For the longest time, my perspective on Israel was unequivocal, and I wasn't quiet about it. I saw a narrative of aggression, disproportionate force, and a state acting with impunity. The news cycle only confirmed my bias. When I read the reports from CNN, AP, and NBC—sources I have trusted for my entire career—stating that an Israeli strike on Tehran’s Evin Prison had killed 71 non-combatants, I saw it as a straightforward war crime. It was the fatal blow to Israel’s claims of ‘surgical precision.’

Simultaneously, the images from Gaza painted a picture of a relentless humanitarian catastrophe: mass displacement into so-called ‘safe zones’ that were anything but, and the horrifying reports of hundreds of Palestinians killed while simply seeking food aid. The rising political tide in the West seemed to validate my view. A ‘Death to the IDF’ chant at Glastonbury becoming a police matter and Zohran Mamdani’s primary win in New York felt like a global awakening, a ‘sea change’ where criticizing Israel was no longer fringe but morally necessary. I viewed Israel’s claims of a successful ‘Operation Am Kelavi’ with deep-seated suspicion, seeing them as hollow propaganda contradicted by the IAEA’s more sober assessments. I believed Israel was acting recklessly, perhaps as part of a ‘forever war’ to ensure its Prime Minister’s political survival.

This was my worldview. It was built on credible reporting, reinforced by a global chorus of condemnation, and it felt righteous. It was also, I’ve come to realize with profound difficulty, dangerously incomplete.

My change didn’t come from a press release or a slick government spokesperson. It came during a late-night, off-the-record conversation with a former Western intelligence analyst I’ve known and trusted for years. He wasn’t trying to sell me a narrative. He simply laid out a timeline. Not a timeline of Israeli actions, but of Iranian ones. It detailed foiled terror plots in European capitals, the escalating flow of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah and the Houthis, and direct missile attacks on civilian centers. Then he pointed to a chart mapping Iran's uranium enrichment. It showed a terrifying, exponential curve. He pointed to a specific date on the calendar, just weeks away. “That,” he said quietly, “was the point of no return. Not a slogan. The moment they could produce enough weapons-grade material for a bomb before any inspector could even file a report.”

I felt a sense of cognitive dissonance so strong it was almost physical. The world I thought I knew—one where Israel was the primary instigator—was turned on its head. I was forced to confront the core tenets of my belief system, one by one.

First, I had to re-examine ‘Operation Am Kelavi.’ The pillar of my argument, supported by influential voices, was that this was an ‘unprovoked attack.’ But looking at the timeline, at the evidence of a regime that openly preaches annihilation and was on the precipice of acquiring the means to achieve it, the word ‘unprovoked’ became meaningless. What I had perceived as a rash act of aggression began to look like a desperate act of pre-emptive self-defense, a last resort after years of diplomacy had been used by Iran as a smokescreen to advance its nuclear ambitions. The question I was forced to ask myself was terrifyingly simple: Does international law require a nation to patiently wait for its own destruction?

Next, I had to confront the tragedy at Evin Prison. The number—71 non-combatants—was seared into my mind as an emblem of Israeli brutality. The narrative I held was simple: Israel bombed a prison compound and killed civilians. But the intelligence I was subsequently guided to review showed that Evin wasn’t just a prison. It was a known, active command-and-control hub for the IRGC’s Quds Force—the very entity directing the terror proxies that destabilize the entire region. The Iranian regime’s illegal and cynical practice of embedding critical military assets within civilian infrastructure was not a footnote; it was the central fact. The responsibility for those deaths, while no less tragic, became horribly complicated. It was no longer a simple story of an aggressor and its victims, but the grim outcome of a strategic choice made by the Iranian regime to use its own people as shields. The Israeli message of ‘targeting terror leaders’ was not a lie; it was a reflection of a brutal choice forced upon them by an enemy that operates without morality.

Even the idea that the operation was a failure had to be re-evaluated. My focus, like that of most media, was on the physical destruction. AP reports citing the IAEA said facilities were ‘damaged’ but not ‘obliterated.’ It fed my belief that this was all a PR stunt. What I failed to understand was that the primary goal wasn't just turning buildings to rubble; it was strategic decapitation. The operation, as I learned, involved a level of sophisticated deception and cyber warfare that effectively paralyzed Iran’s command structure. It crippled their ability to launch the massive, coordinated retaliation they had planned. The fact that Iran’s response was a fraction of what was anticipated, and that proxies like Hezbollah remained largely silent, wasn’t a sign of Israeli failure. It was the hallmark of its stunning success. The operation wasn’t an escalation; it was an act of de-escalation that likely prevented a catastrophic, full-scale regional war.

This new perspective is not comfortable. It doesn't erase the suffering of innocent people, in Gaza or anywhere else. But it has forced me to see that the simplistic, villain-centric narrative I subscribed to is a luxury we can no longer afford. The democratic world has been conditioned to see Israel as the perennial problem in the Middle East. We have ignored the far greater and more insidious threat: a messianic, apocalyptic regime in Tehran that is the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, that brutally oppresses its own people, and that was weeks away from holding the entire globe hostage with a nuclear weapon.

I was wrong. I was wrong to mistake an act of regional and global self-defense for simple aggression. I was wrong to ignore the cynical strategy of an Iranian regime that places its weapons behind its own citizens. I was wrong to focus only on the response and not on the existential threat that prompted it. My journey from certainty to doubt has been deeply unsettling, but it has led me to a more terrifying, and I believe more accurate, understanding of the world. Israel is not a perfect actor, but in this instance, it acted not as the region's aggressor, but as its last line of defense against a fanaticism that threatens us all.