Hezbollah Spotted Israeli Jets and Warned Iran - Here's How the Strike Was Saved

Speaking at a Religious Zionist party conference in Rishon Lezion on Tuesday night, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich provided an unprecedented look into the chaotic behind-the-scenes reality of Israel's massive June 2025 strike on Iran.

Speaking at a Religious Zionist party conference in Rishon Lezion Tuesday night, Smotrich revealed that Hezbollah spotted Israeli aircraft heading toward Iran and immediately warned Tehran, forcing commanders to rewrite the entire attack plan while jets were already in the air.

"The plan was for our missiles to strike at 2:00 a.m., and after two hours the Iranians would respond, with our aircraft in the air," Smotrich explained. "At 11:30 p.m. we received intelligence that Hezbollah saw the aircraft and gave warning to Iran."

What happened next was pure military improvisation. Israeli intelligence watched Iranian officials scramble into a command center that hadn't been identified before. Commanders made a split-second call to change the entire attack plan, mid-flight.

"While the aircraft were in the air, we changed the attack plan," Smotrich said. "It delayed us by an hour, but we managed to take them out too, along with the scientists."

Smotrich also revealed the personal cost of operational security. While Israel's most critical military operation in years was going sideways, his family was being evacuated.

"Five minutes earlier my wife got a call: 'You have 15 minutes to pack the kids, you're leaving the house,' after we had been preparing for half a year and I couldn't tell her anything," he said.

The strike was part of Operation Narnia, designed to concentrate Iran's top nuclear scientists in one location for elimination. Israeli intelligence had ranked Iranian nuclear experts into four tiers based on their knowledge and irreplaceability, with those possessing the most critical military expertise at the top.

The operation successfully eliminated multiple senior scientists, experts in nuclear engineering, physics, reactor physics, chemical engineering and materials science. Many were successors to Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the father of Iran's nuclear program who was assassinated in 2020.

Shas chairman Aryeh Deri described the cabinet deliberations in his party magazine days after the strike: "This was the most difficult decision any cabinet in the State of Israel has made. Long months of discussions, hundreds of hours of security briefings, analyses and risk assessments, everything funneled into one charged, fateful moment: whether to approve the plan for military attack against Iran."

Deri said he prayed for guidance on the decision: "I felt I didn't have the ability to decide on such a weighty issue. I prayed to God to show me the way. And I can say that I saw 'God's salvation in the blink of an eye.' God accompanied us throughout the entire way, at every stage."

The June 13, 2025 strike launched Operation "Rising Lion" and dealt a major blow to Iran's nuclear program and military infrastructure.

Maariv contributed to this article.