What Is Israel’s Endgame with Iran?

After the first session of the attacks between Israel and Iran, on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a direct appeal to the Iranians to upgrade against theocratic rule. He said that the RISING Lion – the name of the blog for a sweeping assault of Israel on the nuclear and Iranian facilities – was “wiping the path” for them, in a video clip released by his administration. He said: “It is time, to unite your knowledge and historical heritage by standing for your freedom from a evil and repressive system.” He added that this system “was not weaker.” Then, in the Persian, with the flag of Israel behind it, Netanyahu called the crowd’s cry that mobilized tens of thousands of Iranians during the patriot “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests In 2022, “Zan, Zandji, Azadi”, he said. On Saturday, he claimed, in another video, that senior Iranian leaders were already “worshiping their bags” and preparing to escape.
The Israel campaign, militarily and speaking, has evolved beyond its initial goals. During the weekend, Iranian energy facilities, including the gas warehouse and an oil filter, hit huge fires and discharge smoke across the sprawling capital, which numbered about ten million people. “Tehran is burning,” has been taken a look at energy resources in other cities in other cities, as well, sabotaging the sources of Iran’s revenues. Israeli officials have also begun to inform the local and foreign media that the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khounai, the supreme leader since 1989, “not outside the borders.” (It was reported that President Donald Trump achieved the inscriptions in the idea, but the fact that the Israeli leaders discussed them with their counterparts in Washington reflecting their willingness to go.)
Israel has always been a military superiority over Iran. In the past two years, new air strikes and new secret operations were conducted against the allies of the Islamic Republic throughout the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and the Hythonians in Yemen. Senior political leaders have been assassinated and thousands of fighters were killed. Israel has more momentum now. But achieving conclusive results will be difficult-whether it blocked the Iranian nuclear program, destroys its advanced arsenal of missiles, paralyzing its economy, or stimulating a counter-revolution.
“The initial attack was so successful that it is difficult not to raise your goals,” General Kenneth (Frank), the son, who led the US Central Command from 2019 to 2022, told me. But he warned, “You have to know what is possible.” Israel can destroy the Iranian nuclear program, “but I don’t think it can be completely eliminated.” In 2020, McKenzi executed President Trump’s order to kill General Qassem SoleimaniThe head of the jacket force, the Iranian revolutionary goalkeeper, who was pushing dozens of attacks on the goals of the United States. Jerusalem continued to organize attacks on American employees in the region.
Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister and retired general, estimates that Israel can only delay the Iranian nuclear program. “Even the United States cannot delay them for more than a few months,” Barak said on Friday. Iran has fragmented its nuclear program – which Tehran claims is only to produce peaceful energy – among different parts of the country. One of its main facilities in the Fordow, which was buried more than two hundred feet under the Zagros Mountains, near the holy city of Qom.
Israel and the international community have long been concerned about expanding Iran’s program to build a bomb. In Washington, the Arms Control Association, a non -partisan group led by nuclear experts and former US officials, warned that the RISing Lion operation can reach “enhancing Tehran’s intention to advance its sensitive nuclear activities and perhaps moving forward in weapons, a step that did not take this stage.”
Windy Sherman, who led the American team that negotiated the nuclear deal signed by Iran and the six major authorities in the world, told me in 2015, he told me that the elimination of Israel from Iranian military copper may be a setback, “but it is not a strategy to end the Iran program”, which led the American team that negotiated the nuclear deal signed by Iran and the six major authorities in the world, in 2015. (Trump withdrew from one side From that deal, which has placed restrictions on uranium enrichment in Iran in exchange for economic relief, in 2018. In just two days, Israel was assassinated by the Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, the Supreme Commander of the Revolutionary Guards behavior, and the head of the country’s aviation program. Sherman said: “The supreme leader will only replace them with their deputies, then their deputies, and their deputies after that.”
The possibilities of changing the Israeli regime, as well, seem to be small. In X, Danny Citrinovich, the former head of Iran’s analysis of Israeli military intelligence, warned that the Netanyahu government had begun in a war based on the “illusion” that could be absorbed in the United States for the “hidden goal” of toppling the Islamic Republic. “The biggest problem,” he wrote, “How exactly … Israel intends[s] To end the war and preserve its achievements without entering the war of attrition, “it becomes open, like it The war in GazaWith no clear exit strategy.
