Israeli leaders said they carried out a series of preemptive strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and key personnel early Thursday evening, declaring a national state of emergency as it prepares for anticipated Iranian retaliation.

U.S. officials took steps to distance themselves from the Israeli strikes, emphasizing that it was not involved.

Israelis were instructed to stay close to protected spaces and avoid gatherings, educational activities have been canceled and the Israeli airspace has been closed. 

The Israeli Embassy in Washington issued a statement that Israel had launched a “preemptive, precise, combined offensive to strike Iran’s nuclear program,” and that Israeli jets had been involved in the “first stage” targeting “dozens of military targets, including nuclear targets in different areas of Iran.”

“Today, Iran is closer than ever to obtaining a nuclear weapon. Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the Iranian regime are an existential threat to the state of Israel and to the wider world,” the statement reads. “The State of Israel has no choice but to fulfill the obligation to act in defense of its citizens and will continue to do so everywhere it is required to do so, as we have done in the past.”

In a prerecorded statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the operation, named “Rising Lion,” was aimed at “rolling back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival,” and would “continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.”

He said that Israel had targeted Iran’s nuclear enrichment and weaponization program, its enrichment facility in Natanz, its leading nuclear scientist working on the bomb and its ballistic missile program.

Netanyahu said that Iran has amassed enough uranium for nine atomic bombs in recent years, and taken “steps it has never taken before … to weaponize this enriched uranium” and if not stopped, could produce a nuclear weapon within a few months.

“When enemies vow to destroy you, believe them. When enemies build weapons of mass destruction, stop them,” Netanyahu said. “As the Bible teaches us, when someone comes to kill you, rise and act first. This is exactly what Israel has done today. We have risen like lions to defend ourselves.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement the U.S. did not participate in the strikes and urged Iran not to retaliate against American targets.

“Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region. Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense. President Trump and the Administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel,” Rubio said.

Just hours before the strikes, President Donald Trump said on social media the U.S. remains “committed to a Diplomatic Resolution to the Iran Nuclear Issue!” and “They could be a Great Country, but they first must completely give up hopes of obtaining a Nuclear Weapon.”

Dana Stroul, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East under President Joe Biden and the research director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the strike “appears to be the first wave of an Israeli campaign.”

“The initial target set in downtown Tehran, including what appear to be precise strikes at the residences of senior officials, suggests an intent to paralyze the leadership and command and control of the regime,” Stroul told Jewish Insider. “Follow-on sets of targets could be much broader and geographically diverse.”

The strikes come a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency voted to censure Iran for noncompliance with nonproliferation obligations.

“The Iranian regime appears to have grievously misunderestimated Israeli intent — in a post-Oct. 7 environment, the Israelis were not going to sit back and wait while Iran took additional aggressive steps in its nuclear program as the IAEA definitively confirmed its noncompliance,” Stroul added. “What remains unclear is whether or not President Trump gave the greenlight only days before his envoy Steve Witkoff was supposed to travel back to the region for another round of nuclear negotiations.”

Trump’s self-imposed two-month deadline for nuclear talks expired this week.

Stroul said that Rubio’s comments were “stunning.”

“The American secretary of state is unambiguously stating publicly that Israel made its decision on its own,” she explained. “When Rubio says: Iran should not target U.S. personnel or U.S. interests, there is a very real risk that the Iranians implicitly understand this as a green light to directly attack Israel. What is left unsaid is whether or not the United States will actively participate in the defense of Israel as it did when Iran directly attacked in April and October of last year.”

She said the “ambiguity or suggestion of daylight between the United States and Israel runs the risk of emboldening adversaries.”

Arab and Israeli leaders are insisting that any U.S. deal with Iran also include provisions to address Iran’s other malign activities in the region, including support for terrorist proxies, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) told Jewish Insider following a trip earlier this month to meet with Israeli and Arab leaders in the Middle East.

Wasserman Schultz traveled with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) to the Middle East for the third time since Oct. 7, 2023, visiting Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Jordan.

