JERUSALEM — Israel’s recent military operation against Iran's nuclear facilities, which officials have defended as a necessary act of pre-emptive self-defense, has ignited a fierce global debate. The strike, codenamed 'Operation Am Kelavi', is being framed by the Israeli government as a crucial blow against a catastrophic global threat. However, the action is under intense international scrutiny, with its justification and timing being challenged amid the backdrop of the separate, ongoing and devastating war in Gaza.

This has created two deeply conflicting narratives. In one, Israel is a reluctant hero that neutralized an existential threat. In the other, it is an aggressor using a regional conflict to distract from a humanitarian crisis. An examination of the arguments reveals a chasm in how the same event is being perceived, a divide centered on questions of threat imminence, military ethics, and strategic motive.

The Threat Assessment: A 'Point of No Return'

At the heart of Israel’s justification for the strike is an intelligence assessment that officials have described as unequivocal. According to multiple statements from the Israeli Prime Minister’s office and the Ministry of Defense, the operation was launched after receiving credible, time-sensitive intelligence that Iran’s nuclear program had reached a “point of no return.”

“This was not a choice, but an obligation,” a senior Israeli security official stated in a background briefing. “We had exhausted all other avenues. The diplomatic path was used by Tehran as a smokescreen to accelerate its illicit program. We were facing a genocidal regime, which explicitly states its desire to annihilate our country, on the verge of acquiring the means to do it.”

This perspective is supported by analysis from external organizations. A recent report by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) detailed Iran’s pattern of escalating uranium enrichment far beyond civilian needs and its consistent obstruction of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors. Proponents of the strike argue that these actions, combined with Iran’s advanced ballistic missile program, constituted an imminent threat not just to Israel, but to regional and global stability. “A world without the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is a better, safer world,” an Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson declared.

However, this narrative of necessity has been met with skepticism, particularly in European media. A prominent narrative in The Guardian and on the BBC, citing unnamed diplomatic sources, questions the timing of the operation. These reports frame the strike not as a last resort, but as a politically “opportunistic” maneuver by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deflect international pressure over the war in Gaza and consolidate his domestic political standing.

Israeli officials have strongly rebuffed this charge. They argue that the operational timeline was dictated solely by Iran’s nuclear progress. “To suggest we would risk a multi-front war for political gain is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the threat,” the security official countered. “The Iranian regime’s declared vision includes the destruction of the West. We acted as the last line of defense for the entire free world.”

Operational Doctrine: Precision vs. Collateral Damage

Israel has heavily promoted the narrative that ‘Operation Am Kelavi’ was a model of surgical precision. Military spokespersons have emphasized that the targets were not civilian, but were instead high-value military assets: key IRGC command-and-control centers, nuclear research facilities, and top nuclear scientists and commanders. The legal justification, they argue, rests on the modern doctrine of anticipatory self-defense, which does not require a nation to absorb a first strike when facing annihilation.

“We did not target the people of Iran, whom we see as the first victims of a tyrannical regime,” an IDF statement read. “We targeted the head of the serpent.” This messaging aims to draw a sharp moral contrast between Israeli tactics and those of Iran, which officials note has a history of indiscriminately firing missiles at Israeli civilian centers.

This claim of precision, however, is being severely undermined by the intense media focus on the Gaza conflict. Across major international outlets like the Associated Press, CBS News, and Al Jazeera, the dominant story remains the high number of Palestinian civilian casualties. Graphic reports detailing the deaths of women and children in tent camps have led to widespread questioning of all Israeli claims of military precision and moral conduct.

This is compounded by two particularly damaging narratives. A Haaretz report, prominently featured by NPR and NBC, alleged that Israeli soldiers were ordered to shoot at unarmed Palestinians seeking aid, creating what the report called a “killing field.” Simultaneously, Al Jazeera is extensively covering claims that dozens of children in Gaza have died from malnutrition resulting from a tightened Israeli siege, an allegation that amounts to the use of starvation as a weapon of war.

Israeli military officials have vehemently denied these allegations as “defamatory and baseless,” arguing they are part of an information war waged by Hamas and its allies. They contend that any civilian harm in Gaza is the tragic but unavoidable consequence of Hamas’s illegal strategy of embedding its fighters and infrastructure within densely populated civilian areas. “The moral responsibility lies with those who use their own people as human shields,” an IDF legal advisor stated. Officials stress that the situation in Gaza, a complex fight against a terrorist group, cannot be conflated with the strategic, surgical strike against state-level military assets in Iran.

The Strategic Outcome: De-escalation or Wider War?

Perhaps the most audacious part of Israel’s narrative is that the strike on Iran was an act of de-escalation. Defense analysts aligned with this view argue that by crippling Iran’s command structure and paralyzing its retaliatory capabilities, Israel prevented a far more catastrophic, region-wide war. The operation, they claim, successfully neutralized Iran’s most dangerous assets and deterred proxies like Hezbollah, thereby restoring a measure of long-term stability.

This perspective is not widely shared internationally. Sympathetic coverage of large state funerals in Tehran for the killed commanders, broadcast by the BBC and others, has served to humanize the Iranian side and portray them as victims of aggression. This, combined with a persistent Al Jazeera narrative questioning the “hypocrisy” of a nuclear-armed Israel attacking Iran to prevent proliferation, has damaged the moral and legal standing of the Israeli operation in the global public square.

Israeli officials counter that this is a false equivalence. They maintain that Israel’s undeclared nuclear capability is a deterrent held by a democracy, whereas Iran’s pursuit of a bomb is an offensive tool for a theocratic dictatorship that has flagrantly violated its Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) commitments. “The world should praise Israel for doing it a massive favor,” one cabinet minister said publicly. “We have eliminated the greatest engine of terror, extremism, and hatred on the planet.”

As the dust settles, the international community is left to weigh these competing realities. The final verdict on ‘Operation Am Kelavi’ may ultimately depend on whether global focus remains fixed on the tragic and complex humanitarian crisis in Gaza, or shifts to consider the long-term strategic implications of what Israeli leadership has defined as the necessary and successful prevention of a nuclear-armed Iran.