TEL AVIV — The assassination by Israel of Iran’s nuclear scientists, code named “Operation Narnia,” is a striking allusion to one of the most famed fantasy chronicles of the 20th century — C.S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia.”

The operation has proven to be so successful that it almost could be the stuff of fiction. During the Jewish state’s opening gambit last Friday, according to Israeli press reports, it killed nine nuclear scientists simultaneously in their beds. A 10th was killed soon after. Israel’s broader attack on Iran is code named “Operation Rising Lion,” a reference to the Biblical Book of Numbers.

Israel’s Channel 12 reports that Operation Narnia was staffed by “120 individuals from Military Intelligence and the Air Force were brought into a facility in Unit 8200 to plan the operation.” Unit 8200, known for clandestine operations, is an Israeli Intelligence Corps unit of the Israel Defense Forces. On Friday, an IDF drone reportedly killed another Iranian scientist at a safehouse in Tehran.

While the details of Operation Narnia remain under censorship, Israeli press is also reporting that a “secret weapon” was used against those nine scientists, though no further details are available. In 2020 Israel reportedly killed the scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, known as the “Father of Iran’s Nuclear Bomb.” That was achieved with an autonomous satellite-operated gun while he was driving outside of Tehran.

Channel 12 relays the opinion of Israel’s military brass that Operation Narnia was the most important part of the opening phase of Operation Rising Lion. One official is quoted as contending that  “the knowledge of these people is irreplaceable. It takes many years, if any, to regroup these minds who each worked for 20-40 years on the nuclear and weapons program.” The upper nuclear echelon, the source relates, is now “wiped out.”

Lewis, an Oxford don and Anglican theologian, wrote “The Chronicles of Narnia” between 1950 and 1956. He was a friend  and colleague of J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote “The Lord of the Rings.”  Lewis’s chronicles, set in the magical land of Narnia, have sold some 120 million copies and inspired television, stage, radio, film, and video game adaptations. The first book in the series, “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe,” is set during the London Blitz of 1940. A closet provides a portal to another realm.

The IDF could have reckoned that calling this operation Narnia, a realm of magic ruled over by the wicked White Witch, could capture something of both the fantastical nature of Israel’s ambitions and the reality of the Supreme Leader’s stranglehold over Iran, another fabled realm in need of liberation. There could be another rhyme, though, with Operation Rising Lion.

The only character to appear in all seven volumes of “The Chronicles of Narnia” is a talking lion, Aslan, who is known as the “King of Beasts.” In Lewis’s telling Aslan, who dies and is resurrected, is a stand-in for Jesus, known in the Christian faith as “the Lion of Judah.” Even without importing the Christian resonances, whoever named Operation Narnia could have enjoyed the alignment with the Rising Lion of Numbers.

Israel’s campaign against the Islamic Republic notched two more signal successes as Friday turned to the Sabbath. The IDF confirms the killing of the head of the Palestinian Division in the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, Saeed Izadi. The military explains that he was  “one of the architects” of Hamas’s attacks of October 7, 2023, and “among the few who knew of it prior to its execution.” The IDF calls him a mastermind of the “Iranian regime’s plan to destroy Israel.”

Also eliminated in western Iran was another senior Quds Force official, Behnam Shahriyari. He was, the IDF reports, “responsible for all transfers of weaponry from the Iranian regime to its proxies across the Middle East.” In the small hours of Saturday morning some 50 Israeli war planes struck Iran’s nuclear facilities in Isfahan. The target was a centrifuge production center as well as additional military targets.

Meanwhile Iran has persisted in its own bombing campaign. Sirens rang out in Tel Aviv on Friday afternoon and around 2:40 a.m. On Friday, some 23 people were injured in Haifa, where a barrage of missiles struck the Al Jarina Grand Mosque, first built in 1775.