In 2003, President George W. Bush launched the Iraqi freedom process to destroy nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in Baghdad. The implicit goal was to drop, then President Saddam Hussein. However, it was found that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction – and the United States was stuck there for an eight turbulent, an occupation that was born in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, led by prisoners detained by the American forces. Sherman pointed out that the Israeli opening opening in the current conflict “reminds us of our shock and awe in Iraq, when everyone thought we were very strong,” Sherman pointed out. “Then the shock and dread were sunk.” In any country being attacked, people tend to gather around science. The history of Persian nationalism dates back to about five thousand years, when the tribes united to create the first major empire in the world. Sherman said, “I don’t think this is easily dying,” Sherman said. “And you don’t know what you create when you are trying to destroy.”
For more than three decades, I had a dialogue with Nasser Hadian, a political scientist who received the education of the United States who taught Colombia and Tehran University. We talked again – I am in Washington, he is in Tehran – on the weekend, via WhatsApp. He said that about eighty percent of ninety -two million people in Iran oppose the leadership of the country’s solid line, but only “a very small number” will embrace Netanyahu’s call to change the system. The Israeli attack makes any “attempt to replace the government” less likely, at least at the present time. Even with the possible turmoil between minorities on the geographical and political environment of Iran, such as Baluch and Kurds, the Iranian state still “has enough support to survive.”
Jonathan Panekov, a former American intelligence officer in a profession, wrote that many Israelis believe that political change in Iran will lead to a “new and better day”, because “nothing can be worse than the current theocratic system.” But he warned that history proves that alternatives can be “always worse”; Panelikov, in an article by the Atlantic Ocean Council, a non -party research tank in Washington, is not democratic, but a “revolutionary guards – more extreme machines”. “In such a case, Israel may find itself in a permanent, continuous and more intense war that is no longer in the shadows, as it was years ago.” Or, other experts warn, Iran can turn into a failed state in internal chaos, as happened in Iraq, with unintended consequences throughout the region.
There is no, so far, no organized or disciplined opposition group – either in Iran or in exile – is transferred to Tehran and the seizure of power. Reza Baglvi, the last son of the Shah, who was overthrown in the 1979 revolution, lived outside Washington, DC, for more than four decades. I once asked him at a dinner in Washington, what language was he dreamed of. “English or French,” answered. He could not remember the dream in the Persian.
Now under the siege, Tehran has a few options. Vaez said the only “good strategy” is not ready to decline. The extensive energy resources and its geological location in the Persian Gulf provides some influence, and oil prices have increased since the outbreak of hostilities. The price of raw for us seven percent in the first twenty -four hours. Iran has the third largest oil reserves in the world. It also controls the Hormuz Strait, as it passes about five global energy supplies every day. Fayez said that the war is leaking beyond the Middle East. Tehran may hope that the international energy markets will become more rocking and that “Trump Siomed first and gets Israel to stop.”
It seems that there is no post -slope yet, as destruction and death are committed in both countries. In Iran, more than two hundred people were killed, and thousands were wounded. Israel was deeply shaken by the retaliatory missile attacks, which killed at least twenty and wounded hundreds. On Saturday, Iran withdrew from the nuclear negotiations that were scheduled to take place in Amman the next day. The Trump administration insists that diplomacy has not died. “Iran and Israel must make a deal, and a deal will make a deal,” the president said on Sunday. Many calls and meetings were behind the scenes, as he claimed, on the social truth. “I am doing a lot, and I don’t get the credit for anything, but that is good, people understand. Make the Middle East great again!”
On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Aragchi, accused Israel that Israel is undermining diplomacy attempts in nuclear issues. Foreign diplomats said Tehran is ready to reduce its controversial program, but it also does not want to lose its right to enrich uranium at low levels of peaceful requests. (As a sign of a nuclear non -proliferation treaty, Iran has the right to produce civilian nuclear energy.) The intermittent power outage is already common.
In April, the Trump administration has set a sixty -day limit for new nuclear deal negotiations. (The 2015 agreement took two years of tormented diplomacy and ended as a document of one hundred and fifty pages, in addition to the accessories). Hadian, the political scientist, told me that many Iranians now believe that the United States has participated in “advanced deception” with Israel. Just return to the table will be difficult. Certainly reaching a new deal is more difficult, despite Iran’s losses. Revolutionary systems in nature with great greatness. Like Trump’s efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine or the war in Gaza, the president is unlikely to be able to end new hostilities – in a permanent way – directly. ♦