By Gustav Krös
02/07/2025
On Friday, 13th June, we saw one of the modern age’s greatest feats of patience come to fruition, when Israel launched its attack on Iran. The attack brought to an end 46 years of patiently waiting on Israel’s part to launch their attack on Iran at the ‘last minute’, before Iran could acquire their own nuclear weapons.
Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Iranian monarchy on 11 February 1979, which became known as the Iranian Revolution. After Khomeini took control of Iran, he immediately took on an anti-Israel stance, handing over the Israel Embassy in Tehran to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), and began referring to Israel as ‘Little Satan’. For the past 46 years, Israel has thus been acutely aware that Iran wants to destroy it and replace it with an Islamic Palestinian state.
Iran has had a nuclear program since the late 1950s, but since the 1979 Revolution, fears have grown that the new Iranian regime will use the program to build a nuclear bomb as part of their agenda to destroy Israel. Then, in August 2002, it was discovered that Iran had been running a secretive nuclear programme since the early 1990s alongside its civilian programme. The discovery of the secret programme confirmed that Iran harboured nuclear ambitions beyond purely for civilian use.
What followed, since the discovery in 2002, can be described as a ‘diplomatic dance’ between Iran and the West, intended to allow Iran to continue their nuclear programme while trying to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons. Knowing the extremist mindset of the Iranian regime, Israel has thus been monitoring this ‘diplomatic dance’ of negotiations for more than 20 years, well aware that a day would come when they would have to attack Iran. Due to their small geographical size, Israel could not allow Iran to strike first. And, to avoid being perceived as the aggressor, it had to patiently wait until the ‘last minute’ to show that it had no choice but to attack Iran.
This all culminated on Thursday, 12 June, when the UN-backed atomic watchdog passed a resolution declaring that Iran is not complying with its obligations regarding nuclear non-proliferation. Thus, with the UN officially acknowledging that Iran was not adhering to previous agreements—together with intel on how close they were to producing a nuclear weapon—Israel’s waiting came to an end, and on 13 June, they attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities.
It will be difficult for anyone to put themselves in Israel’s shoes with regards to the past 46 years— especially the past 23 years since Iran’s nuclear weapon programme became evident. To sit and wait for Iran as they prepare themselves to annihilate you, knowing you can’t defend yourself from the outset because then you will be perceived as the ‘bad guy’—instead, you must patiently wait for all these years, constantly evaluating all available intel, and hope you don’t get the timing wrong. Waiting one or two weeks too long can mean the end of the nation; attacking too early would significantly determine the extent of the international diplomatic fallout.
Looking at the situation now, it does seem that Israel got their timing just right—and within this, there is a lesson for us: the lesson of patience.
Patience is listed in Galatians 5:22-23 as one of the nine Spiritual Fruit: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”
Yet, within the Body of Christ today, I want to venture as far as to say that patience is probably the rarest of Spiritual Fruit to grow and mature. The modern world has become a world of instant gratification. People don’t have to wait for anything anymore. You don’t have to wait until you reach a telephone to make a phone call, wait for postmail, wait for your weekly television programme, or wait for the evening news. These days, with smartphones and millions of apps, you can do almost anything from anywhere in the world—as long as you have a Wi-Fi signal.
People below 30 years of age have grown up in a world where waiting looks very different from what it looked like for all the previous generations. But just because the world has changed doesn’t mean God’s desire for us to wait and be patient has changed.
The Israelites had to wait 400 years before they were freed from slavery in Egypt and took possession of the Promised Land. In comparison, the Jewish people had to wait roughly 2,000 years for the prophecies concerning their return to the Promised Land to be fulfilled. Alongside this, it has also been almost 2,000 years that we have waited to see Christ return on the clouds.
Waiting and patience are part of our journey of maturity in our relationship with God. It is through patience that we show God and those around us that we trust Him—that we don’t take matters into our own hands or make our own plans. By waiting on God, we testify that He knows best and that His timing is perfect.
Many times, we fail the test of patience because of being swept up by the culture of the day. Waiting is almost perceived as a weakness. We would rather make our own plans and ask the Lord to bless them, instead of praying, asking the Lord for His guidance, and patiently waiting for His answer.
It is ultimately only through patience that we can receive answers, confirmation, and revelations from the Lord—and it is thus through patience that you truly come to know the Lord. Those who are merely interested in the acts of God and attaining salvation have very little appetite for patience.
May we, therefore, draw inspiration from those who exemplify patience to us, and may we desire the Spiritual Fruit of patience. Let us pray and ask the Lord to grow our capacity of patience, so that we may grow in the depth of our relationship with Him.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/event/Iranian-Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran
https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/06/1164291
