Quick Thoughts on Lion Rising (and which one that might be)

Overnight, Israeli forces conducted some two hundred airstrikes and a variety of intelligence, sabotage, and assassination plots across Iran — activities broadly grouped under the heading of "Operation Lion Rising".

Sometimes, a name is just a name, like the World War II-era Operations Cartwheel, Husky, Market Garden, and Mars, or the Vietnam-era Linebacker II. Many Israeli military activities have also had relatively innocuous names like Mole Cricket 19.

However, in a tradition dating back at least to the Six Day War in 1967, and perhaps to independence, the leaders of modern Israel have occasionally put themselves at pains to connect their polity with roots in Jewish culture, religious texts, and occasionally, its symbology.

"Rising Lion" could easily be a reference to the Lion of Judah.

There is also, however, a second lion to consider — for centuries and perhaps millennia, one of the staunchest, most favorable, most indulgent friends and benefactors of the first — and perhaps even with an older lion-based iconography than the first: The Lion (and Sun) of Persia.

• Traditions of Persian statehood going back to the Achaemenid period and perhaps beyond have drawn on the lion as a symbol, as does the Shi'a tradition of Islam — very prominent in Iran for many centuries at this point — tracing back to their founder, Ali ibn Abu Talib.
• Moreover, Isaiah 45:1-4 shows the exiles of Judah looking to Cyrus of Persia by name as their liberator in the sixth century BCE, and the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther all generally give a positive image of the Persian court — not least in contrast to Babylon.

So what does this have to do with the present?

• Until 1979, Iran's flag had the lion and sun iconography in it, with the Pahlavi dynasty drawing on both Persian and Shi'ite traditions.
• Israel's quarrel with Iran since that time has little to do with the people and overall civil society, and much more to do with the top-level government in Tehran.

So what does this mean for Lion Rising?

Perhaps it's just a name. And perhaps it's just an exercise of hard power against Iran's nuclear program. That is, of course, quite possible.

But suppose for a moment that it's something more. Naturally, Israel's government would be almost the last in line to make public statements in favor of Iranian opposition groups, for fear of undermining their legitimacy. And yet, while it's no mystery that the Ayatollahs' grip on power has always been more flimsy and historically contingent than their propaganda has historically suggested (see here, especially from 9:08), this might be a moment for Iran watchers, and maybe the regime itself, to look for Israeli assets at work beyond the hard power strikes.

With a few other circumstances intervening, it may not be surprising to see information and influence operations behind the scenes, promoting revolution. No doubt regime change would be to Israel's liking and short term advantage, but in and of itself it would not guarantee a new order with any higher regard for the Jewish state. Thus, if Persia's lion is set to rise again like a new day's sun, then perhaps the softer side of current Israeli operations — even down to their naming conventions — would help a new Iranian regime to pay a kinder regard to their fellow lion in Judah.