It’s the question that basically sets every dinner party debate or social media thread on fire: did Israel or Iran attack first? Honestly, if you’re looking for a simple "Person A hit Person B on this specific date" answer, you're going to be disappointed. History in the Middle East is rarely a straight line. It's more like a tangled web of "he said, she said," except with ballistic missiles and cyber warfare instead of schoolyard rumors.
Most people today look at the explosive events of 2024 and 2025 as the starting point. But the reality is that these two used to be buddies. Back in the 1960s and 70s, under the Shah, Iran and Israel were actually quite close strategic partners. They traded oil, shared intelligence, and generally played nice because they both felt like outsiders in a region dominated by Arab nationalism.
Everything flipped in 1979. The Islamic Revolution happened, and suddenly, the "Little Satan" (Israel) became the ideological arch-enemy of Tehran. Since then, it’s been a slow-motion car crash that finally went full-speed direct last year.
The "Shadow War" That Started It All
Before we got to the direct missile exchanges of the mid-2020s, there was the "Shadow War." For decades, the answer to who attacked first depended entirely on how you define an "attack."
If you mean through proxies, the finger points toward Iran. Starting in the early 1980s, Iran helped fund and train Hezbollah in Lebanon. Their goal? Harass Israeli forces and push them out of Southern Lebanon. Thousands of rockets have been fired by Hezbollah into Northern Israel over the years, all backed by Iranian money and tech. From Israel's perspective, these were Iranian attacks by another name.
On the flip side, if you look at covert ops and assassinations, Israel has been incredibly busy. For years, Iranian nuclear scientists have been meeting mysterious ends. Remember the remote-controlled machine gun that took out Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020? Or the Stuxnet virus that melted down Iranian centrifuges way back in 2010? Iran argues that Israel started the "hot" part of the war by violating their sovereignty and killing their citizens on their own soil.
April 2024: The Moment the Gloves Came Off
The timeline changed forever on April 1, 2024. This is the date many historians now point to as the end of the "shadow" era and the start of the direct war.
Israel launched an airstrike on an Iranian consular building in Damascus, Syria. It wasn't just a random building; it was a diplomatic facility, and the strike killed several high-ranking IRGC officers, including General Mohammad Reza Zahedi.
Tehran felt backed into a corner. They couldn't ignore a hit on a "diplomatic" site. So, on April 13, 2024, Iran launched over 300 drones and missiles directly from Iranian soil toward Israel.
It was a first.
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While 99% of those were shot down by Israel, the US, and even Jordan, the seal was broken. You can't un-ring that bell. Israel retaliated a few days later with a precise, limited strike near Isfahan to show they could hit Iran's sensitive sites if they wanted to. This 2024 exchange is what most people mean when they ask who attacked first in the modern, direct sense. Israel hit the consulate first; Iran hit the mainland first. Take your pick.
The 2025 Escalation: Operation Rising Lion
By the time we hit June 2025, the "limited" nature of the conflict vanished. Following months of tension and the collapse of any remaining nuclear diplomacy, the situation turned into what we now call the Iran-Israel War.
On June 13, 2025, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion. This was a massive, multi-pronged surprise attack. They didn't just target military bases; they went after nuclear facilities in places like Natanz and Fordow. They also used targeted assassinations to take out Iranian leadership in their homes. It was a decapitation strike intended to end the threat once and for all.
Iran’s response—Operation True Promise III—was equally massive. They fired upwards of 1,000 ballistic missiles. Unlike the 2024 exchange, this one caused real damage to Israeli infrastructure, including the Haifa power plant and the Bazan oil refinery.
Who Is Actually to Blame?
Trying to find the "first" attacker is like trying to find the first drop of water in a flood.
- The Proxy Argument: Pro-Israel voices say Iran started it decades ago by encircling Israel with "rings of fire" (Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis).
- The Sovereignty Argument: Pro-Iran voices say Israel started it by assassinating scientists and bombing sovereign territory in Syria for years before Iran ever fired a shot from its own land.
- The 2025 Context: Some argue the June 2025 Israeli strikes were a "preemptive" defense because Iran was allegedly weeks away from a nuclear breakout. Others see it as an unprovoked act of aggression.
What You Need to Know Moving Forward
As of early 2026, we are living in the shadow of the fragile ceasefire brokered in late 2024 and the subsequent fallout of the 2025 strikes. The region is fundamentally changed. The "Axis of Resistance" is weakened after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, but Iran remains a formidable, albeit scarred, power.
If you’re trying to make sense of the news today, keep these three things in mind:
- Cyber is the new front line. Even when the missiles stop, the hacking doesn't. Watch for "technical glitches" in power grids or water systems; those are often the real "first strikes" of the modern era.
- The US factor is huge. With the US having joined the 2025 conflict via Operation Midnight Hammer, the "Israel vs. Iran" dynamic is now officially a "West vs. Iran" dynamic.
- Internal stability matters. Recent protests in Iran (January 2026) show that the regime is fighting a war on two fronts: one against Israel and one against its own people.
To stay informed, don't just look for who fired the latest missile. Look at the diplomatic backchannels in Cairo and Doha. That’s where the real story of whether this stays a "cold" or "hot" war is being written. Keep an eye on the IAEA reports—if those inspectors can't get back into Fordow soon, we might see a repeat of June 2025 sooner than anyone wants.