Bill Gates once said that people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year and underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade.
We just finished reading the Megillah. Most people assume the story of Purim unfolds over a year or two. But the actual timeline spans more than a decade. Achashverosh’s opening feast takes place in his third year of his reign; the decree against the Jews comes in his twelfth. Nine years separate the party from the pogrom. Events separated by years that no one living through them could have connected. Our job is to look backwards in time and put the pieces of the puzzle together and see the Divine plan.
When Moshe asks to see the Divine presence, G-d responds: “You will see my back, but my face cannot be seen” (Shemot 33:23). We do not see providence as it unfolds. We see it only after it has passed.
We are living through such a moment now. Our task is to step back and see the whole picture.
The chain of events that led to last Shabbat’s joint American Israeli strike on Iran and the elimination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei did not begin on February 28, 2026. It began years earlier.
Step 1: October 25, 2009: A wedding in New Jersey. Two real estate dynasties come together. Ivanka Trump converts to Orthodox Judaism and marries Jared Kushner. Few could have imagined the future impact of that union. Yet it placed a committed Jewish son-in-law beside a future American president. Kushner would later help broker the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and four Arab states and strengthening Gulf alliances. Those partnerships would matter when pressure mounted for decisive action against Iran. No one at that wedding was thinking about Tehran.
Step 2: October 7, 2023. Hamas massacres 1,200 Israelis, triggering a cascade Iran cannot control.
Step 3: September 2024: The pager operation. Thousands of pagers carried by Hezbollah fighters explode simultaneously across Lebanon. The Mossad had spent years penetrating Hezbollah’s supply chain, embedding explosives into the very devices Hezbollah believed were their most secure communications tool. Hezbollah’s command structure collapsed. Nasrallah was eliminated. Iran’s most powerful proxy was broken.
Step 4: October 2024: Operation Days of Repentance. Iran’s air defenses destroyed. Israeli strikes demolish twenty of Iran’s Russian-supplied S-300 air defense batteries. At the time, this reads as a tit-for-tat exchange. In retrospect, it removes the shield that would have blocked everything that followed.
Step 5: December 2024: Syria falls. With Hezbollah shattered, Assad lost his regional military support. Syria collapsed. Iran’s primary land bridge for weapons into Lebanon and Gaza was severed. Iran was now encircled in ways it had never been before. Israel was able to destroy Syria’s air defense system, effectively providing it with undetected air access to Iran.
Step 6: June 2025: The Twelve-Day War. With Iran’s S-300 air defenses already gone and its proxies dismantled, Israel struck Iran’s nuclear facilities directly. The United States joined on June 22, bombing Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. This war also destroyed part of Iran’s ballistic missile infrastructure. The first war cleared the skies. The second crippled the arsenal. February 2026 required both.
Step 7: November 2020 and November 2024: Two elections. When Trump lost in 2020, it looked like a defeat. It may have been a deferment. Assad did not fall until December 2024. Had Trump won consecutively, he would have been constitutionally ineligible to serve now. Perhaps it was G-d’s plan that he did not become president in 2021 so that he could return.
Mordechai says to Esther: “U’mi yodea im l’et kazot higat la’malchut,” and who knows if it was not for precisely this moment that you came to royalty (Esther 4:14). Not for great things in general. For this specific convergence. This precise window.
In the summer of 2024, Trump survived two assassination attempts. Bullets passed within centimeters. A man preserved through circumstances that defy probability returned to office at the exact moment the chain required someone willing to say yes.
Step 8: On February 28, intelligence confirmed Khamenei was aboveground at his compound in Tehran. The strike was accelerated. Decades of state terror, from the funding of Hamas to October 7 itself, traced back to one man. He is gone.
The Megillah tells us, “Asher yishletu haYehudim heimah b’son’eihem” – the Jews prevailed over their enemies. Not through one dramatic reversal. Through a sequence that only later revealed its unity.
Purim is not a story of instant miracles. It is a story of patient preparation, hidden alignment, and a moment when all the threads tighten at once.
Our obligation is to look back with clarity. To see a wedding years ago, a diplomatic breakthrough, a shattered proxy, a fallen regime, two wars, two elections, a life preserved, and understand that they are not isolated events. They are chapters in one story.
May we merit to see its completion. And may we have the courage to name what we see. Not coincidence. Not strategy alone. The hand of G-d, visible from behind, exactly as promised.