As Israel Attacks Iran, a U.S. Army Colonel's Dire Warning About Israel’s Nukes is More Prescient Than Ever

Apocalyptic right wing Zionism now runs Israel and its military. Will it launch nuclear weapons?

On June 12, Israel launched an overnight attack on Iran, killing senior military officials, targeting military infrastructure including nuclear sites, and killing civilians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the operation, dubbed “Operation Rising Lion”, would carry on until the threat is neutralized.

The attack came as the Trump administration continued negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program and gave conflicting statements, stating that he told Netanyahu not to strike Iran but that he believed “it could happen.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied U.S. involvement, though the U.S. had removed personnel from locations in the regions in anticipation of an Israeli strike and Iranian response.

The day before, U.S. Steve Witkoff spoke at a United Hatzalah gala, indicating that the U.S. is fully behind Israel.

“A nuclear Iran is an existential threat to Israel, and it is an existential threat to the United States,” Witkoff said. “We must stand together with resolve to stop it. Whatever it takes.”

While the extent of the damage to Iran’s military command structure and capabilities remain unclear, the escalation raises questions about how far Israel will go, and if it will use its secret nuclear arsenal.

A Two-Decade-Old Warning

Dr. Warner “Rocky” D. Farr, a retired U.S. army colonel whose decorated career spanned five decades, passed away on November 20, 2024.

His death came amid the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza and only weeks after Iran carried out its Operation True Promise 2. The unprecedented missile salvo on Israeli military installations not only exposed the vulnerability of its air defenses,] but raised pressing concerns about a possible Israeli nuclear strike.

Now that Israel has struck Iran, apparently with U.S. foreknowledge (at the very least), while Washington pressed Tehran to curtail its nuclear program, the peril of Israel’s nukes is now in sharp relief. Iran’s intelligence services have also seized sensitive and classified information about the locations of Israel’s secret nuclear missiles, adding another layer of intrigue to this historic confrontation.

This may not have been lost on at least one high ranking U.S. government official. Director of National intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently appeared in Hiroshima, Japan, to warn against the dangers of nuclear war and chastising “warmongers.” Though she stopped short of naming them or specifying which conflict she was referring to, it is hard to believe, in light of Israel’s attack, that her critique was not referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his most fervent supporters in the U.S..

Farr was not only considered a trailblazer in Army Special Forces and military medicine, but foresaw the danger of Israel's undeclared nuclear weapons. In 1999, he published a review of the arsenal, commissioned by the U.S. Air Force Counterproliferation Center “to provide information and analysis to U.S. national security policy-makers and USAF officers to assist them in countering the threat posed by adversaries equipped with weapons of mass destruction.”

The paper, titled “The Third Temple’s Holy Of Holies: Israel’s Nuclear Weapons" examined the development and history of Israel’s nuclear weapons, occasions where they were nearly launched, and pointed to the obvious dangers of society and military bent on permanent occupation possessing a secret nuclear weapons program.

What is the chain of decision and control of Israel’s weapons? How susceptible are they to misuse or theft? With no open, frank, public debate on nuclear issues, there has accordingly been no debate or information on existing safeguards. This has led to accusations of “monolithic views and sinister intentions.”

Would a right wing military government decide to employ nuclear weapons recklessly? Ariel Sharon, an outspoken proponent of “Greater Israel” was quoted as saying, “Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches.”

Could the Gush Emunim, a right wing religious organization, or others, hijack a nuclear device to “liberate” the Temple Mount for the building of the third temple? Chances are small but could increase as radicals decry the peace process. A 1997 article reviewing the Israeli Defense Force repeatedly stressed the possibilities of, and the need to guard against, a religious, right wing military coup, especially as the proportion of religious in the military increases.

If Ariel Sharon, who went on to become prime minister, or Gush Emunim (the settler movement launched in the wake of the 1973 war to establish settlements throughout the occupied Palestinian territory) seemed extreme to Farr in 1999, today’s genocidal Israel makes them look quaint and moderate.

Religious Zionists today are no longer limited to an activist movement tacitly supported by the government. Despite accounting for only 12% of Israel’s population (others estimate the proportion as high as 30%), they have taken over the government itself and all of Israel’s institutions, including the media, judiciary, and more.

While Gush Emunim established settlements in violation of Israeli law, it maintained the traditional Jewish prohibition on going to the Temple Mount – known to Muslims as the Al-Aqsa compound. The punishment for stepping foot onto the Temple Mount, according to virtually all rabbis including Israel’s Chief rabbis, is known as kareth, which means excommunication.

