HUDSON INSTITUTE 1HOW ISRAEL’S OPERATION RISING LION DISMANTLED IRAN FROM WITHIN
POLICY MEMO
How Israel’s Operation
Rising Lion Dismantled
Iran from Within
A Case Study in the Art of Deception
ZINEB RIBOUA
Research Fellow, Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East
June 2025
disabled, and its internal threat assessments were in disarray.
Crucially, Israel did not rely on cross-border operations. It had
pre-positioned remote-activated strike platforms inside Iran
and deployed them with surgical precision.
Israel’s operational concept combined a decapitation strike
with cognitive disruption. The psychological warfare element—
that the strike had come from Iranian soil—amplified the
attack’s kinetic effects, leaving Tehran paralyzed. Unable to
determine whether it had been infiltrated or outmaneuvered,
the regime’s ability to respond collapsed before it could launch
a single countermeasure.
I. Strategic Complacency: How
Iran Misread the Coming Storm
The first two warnings came in July 2024 and September
2024. In July, Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh—Hamas’s
top political official and a guest of the Islamic Republic—in
On June 13, the Islamic Republic of Iran experienced a strategic
collapse that altered the balance of power in the Middle East.
Israel eliminated key Iranian military and scientific personnel,
degraded the country’s missile infrastructure, and neutralized
its early-warning systems. But more consequentially, Israel’s
strike—dubbed Operation Rising Lion—shattered the Iranian
regime’s confidence in its own security apparatus.
1
This outcome was the result of years of sustained intelligence
preparation, real-time intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance (ISR) dominance, and deep operational
infiltration.
2
Israeli planners achieved full-spectrum disruption
by dismantling Iran’s command and control networks, severing
high-level communications, and injecting uncertainty into the
regime’s decision-making processes.
By the time Tehran could react, the damage was already done.
Its upper command was dead, its defensive systems were
