Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir attended Thursday evening’s graduation ceremony for the 192nd pilot training course. In his speech, Netanyahu said Israel established its air superiority through Operations “Rising Lion” and “Lion’s Roar.” Without the precise and powerful action at the right time, he said, Iran would have armed itself with nuclear weapons designed to destroy Israel.
2+Netanyahu compared the preemptive strikes carried out by air force pilots to historic operations like Operation Focus. “Our pilots carried out thousands of sorties and strikes and delivered a powerful opening blow to Iran,” he said. “We went into these operations with our American friends to remove the threat of immediate destruction from the entire Western world.”
“Facilities to Ash, Nuclear Infrastructure Crushed”
The prime minister detailed the achievements of operations against Iran: “We eliminated 20 nuclear experts, killed senior leadership, and crushed the nuclear infrastructure and ballistic missile production facilities.” He emphasized that the operations turned military installations in Iran to “dust and ash” and caused massive damage to the Revolutionary Guards’ economy, while maintaining complete control of enemy skies.
“I saw the air crews cruising back and forth in the skies, hunting down enemy operatives in territory 75 times larger than Israel,” Netanyahu added.
2+Toward Arms Independence
Despite the successes, Netanyahu made clear the war has not ended and that the country is preparing for every scenario amid new challenges. As part of learning lessons, the prime minister revealed that Israel is advancing a policy of arms independence. “We will develop an extensive arms industry made in blue and white that will reduce dependence on procurement from abroad,” he concluded. “All these actions contribute to establishing our strength in deterrence, defense, maneuver, and when necessary—in preemptive strikes.”
“We’ve Changed the Game—From Gaza to Tehran”
In addition, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir also spoke in the ceremony. In his speech, Zamir highlighted the relationship forged with the U.S. military and Air Force during Operation Lion’s Roar: “We worked together with the world’s greatest power, flying wing-to-wing—the Air and Space Arm alongside the U.S. Air Force.” The chief of staff added another shift that occurred during the recent campaign: cooperation between ground and air forces. “Never have the skies and the ground been so close.”
2+On the enemy side, too, a significant change has been recorded. Zamir stressed that operations once considered far from reality have been carried out multiple times recently by the Air Force—including, of course, the surprise attack that eliminated senior figures in the ayatollahs’ regime, nuclear officials, weapons industries, air defense batteries, and ballistic missile launchers: “We turned the third circle into the first circle and made the enemy in Gaza, in Beirut, in Sanaa, and in Tehran feel the same sense of being hunted.”
The chief of staff didn’t forget to mention the fallen from the recent campaign: “We remember the fallen—the best of our sons and daughters who fell in the difficult battles, we embrace the bereaved families, and we closely accompany those wounded in body and soul, who bear on their flesh the pain of war. Their memory and heroism are the compass that obligates us to continue, to fight, and to win.”