Israel has stated a strategy for Iran, but it doesn’t think it will work
On Tuesday, Israel killed Iran security chief Ali Larijani and Brig. Gen. Gholamreza Soleimani, head of the Basij militia, which has had a central role in crushing dissent.
Larijani’s death is the biggest blow to the country’s leadership since Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed by Israel on the first day of the war, according to a New York Times analysis and The Wall Street Journal.
The killings highlight “how heavily Israel is relying on targeted killings to achieve its war aims — especially its goal of destabilizing the Iranian government and helping make way for a popular uprising by weakening its internal-security forces. Earlier this year, those forces killed thousands of unarmed protesters,” the Times says.
“If we persist in this, we will give them a chance to take their fate into their own hands,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israelis in a video message on Tuesday.
But senior Israeli officials have told U.S. diplomats that Iranian protesters will “get slaughtered” if they rise up against their government, according to a State Department cable reviewed by The Washington Post.
The cable summarized recent meetings between American officials and senior members of Israel’s National Security Council, Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday and Thursday, the Post says.
Narges Bajoghli, an Iran expert at Johns Hopkins University, says Iranians long have been skeptical of Israeli intentions, and the cable will be viewed by many as callous and exploitative of Iranian lives.
“I think a lot of people will feel very betrayed by this assessment,” Bajoghli says.
The Trump administration’s outlook on the risks facing Iran’s opposition has shifted since the start of the war, the Post says. President Trump initially urged Iranians to “take over your government” but recently has acknowledged that Iran’s security forces would kill protesters if they took to the streets.
“I really think that’s a big hurdle to climb for people that don’t have weapons,” Trump has said.
Iran has funded militias and political movements across the Mideast that are hostile to Israel, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
Israel’s effort to push for an uprising in Iran regardless of the number of fatalities is consistent with its decades-long effort to cause the “fragmentation of Iran” and “state collapse,” says Bajoghli.
The Times analysis wonders "whether Israel is killing so many Iranian leaders because that appears the surest way to achieve its military objectives — or merely because it can.”
For example, In 1972, after 12 of its Olympic athletes were slain in Munich, Israel launched a yearslong campaign of vengeance aimed at killing every person responsible, the Times says.
Larijani had a reputation as a pragmatist capable of working with moderates and hard-line military leaders alike, and his death could bolster hard-liners, analysts say.
He had ties to the United States through his daughter, Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, who was an assistant professor at Emory University medical school in Atlanta until she was dismissed in January following a petition launched by opponents of the Iran regime.
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