Filenews 21 June 2025 - by Marc Champion
Israel is once again demonstrating the extraordinary capability of its security services, both military and intelligence. After five days of airstrikes, Iran already appears to be showing that it wants to return to nuclear talks with the United States, which it broke off last Sunday.
However, this makes it all the more important to understand the scope of Israeli ambitions and the stakes – because, depending on how far Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to go, military success can either promote or distance his goal of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Perhaps the two most impressive aspects of Operation Rising Lion were the depth at which Israeli intelligence was able to penetrate the Iranian regime and the speed with which its air force secured air superiority. This allowed Israeli pilots to fly over much of Iran – including its capital. Iran's long-range ballistic missiles now appear to be more than just a simple weapon.
Netanyahu's direct appeals to the people of Iran to rise up against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as some of the targets he chose to bomb, suggest that regime change is also among Israel's goals, despite official denials. Punishing and degrading Iran's military are other goals.
It is possible that the regime will collapse or come to the negotiating table waving a white flag. It is possible, though relatively unlikely, to destroy the nuclear infrastructure buried under a mountain in Ford without U.S. involvement. But the risk and stakes will quickly increase if and when they are not implemented.
In that case, the time will soon come when Netanyahu will have to choose between the exit strategies he has pursued in Gaza or Lebanon. In the first, he continued the war instead of leaving, without having achieved his goal of eliminating Hamas with military forces. In the second, he withdrew Israeli troops as soon as they had effectively weakened Hezbollah, then sought to disarm it in cooperation with allies and Lebanese authorities.
In Iran, it is extremely important that Netanyahu follows the Hezbollah model if the campaign of military shock and awe does not bring quick results. Because the more it pushes to impose regime change, the more likely it is that Iran's priestly leadership will despair and—feeling that it has nothing to lose—will decide to expand the war.
The threats made by Iran's leaders to prevent the attack have not materialized, for the very simple reason that doing so would cause disaster. Iran cannot defeat a U.S.-backed Israeli military, let alone a combined U.S.-Israeli force. And if, as he has threatened, it strikes U.S. military bases, damages Gulf energy assets, or closes the Strait of Hormuz to disrupt global energy supplies, Donald Trump and his administration have made it clear that they will intervene.
With Iran's air defenses weakened and the attack on Iran working in its favour politically at home, the temptation for Netanyahu to simply continue bombing in the hopes of destroying Iran's nuclear program or forcing regime change will be strong. But he must - as he did in Lebanon - know when to declare victory and leave. Because even with the U.S. on its side, no one is invading Iran to guarantee a nuclear-free Iran. A wider war that would eventually produce an Iranian bomb is not in Israel's interest either.
Again, in the absence of a sudden collapse of the Islamic Republic or a strong agreement, it is highly likely that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will order the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to build a nuclear weapon, for the simple reason that all other deterrents will have failed.
It is true that Israel enjoys significant domestic and international support for punishing Iran, and rightly so. Tehran's foreign policy has long been a force for regional destabilization and, in the case of Israel, a threat. Khamenei's decision to applaud, if not allow Hamas's terrorist savagery on October 7, 2023, was merely the culmination of this policy and proved to be a strategic mistake of historic proportions.
However, this international support can be quickly lost, just as the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza has undermined Israel's soft power around the world. Any positive sentiments from critics of the regime within Iran – the people who could trigger regime change – may be lost just as quickly. It is one thing to cheer for Israel's extermination of commanders responsible for the repression in your country, and another when those who die are your civilian neighbours.
Israel is proceeding with a reshaping in the Middle East in ways that can potentially have significant long-term benefits. But that success has been overshadowed and undermined by the brutality of his protracted war in Gaza, and it is important that it is not repeated in Iran.
War, on its own, is difficult to end — and not just delay — Iran's nuclear ambitions. Indeed, it could even speed up Iran's acquisition of a bomb. As in Gaza, achieving a real victory will require a much broader strategy that will lead Israel's opponents to a better path and that combines both political and military means. Netanyahu proved to Lebanon that he was capable of making the right decisions. It is even more important to do so in the case of Iran.
