queen shared so eloquently:

The operation, which is continuing into Friday, came after President Donald Trump asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to give Iran 60 days for negotiation. Operation Rising Lion commenced on Day 61.

Lessons the West Keeps Misplacing

Preemption is reckless, says one European editor.

Fine.

So is ignoring seven UN Security Council resolutions, hidden centrifuge halls, and missile tests filmed in 4K.

Diplomacy must run its course, insists a Harvard panel.

Perhaps, though, diplomacy without leverage is only wishful talking. Israel understands leverage. It measures it in runway length, bunker-buster yield, and the number of fire trucks parked outside Natanz on a Thursday morning.

The Six-Day War proved that statecraft sometimes rides in the bomb bay. Rising Lion reminds us that the escort jets are still on station.

Final Thoughts

History is a stern professor. Fail the mid-term, and the final comes sooner, harder, with no notes allowed.

In June 1967, Israel took the exam first and passed in less than a week.

So far in June 2025, it retook the test in a different classroom, graded on a curve. The old answer key, strike before the noose tightens, still earned full credit.

Iran now stares at smoking concrete and empty office chairs. It may howl, it may counter, but it cannot pretend surprise. The warning lived in every textbook: when Israel feels its back against a wall, it does not negotiate for elbow room; it clears the way.

And the rest of us?

We should mark the calendar, pour another coffee, and reread the Churchill line about acting soonest.

Delay is comfortable until it is fatal. Ask the regime technicians who once swiped their timecards at Natanz. Ask the ghosts of field marshals who thought six days would be enough to crush a country barely old enough to rent a car.

June keeps its receipts. And I stand for Israel!