Operation Roaring Lion is the Israeli military designation for its component of the joint U.S.-Israeli strike campaign against Iran, initiated on 28 February 2026. The IDF stated that it struck 500 Iranian targets in the first wave. Israel reportedly launched the strike on Khamenei’s compound unilaterally, using U.S. intelligence — a detail that, if accurate, reveals the operational division of labor between Israeli strike execution and American intelligence support in the decapitation operation.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz disclosed on 4 March 2026 that Israel had initially planned to strike Iran in mid-2026, and that Prime Minister Netanyahu had set the aim of assassinating Khamenei as early as November 2025. This timeline indicates that the intelligence collection operation supporting the assassination — months of CIA surveillance and Israeli source reporting — was running concurrently with the diplomatic negotiations in Oman and Geneva, a temporal overlap examined in the diplomatic-intelligence paradox.
Related terms
- Operation Epic Fury — the U.S. component of the joint campaign
- Operation True Promise IV — Iran’s retaliatory designation