Hundreds of Israel365 members from across the globe gathered online Tuesday evening for a gripping special briefing titled “The Iran War as the Dawn of Universal Zionism,” as dramatic developments unfolded in real time across the Middle East. With Israeli and American forces actively striking targets deep inside Iran, the Israel365 community logged on from Amsterdam to Latin America, hungry for clarity, context, and hope amid the most consequential military confrontation the region has seen in decades.

The webinar was hosted by Rabbi Tuly Weisz, founder of Israel365 and author of the newly released Universal Zionism, and featured Knesset Member Ohad Tal of the Religious Zionist Party and Sagiv Asulin, a former senior intelligence officer and Iran expert at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA).

A 500-Year-Old Prophecy and Today’s Headlines

MK Ohad Tal, who chairs the Religious Zionist faction in the Knesset, opened with a theological perspective that drew audible resonance from the online audience. Describing his own journey from a secular upbringing to religious Zionism, he cited the miraculous return of the Jewish people to their homeland after two thousand years as the defining spiritual fact of the modern era.

“There is no precedent in human history to a nation that was killed and scattered to the four corners of the world and returned back to its homeland,” Tal said. “And I always asked myself — what is the purpose?”

His answer came in the form of a passage from the Yalkut Shimoni, a medieval rabbinic anthology drawing on Talmudic sources nearly five hundred years old. The text, Ohad Tal noted to the audience, reads as though written for this precise moment: the King of Persia provoking the King of Arabia, the nations of the world thrown into turmoil, and Israel seized by fear — until God says to His people, “My children, do not be afraid. Everything I have done, I have done only for your sake. The time of your redemption has arrived.”

“You cannot believe that this was written 500 years ago,” Tal said. “And this is exactly what we are seeing today.”

Breaking News: The Elimination of Ali Larijani

The webinar took place on an extraordinary day in the Iran War. Just hours before the briefing began, Israeli forces eliminated Ali Larijani — widely considered the most powerful figure in Iran following the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — along with the commander of the Basij paramilitary and approximately 300 senior members of its leadership.

“This is a very important day,” Tal told attendees. “We are putting all the pressure on the Iranian regime. And I want to emphasize: Israel has no conflict with the Iranian people. Before the revolution in 1979, Israel and Iran were the best allies in the region — and I expect that to come back again.”

Sagiv Asulin called the Larijani operation a testament to the depth and precision of Israeli intelligence. “This proves the level of intelligence that Israel has,” he said, “to achieve this kind of operation 18 days in, while the entire Iranian leadership knows they are targets.”

Asulin also named Mohammed Barker Kalibakh, chairman of the Iranian parliament and a former senior IRGC officer, as a figure to watch. As for the regime’s ultimate fate, Asulin was measured but confident: “The train is out of the station. The regime will never go back to what it was. It will never again be the threat to Israel and the surrounding countries that it used to be.”

From Defense to Offense: The Strategic Transformation

Rabbi Weisz pressed MK Tal on the broader strategic shift Israel has undergone since October 7th, noting the almost surreal nature of the current moment: Israeli and American pilots flying integrated missions, conducting strikes two thousand kilometers from Israel’s borders, with the Secretary of Defense declaring that “the two best militaries in the world” are fighting side by side.

Tal credited a remarkable convergence of events — from the Russia-Ukraine war occupying Moscow’s attention, to the fall of Assad in Syria, to the Houthis inadvertently training Israel for long-range precision strikes — as the hand of providence aligning conditions for this moment. “If all that had not happened,” he said, “we would not have had the ability to perform the incredible miracles we are seeing today.”

He was equally blunt about the pre-October 7th strategy of deterrence and economic inducement toward Hamas: “We’ve learned in the hardest way possible that this bully is not going to leave us alone. The biggest disease Western civilization suffers from is being willing to pay with our future to buy peace and quiet in the present.”

Sovereignty, Gaza, and the Road Ahead

In one of the webinar’s most significant moments, MK Tal articulated his now-unequivocal position in favor of Israeli sovereignty over Gaza — a stance he had been more cautious about in the early months of the war. He explained that his earlier hesitation was strategic, not ideological: sovereignty is a long-held conviction, but pushing it as an explicit war goal risked fracturing Israeli unity at the moment it was needed most.

“Reality has taught us in the clearest way that that is the only way forward,” he said. “When the people of Israel hold sovereignty over the land of Israel, that is the only way to truly secure peace, stability, prosperity, and blessing — to everybody. Jews, Arabs, the Middle East. The world will be a better place.”

Tal went further, stating his personal belief that Israeli sovereignty should extend through Southern Lebanon to the Litani River, and warning that Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood represent the next major civilizational challenge — one that may be even more dangerous than Iran, given Turkey’s NATO membership and sheer demographic scale.

The 8th Front: Winning the Information War

Asulin closed the webinar with a sobering assessment of what he calls the “8th front” — the war of public perception, social media, lawfare, and influence operations. While Israel is winning decisively on all seven kinetic fronts, he argued, it is losing badly on this eighth one.

“Trillions of dollars have been poured into a well-organized campaign — led by Iran, Qatar, and Russia — that humankind has never seen anything like,” Asulin said, describing a coordinated alliance between radical Islamist movements and progressive activist networks that he sees as systematically eroding Western civilization from within.

His prescription: Israel must formally declare the information war an official national security threat, and must build a broad alliance with the hundreds of millions of non-Jewish Zionists — particularly evangelical Christians — who share a stake in Western civilization’s survival.

“We have between 600 and 800 million non-Jewish Zionists who could be great partners,” Asulin said. “But we must raise the flag of leading Western civilization to survive — not simply recruit them to fight anti-Semitism on our behalf. If we do that, great things will happen.”

The Israel365 Community Stands Firm

Throughout the hour-long briefing, the comments section overflowed with responses from members in the United States, Europe, and Latin America expressing solidarity, anxiety, and faith. The Israel365 community — which spans over two million Christian supporters of Israel worldwide — has been among the most engaged audiences tracking the Iran War, recognizing that the conflict’s outcome will shape the future not only of the Middle East but of Western civilization itself.

Rabbi Weisz framed the evening’s discussion around the central thesis of his book: that the Jewish state is transitioning from an era of political Zionism — focused on survival and state-building — to a new era of Universal Zionism, in which Israel’s mission is nothing less than serving as a moral and spiritual beacon for all of humanity.

“We are not satisfied anymore to be a nation like all other nations,” Weisz said. “Israel has made it our mission to defend not only ourselves, but the whole planet. And thank God, we are not doing it alone.”

The webinar concluded on a note of defiant optimism. As Rabbi Weisz signed off with a cheerful “Shalom from Israel,” he noted with a laugh: “We got through a whole hour without a siren.”

Universal Zionism by Rabbi Tuly Weisz is available now at Israel365.com. Israel365 members can use the exclusive coupon code for 10% off.