The beginning of the end of Iran's war against the west

Israel is paying in blood for defending the free world

Iranian schoolgirls remove their hijabs in defiance of the regime

This is an expanded version of my column in today’s edition of The Times (£)

At four o’clock yesterday morning, after my phone shrieked an ear-piercing warning of an imminent missile attack from Iran, I stumbled down to our underground shelter here in Jerusalem as the air-raid siren began to wail.

With other residents of our apartment complex enduring yet another disturbed night under the nerve-shattering stream of alerts and sirens, I wondered if the ominous booms and thuds meant missiles were being shot down by Iron Dome or were direct hits.

As the sun rose we had the answer: that attack had left at least eight Israelis dead and hundreds injured.

These Iranian ballistic missiles are far more powerful than the rockets fired at Israel for decades from Gaza, Lebanon and most recently Yemen. And so many are being fired at once that some are getting through Israel’s fabled air defences. So the toll of civilian deaths and injuries is rising.

Even as these casualties mount, however, there is huge relief that the nightmare under which everyone here has been living for so long, of a nuclear-armed Iran determined to wipe Israel from the map, is finally being tackled.

No-one here doubts for a moment that Israel will win this war, even though it may be protracted and the price may be very steep. Israel hasn't started a war with Iran: it has started the end of Iran’s war against Israel and the west because the Jewish state believes it has no choice.