Zionists worship at the Temple Mount in violation of Israel’s International agreements and Jewish law. Source: Israel Today

Today, a combination of both secular and religious Zionists* are active on the holy site on a daily basis, where they openly conduct lengthy prayer sessions and nationalist demonstrations under the protection of heavily armed occupation forces. This is a recent development, unliterally imposed by Israel, in violation of the arrangement Israel had imposed in 1967 commonly referred to as the “the status quo,” the most essential aspect of which states that Jews are allowed to visit the holy site (despite Jewish religious prohibitions), but those who wish to pray be redirected to the Western Wall. While the Israeli government publicly claims there has been no change to the status quo, this transformation has gradually proceeded over a period of decades and exponentially accelerated since the October 7 attack, turning the site into what Hebrew University professor Eran Tzidkiyahu called an “open air synagogue.” At the same time, Palestinians have seen their access to the site dramatically reduced, with Israeli forces imposing age restrictions, outlawing religious groups that protest Israeli infringement, and repeatedly attacking worshippers inside the Al-Qibli mosque itself.

Even with Israel having unilaterally imposed its own control over the holy site, the Temple movements remain unsatisfied, and demand the total expulsion of all Palestinians and Muslims from the site, with the most fanatical among them calling to demolish the Dome of the Rock and construct a “third temple” in its place.

While this long-term development cannot be ignored – and is listed by Hamas as the primary reason for the October 7 attack – the most meaningful accomplishment of religious Zionism is the take-over of Israeli society’s central institution: the military.

The apocalyptic right’s ‘quiet revolution’

In Israel’s early years, religious Zionists avoided sending their sons to enlist in the military for fear its secular nature would corrupt their lifestyle. The army created hesder (arrangement) yeshivas in order to accommodate them, however those offered only shortened periods in combat and its graduates did not go on to become officers or seek careers in the military.

In 1987, Rabbis Eli Sadan and Yigal Levenstein founded the Bnei David pre-military academy in order to advance religious Zionist influence and place its soldiers into power positions occupied by secular Zionists and for careers in the military. Just 67 people signed up for its inaugural class. In 1990, religious Zionists made up around 10% of the population but contributed only 2.5% of cadets in the Israeli military officers academy. By 2005 religious Zionists accounted for 27% of military officers academy cadets. Today, according to former IDF Chief Psychologist Reuven Gal, more than 50% of cadets in the officers academy are from the religious Zionist sector. There are nearly 100 pre-army academies, primarily concentrated in the occupied territory, and nearly 50,000 alumni. More than half of the cadets in the army officers’ academy are from the religious Zionist camp, and many have reached top positions.

Bnei David’s website notes that a “total of 2500 enlistees of whom 35% served in elite units and 50% went on to become commissioned officers. More than 100 have chosen the army as their life-career and are steadily rising up the ranks of command.” Among them are Bnei David alumni including Roman Goffman, now Benjamin Netanyahu’s military secretary, and Brigadier General Yehuda Vach, the commander of the Golani brigade unit that massacred 15 paramedics and rescue workers in April, 2025.

The academy boasts of having achieved a “quiet revolution” in Israel’s armed forces, achieving precisely what Farr warned about.

While some might be tempted to see the growing threat of an Israeli nuclear strike and the growth of the Temple movements as temporally but not ideologically related, Farr notes that “Temple” was Israel's code word for nuclear weapons.

Iran as “Amalek”

While Israel would be unlikely to deploy a nuclear bomb on Gaza because of its proximity to Israeli settlements (despite the desire of at least one Israeli member of Knesset) the same cannot be said for its willingness to target Tehran, which is approximately one thousand miles away.

According to a recent poll commissioned by Penn State University, 65% of Israelis believe the Palestinians are a modern incarnation of “Amalek” – a biblical enemy nation that personifies evil and is to be exterminated, not sparing a single infant. While the mainstreaming of this genocidal discourse accelerated after October 7, Netanyahu – who is completely secular – began to refer to Iran as Amalek in 2009. Jeffrey Goldberg described a conversation with Netanyahu.

The prime minister’s preoccupation with the Iranian nuclear program seems sincere and deeply felt. I recently asked one of his advisers to gauge for me the depth of Mr. Netanyahu’s anxiety about Iran. His answer: “Think Amalek.”

With Netanyahu waging war in command of an army whose rank-and-file consists of apocalyptic right-wing zealots bent on extermination of what they believe to be the reincarnation of biblical enemies, a growing national obsession with conquest of the third holiest site in Islam, and access to an undeclared and opaque arsenal of nuclear weapons, Dr. Farr’s decades-old warning now echoes like an air-raid siren as the non-NATO world, which could only wring its hands at the livestreamed genocide in Gaza, now beholds an even greater horror: the growing threat of a nuclear holocaust, which the Israeli government, military, and most of its citizens, seem ready to unleash.

*Secular Zionism, which emerged in the 19th century, recast Judaism from a religion into a mythology to justify their nationalist goals of a “Jewish homeland.” Religious Zionism believes that Jewish nationalism is a fulfillment of God’s promise, thereby converting Zionism into a religion.