According to The Wall Street Journal, Israel codenamed its initial attack on Iran that killed senior military leaders “Red Wedding,” referring to a gruesome massacre from the book series “Game of Thrones,” which was adapted into a TV series on HBO.
In the Red Wedding scene, one family murders the members of the other, including a pregnant woman, during a wedding feast, a surprise attack that relies on betrayal and deception. Israel’s attack also relied on deception as it used the cover of nuclear talks between the US and Iran to catch Tehran off guard.
The Israeli attack was launched on Friday, June 13, two days before the US and Iran were set to hold another round of nuclear negotiations. According to the Journal report, part of the ruse involved Israeli officials leaking stories to the media about a split between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the possibility of Israel attacking Iran.
Trump and Netanyahu held a phone call on Monday, June 9, the day the Journal report said Israel had decided to launch the attack on June 13. Axios reporter Barak Ravid, a former IDF intelligence officer, reported the day after the call that an Israeli official and a US official told him that Trump expressed to Netanyahu that he believed he could reach a nuclear deal with Iran and opposed military action at that time.
According to the Journal, on the day of the attacks Trump told reporters that the US and Iran were “fairly close to an agreement” and that he didn’t want the Israelis “going in,” and Israeli officials told reporters they would wait to see the results of the next round of US-Iran nuclear talks before attacking.
The Journal report said: “The key to the deception, said a security official familiar with the planning of the operation, was the idea implanted in the minds of the Iranians that Israel wouldn’t strike without US authorization and participation. As long as the US wasn’t mobilizing its forces and was engaged in negotiations, Israel could threaten to attack and even mobilize its troops in plain sight of Iran without giving away the element of surprise.”
Hours before Israel’s bombing campaign started, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was still committed to a diplomatic solution with Iran. The Journal report said Israeli warplanes were already getting in the air when he made the post.
As Israeli planes were on the way to Iran, senior Iranian air force officials began to mobilize and ended up gathering together in the same place, where they were hit by Israeli missiles. The surprise attack on Iran’s military leaders killed multiple senior officials, including Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, and Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
In its initial strikes on Iran, Israeli warplanes also fired missiles into the homes of Iranian nuclear scientists, and that part of the attack was dubbed “Operation Narnia,” a reference to the C.S. Lewis series because the planners initially thought it was a “fantastical” operation. Israel also hit Iranian air defenses with drones launched from inside the country, and the Journal report said the success of the initial attack, which lasted about four hours, was thanks to Israel building up its intelligence assets within Iran over the past few decades.
