Shortly before 2 am in Israel on Saturday, October 26th, airmen and women wearing bomber jackets bearing the Star of David climbed into the cockpits of about 100 jet fighters, spy planes, and refueling aircraft at an Israeli military base. They were following commands from an underground bunker known as the pit.

Israel’s wartime leaders, who were gathered in the bowels of the military headquarters in Tel Aviv, had just given the green light for the largest attack against Iran in Israel’s history — and its most politically perilous. They called the operation “Days of Repentance”. The assault was calibrated to punish Iran for an attack on Israel but aimed to avoid setting off a full-scale war between the two foes involving American forces and other countries in the region. The attack steered clear of the oil and nuclear facilities that Iran had warned would prompt retaliation, and appeared to heed the caution urged by US officials.

The attack, however, marked a dangerous new phase of confrontation between Israel and Iran, which began striking each other directly earlier this year. It left Iran even more exposed to further air attacks, with Israel destroying several of the country’s Russian-made S-300 radar defence batteries, according to an Israeli official.

An Israeli official said, “The message is that we don’t want an escalation but if Iran decides to escalate and attack Israel again, this means that we have increased our range of freedom of movement in the Iranian skies,”

Iran “knew that Israel was coming, and still, they couldn’t prevent anything,” said Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general.

This attack fulfills Biblical end-times prophecies of Israel being the centre of the world’s attention, antisemitism rampant, and all of its surrounding nations intent on its destruction. Prior to 1948 Israel as a nation did not exist. Its miraculous rebirth was the first and most significant of end times prophecies that would signal Jesus return to rescue God’s nation from destruction. We need to be watchful as we may have entered the last seven years (see post my Oct 17th, Where is Iran in Biblical Prophecy) before that happens.