On Saturday night, Netanyahu urged Iranians to \u201cunshackle themselves from tyranny,\u201d seizing a \u201conce in a generation chance\u201d to overthrow the dictatorship. \u201cTake to the streets en masse\u201d and \u201cget the job done,\u201d he added. Cleaving to the same strategy, U.S. President Donald Trump is insisting the Iranians have their \u201csingle greatest chance\u201d to \u201ctake back\u201d their country. <\/p>\n
Netanyahu thinks he comes out on top, even if the popular uprising he is calling for plunges the nation into violent disorder. In an ideal world, a friendly regime appears in Tehran. But Israel often makes the Realpolitik judgment that turmoil can bolster its interests too. <\/p>\n
That has been obvious in Lebanon and in Syria. Netanyahu has not assisted the Lebanese authorities in their efforts to discipline Hezbollah\u2019s Shiite militia, or to get them to disarm. He has done quite the reverse, continuing air raids and drone strikes. Similarly, he\u2019s stirred up trouble for the new leadership in Damascus by backing the Druze minority. In the Palestinian territories, Netanyahu is often accused of exploiting the divisions between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. <\/p>\n
The logic is clear. If countries are consumed by internal political strife \u2014 even civil war \u2014 they can\u2019t get their acts together and turn on Israel. So it would be a mistake to think that Netanyahu\u2019s only desirable endgame is stability in Tehran. Instability could work too. If Iran is too weak to run uranium enrichment centrifuges, and to support Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, that is also a victory. <\/p>\n
The goal of the Iran war, according to Netanyahu\u2019s foreign policy adviser Ophir Falk, is simple: \u201cTo win.\u201d And in a text exchange with POLITICO he added that winning would be when \u201cthe threat posed by the Ayatollah regime and its proxies is removed.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked what the Israeli government thinks is happening inside the embattled regime, Falk replied, almost nonchalantly: \u201cWe\u2019ll see what happens.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Saturday night, Netanyahu urged Iranians to \u201cunshackle themselves from tyranny,\u201d seizing a \u201conce in a generation chance\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8644,129531,105611,49,1153,4406,5471,54,22892,2973,103810,1154,85,4427,87,6605,46,70579,88,68869,47,2899,11982,140458,43,46811,13838,4586,140,2956,18085,4713,4443,1032,2201,2893],"class_list":{"0":"post-319717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-afghanistan","9":"tag-air-defense","10":"tag-ali-khamenei","11":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","12":"tag-conflict","13":"tag-defense","14":"tag-democracy","15":"tag-donald-trump","16":"tag-drones","17":"tag-foreign-policy","18":"tag-george-w-bush","19":"tag-history","20":"tag-il","21":"tag-intelligence","22":"tag-iran","23":"tag-iraq","24":"tag-israel","25":"tag-judiciary","26":"tag-lebanon","27":"tag-libya","28":"tag-middle-east","29":"tag-military","30":"tag-missiles","31":"tag-muammar-gaddafi","32":"tag-news","33":"tag-produce","34":"tag-refugees","35":"tag-resilience","36":"tag-security","37":"tag-services","38":"tag-stability","39":"tag-syria","40":"tag-tanks","41":"tag-united-states","42":"tag-war","43":"tag-yemen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}