“There was a very clear urgency that the leaders we spoke to had to make sure that we … don’t let Iran up from their very weakened state. They’ve been badly pummeled and had significant defeats,” Wasserman Schultz told JI last week. “The consensus across the region, no matter where we went, was that we needed to make sure that continued and that we prevented them from achieving their nuclear weapons goals and that we particularly prevented them from continuing their support for terrorist activity.”

She said that notion was raised by multiple leaders without prompting from the U.S. lawmakers.

She said that “across the board” the leaders shared her view that any deal with Iran must “include defanging them — and that was a term that was used repeatedly, defanging them — and stopping them from continuing to terrorize” the region.

“It was made very clear to us it was not enough to just negotiate over their nuclear ambitions, that in their weakened state, you could not separate Iran’s malignancy when it comes to all of their activity — particularly if they got any relief from sanctions,” she said.

Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, the lead negotiator for the U.S. in talks with Iran, suggested in a recent Fox News interview that the U.S. would consider allowing Iran to retain its enrichment capacity as part of a deal — a statement he later walked back — while Wasserman Schultz and Ernst were in the region. The outline Witkoff provided on Fox appeared to many to be equivalent to the original 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action which Trump withdrew from in his first term.

Wasserman Schultz called it “incredibly hypocritical” for officials from the new Trump administration, such as Witkoff, to endorse terms of a deal similar to the JCPOA. Wasserman Schultz ultimately voted for the JCPOA in 2015 and calls it “the most difficult vote I’ve cast in all the years I’ve been in Congress.”

She called on Witkoff and the American negotiators to seek a deal stronger than the original JCPOA, making her the latest pro-Israel Democrat to raise concerns about the potential terms of a new deal with Iran. 

She said she’s “frustrated and concerned … and even angry” that the administration seems to be going “from pillar to post. Their discussions seem like they’re happening on quicksand and I have seen nothing that looks different than the agreement that [Trump] pulled out of.”

With Iran significantly weaker and more vulnerable than it was in 2015, Wasserman Schultz said the U.S. must seize the opportunity to push for a more comprehensive deal to prevent Iranian terrorist activity and stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

If the U.S. does return to a deal similar to the JCPOA, Wasserman Schultz said that the ultimate result of Trump’s withdrawal from the original deal would have been allowing Iran to get “perilously close to a nuclear weapon” and removing the option to strengthen the original agreement through further negotiations.

Wasserman Schultz said that she told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who aggressively opposed the 2015 deal, that she expected he would offer “the same howling pushback that occurred back during the Obama years when those negotiations were taking place” if Trump moves toward a deal similar to the JCPOA.

Wasserman Schultz and Ernst also discussed the ongoing war with Hamas in their meeting with Netanyahu. Compared to previous meetings, Wasserman Schultz said she believed that the prime minister and Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer outlined more comprehensive and specific strategies to achieve the release of the remaining hostages being held in Gaza.

“I probably have met with him five or six times over the course of the last year and a half there in Israel and in the U.S.,” Wasserman Schultz explained. “I was glad to see that they had varying approaches in terms of their negotiations and strategy with the ceasefire and hostage deals that they’re discussing. I was glad to see that and hear for the first time Dermer — and Netanyahu too — talk about the various options that they had, as opposed to it being a more minimalist conversation.”

Wasserman Schultz said she and Ernst had also spoken to Arab leaders about their proposals for post-war Gaza and achieving Saudi-Israeli normalization. She said the Arab leaders had been “very clear-eyed” about the difficulties of finding credible Palestinian leadership able to help move toward an eventual Palestinian state, but said they believed it was possible.

“I came away feeling like there could be some progress made. But it was clear that as a result of the war in Gaza, the signs of progress that we had hoped for when we were in Saudi Arabia on the night of Oct. 6 [2023] [were] further away at the moment than [they were] then,” Wasserman Schultz said. 

But she added that the countries which have normalized relations with Israel are not retreating from those agreements and remain committed to them, highlighting as one example of the progress made that she was able to attend a Seder on the first night of Passover in Abu Dhabi.