In Tehran and across Iran, as the skies over the capital and major cities fill with the sound of explosions and missiles, a significant portion of Iranian society is not only unafraid, but is in fact greeting these attacks with a sense of hope—and even celebration.

In 586 BCE, the Babylonian Empire under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar II brutally attacked and captured Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple of Solomon, and took many Jews into

captivity in Babylon.

Forty-seven years later, in 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great, the Persian king, conquered Babylon, freed the Jewish people, and permitted them to return and rebuild the Temple—an

act remembered in Jewish and Christian scripture as one of history’s great gestures of benevolence.

Today, in March 2026, many Iranians are symbolically revisiting this history. After 47 years of rule by the Islamic Republic—established in 1979—Israel and the United States, under the leadership of Donald Trump (notably the 47th president of the United States) and Benjamin Netanyahu, have launched a large-scale military operation targeting the Islamic Republic’s military, nuclear, and command infrastructure, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The operation, which began on February 28, 2026 (9 Esfand 1404) with the assassination of Ali Khamenei and extensive strikes, is viewed by some Iranians not as an act of aggression, but as a form of “repayment of Cyrus’s kindness” and an opportunity to escape what they........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)