Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and U.S. President Donald Trump during a press conference after meeting at Mar-a-Lago.Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
If America’s motivations for attacking Iran have been a matter of debate, analysts say, Israel’s ultimate goal is an indisputable one: regime change.
The war in Gaza has often been viewed solely through the lens of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, has always placed the Gaza war within the larger context of his country’s existential war with the Islamic Republic, which has long funded proxy wars along Israel’s borders, supporting Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Leading opposition members of the Israeli parliament and military experts have backed Mr. Netanyahu in this assessment, particularly given that Iran, which has long threatened to destroy Israel and the United States, had also ramped up its drive to produce weapons-grade uranium and built up a ballistic missile arsenal.
Eighty-one per cent of Israelis support the war, according to a poll conducted Sunday and Monday by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University.
This war is one, therefore, that Israel has long anticipated.
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For Israel, the military action is more about the threat to its existence, explained Major-General (res.) Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli national security adviser.
“For the Americans, it is more about the big picture of the Middle East that they want to achieve. At the end of the day, both are related to weakening Iran.”
Mr. Trump is trying to build a new Middle East, based on the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and his 20-point plan to rehabilitate Gaza, said Maj.-Gen. Amidror, who is also a fellow at the U.S.-based Jewish Institute for National Security of America.
He said the U.S. President also wants to expand the Abraham Accords from his first term, which created a rubric for Arab states to normalize ties with Israel.
“This idea could not be implemented without putting Iran in a totally different position relating to its ability to harm the [Middle East] neighbourhood,” he explained, adding that Mr. Trump could move forward with his vision if Iran were weak enough, even without regime change, but eventually the Islamic Republic would rebuild its military capacity.
Mr. Netanyahu speaks in Meitar, Israel, on Jan. 28.Ariel Schalit/The Associated Press
Ultimately regime change would need combat forces on the ground and/or an organized Iranian opposition force, he said.
The joint military campaign launched Saturday morning followed last June’s 12-day war with Iran, in which the country’s nuclear facilities were badly damaged. Israel and the U.S. have argued that the destruction was not enough to limit Iran’s ballistic missile threat or the possibility that it could in the future produce nuclear weapons.
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth boasted Wednesday that this time around Iran’s missile and ballistic threat would be decimated, stressing that American and Israeli air power would soon control Iran. The war was necessary, he said, because negotiations had failed.
Earlier in the week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio painted Israel as impatient to go to war.
U.S. President Donald Trump, however, told reporters Tuesday that he set the timing for the war, believing that Iran was on the verge of attacking Israel and U.S. targets first. “I didn’t want that to happen, so if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand. But Israel was ready, and we were ready,” he said.
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Since Saturday, Israeli and U.S. forces have targeted both Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile facilities, but also assassinated Islamic Republic officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Military expert Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher on Iran at the INSS, said this second Iran war is one of opportunity. Iran was not an immediate threat to the United States, he said, because it was years away from producing nuclear weapons.
Iran was weakened by the June war, and Mr. Trump came to believe he could use firepower to change a country’s internal dynamics, Mr. Citrinowicz said.
He predicted that after two weeks, Mr. Trump would begin to look for “an off ramp,” particularly given the rising price of oil and the fact U.S. public opinion is against the war.
Israel, he said, will not be bound by the U.S. timetable, because it could continue the war without American military support.
“I don’t think you will see the regime collapsing. It will stay. It won’t surrender,” Mr. Citrinowicz said.
And no matter what happens in Iran, there would still not be peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, nor would it resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said.