JERUSALEM — When Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, sat down for Shabbat dinner Friday at his mother’s home in central Israel, nobody else at the table knew what was about to unfold.

Hours later, the general was being taken in an unmarked car to an underground military command center in Tel Aviv, where he gave the orders for Israeli forces to attack Iran, according to two Israeli military officials.

Those orders included the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.

“You are authorized to execute,” Zamir said, according to Israel’s military. “Strike your targets; you’re making history.”

Zamir, 60, has emerged as a key architect of the joint Israel-U.S. offensive, drafting war plans with his American counterparts; consulting with Israeli political leaders and Arab security officials; and overseeing airstrikes, the officials said.

“He’s managing the operation,” said Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom, a former senior Israeli military strategist. The Israeli military said Zamir was not available for an interview.

Current and former Israeli officials say Zamir has long been focused on the threat from Iran and its proxies in Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and Yemen and on how Israel, the United States and the Arab world can work together to thwart it.

“He considers Iran to be the head of the snake,” said Brig. Gen. Guy Hazut, who previously served under Zamir and has written about the Israeli military. “The idea is when you pull out the rug from under Iran, you pull out the rug from under all of its proxies surrounding us.”

A native of Eilat, Israel’s southernmost city, Zamir has served in various senior positions in the military, including as a commander of operations in Gaza.

Former colleagues say that his years as commander in a tank division proved to be formative, giving him a soldier’s eye view of the battlefield.

He became chief of staff in March last year, and analysts say he was appointed by the Israeli government to help rebuild public trust in the military after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, widely regarded as among the worst intelligence failures in the country’s history.

Zamir had previously warned about Israel’s preparedness in the face of a “heavy, long, multifront battle,” saying in 2021 that Israel needed a “critical mass” of soldiers that wasn’t there at the time.

He went on to lead a campaign against Hamas in Gaza that has come under intense international criticism. Israel’s bombardments caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians and widespread destruction.

The Israeli military has said it does not deliberately target civilians and accused Hamas of embedding its fighters among them.

Three months into Zamir’s tenure, Israel carried out a surprise attack on the Iranian nuclear program, igniting a 12-day conflict last June, during which Iran retaliated with volleys of ballistic missiles aimed at Israeli territory.

Hundreds of Iranians were killed in that war, including women and children, according to Iran’s Health Ministry. Dozens of Israelis were killed by Iran’s retaliatory strikes, Israeli authorities say.

The conflict was a watershed moment for Zamir, as Israel was for the first time fighting an open war against Iran, and not one of its regional proxies.

For years, the two sides had traded one-off clandestine attacks by land, sea, air and cyberspace. Zamir had argued that those attacks should be expanded. In a 77-page paper for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, he called for a focused campaign against Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and a defensive alliance against Iran among states in the region.

“It is important to act strategically with partners and act unexpectedly to create surprises and uncertainty and generate apprehension both in Iran and among its proxies,” he wrote.

In the weeks leading up to the current campaign, Zamir held a flurry of meetings with the top leadership of the U.S. military.

In January, he visited Washington to meet with Gen. Dan Caine, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And he has discussed intelligence and battle plans with Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of Central Command, a branch of the U.S. military responsible for the Middle East, according to the two Israeli officials.

The commanders have a close working relationship, and Zamir even hosted Cooper for Shabbat dinner in Israel, the officials added.

Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute, who worked with Zamir in the 2020s when he was a fellow at the institute, said he was someone known for speaking candidly, laying it down as he sees it.

That has extended to senior politicians. Zamir served as military secretary for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and although they appear to be aligned on the need to attack Iran, the two men have been at odds before.

When Netanyahu set out plans to invade Gaza City in August, which he said was an effort to rout Hamas, Zamir pushed back, raising concerns about the welfare of Israeli hostages in Gaza and the exhaustion of his soldiers. He has also been vocal about the military’s need to enlist more ultra-Orthodox Israelis in its ranks, even as the government delays passing legislation on the issue.

“He’s not a yes man,” said Moshe Tur-Paz, a centrist Israeli lawmaker and a member of the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “Professionalism is more important to him than political loyalty.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Adam Rasgon/Amit Elkayam
c. 2026 The New York Times Company