The heads of Israel’s political opposition rallied around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the military on Saturday, after Jerusalem and Washington launched a major joint strike on Iran, with waves of attacks on sites across the Islamic Republic continuing throughout the day.

“We are united behind the pilots, fighters and security forces in the most justified operation there is,” Opposition Leader Yair Lapid declared in a video address, insisting that there were no political implications” of Israel’s war against Iran.

“We are all united on the operation,” he said, only days after boycotting a speech by Netanyahu during an official state visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The strikes on Saturday targeted top Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who an Israeli official later said was dead.

Targets in the campaign, which began shortly after 8 a.m. Israel time, also included Iran’s military, symbols of government and intelligence targets, according to an official briefed on the operation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic information on the attack.

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett, a leading rival to Netanyahu in the upcoming elections, expressed his “full support for the IDF, the Israeli government and the prime minister.”

“The entire nation of Israel stands behind you until the destruction of the Iranian threat,” Bennett posted on social platform X following the end of Shabbat. He thanked US President Donald Trump and asserted that the Iranian people now have an “historic opportunity to free themselves from a violent, disconnected, corrupt and failed terrorist regime.”

That sentiment was shared by other opposition figures, such as Blue and White’s Benny Gantz, who declared that “we are all standing together.” Yashar party chief Gadi Eisenkot stated that “today we are all united........

© The Times of Israel