The Israel-Iran war

Twelve days into the current hot war between Israel and Iran, a clearer picture is emerging, although the ultimate outcome remains murky.

Israel's priority, of course, was to degrade the Iranian nuclear program and other military capabilities as much as possible, to reduce future threats to itself.  It has had some success at this, not only destroying and damaging nuclear facilities and weapons stockpiles but also killing some nuclear scientists.  These airstrikes have been precisely targeted, with an eye to minimizing civilian casualties as Israel always does -- inevitably there have been some, but remarkably few for an attack of this scale.  The Iranian theocracy's response has been to fire missiles into Israel apparently more or less at random.  Most of these have been intercepted, and those that got through have mainly hit civilian areas, killing some people but doing no damage to Israel's military.

Of much greater long-term significance, Israel has also struck at many political targets, clearly aiming to weaken the regime's grip on Iran.  Netanyahu has always recognized the Iranian people as potential allies against the hated theocracy.  "Regime change" imposed from outside is probably impossible and would be unlikely to produce enduring or positive results if it happened, but if Israel can inflict serious damage on the theocracy's thugs and its sadistic machinery of enforcement, it can create a window of opportunity for organic change from within.

The most recent wave of attacks was clearly focused on this possibility.  Israel destroyed the gates of the notorious Evin Prison, and attacked various local headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards (see one such strike here) and of the Basij militia, the theocracy's famously brutal internal Gestapo force.  The intent is obviously to cripple the regime's ability to respond to a popular uprising, should one materialize.  The opposition is certainly capable of organizing one -- the 2009-2010 protest demonstrations in Iran were reported at the time as being the largest in the history of the world.

An important question now is whether Israel will be able to continue breaking down the regime's apparatus of repression.  Trump claimed yesterday that a "complete and total" ceasefire would soon take effect, implying that the West had pressured Israel into abandoning the job half-finished, as has so often happened in the past.  However, with Trump, one never knows what relation his blather bears to reality, if any.  ISW reported the following:

Senior Israeli defense officials told an Israeli Army Radio correspondent on June 23 that Israel will increase strikes on Iran in the coming days in order to rapidly achieve its war aims.  This report was published before Trump announced the Iran-Israel ceasefire.  Israel will start adhering to the Iran-Israel ceasefire at 12:00 PM ET on June 23.  The unspecified defense officials said that Israel seeks to fully achieve its objectives in Iran "within a few days."  Israel launched its air campaign on June 12 to "degrade, destroy, and remove [the] threat" of weaponization of the Iranian nuclear program.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on June 22 that Israel was "very, very close" to achieving these aims.  Israeli and Arab officials told the Wall Street Journal on June 23 that Israel intends to "get through" a list of Iranian military targets in the coming days.  Senior Israeli officials have emphasized that Israel would continue its air campaign if Iran attacks Israel or if Israel sees [Iran] is trying to reconstitute.

This leaves it unclear whether Israel seriously intends to abide by the ceasefire, but it certainly suggests that it believes more work remains to be done to minimize the military threat.  And Netanyahu is certainly aware that any progress achieved in reducing that threat will be only temporary as long as the theocracy remains in power.

ISW also reported:

There appear to be internal fissures within the Iranian regime over how to respond to the conflict with the United States and Israel.  Opposition media reported on June 21 that former moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani reportedly met with senior clerics in Qom in recent days to persuade them to pressure Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to concede to key US and Israeli demands..... Unspecified Iranian leaders have reportedly developed a contingency plan to govern Iran without Khamenei in the event that Khamenei is killed or informally sidelined..... The individuals have considered Rouhani for a "key role" in the leadership committee.  Some military officials involved in the plan have engaged Gulf countries to try to gain support for such political change in Iran.

The best outcome of all would be a peaceful transition to democracy, which would spare the country the bloodshed likely to accompany a violent overthrow of the regime.  Nothing in the above report suggests that regime insiders are considering facilitating such a thing, yet.  But if mass demonstrations do materialize, moderates within the theocracy might be willing to make concessions and negotiate with the people rather than resorting to a crackdown as in the past.  Any increase in Rouhani's influence is certainly a positive sign.  And as for "supreme leader" Khamenei, he is 86 and his mental acuity is questionable.  It's high time for him to be "informally sidelined".

The stakes here are incredibly high.  The theocracy is a brutal, medieval regime whose treatment of women, gays, and personal freedom in general makes the most extreme US fundamentalists look like flaming liberals in comparison.  It and its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, and elsewhere are the main drivers of religious fanaticism and violence in the Middle East today.  Judging by their long and variegated history of activism and resistance, the Iranian people are much more politically sophisticated and aware than, say, the Russian people (or than a lot of Americans, frankly).  Fewer than half of them are even Muslim today.  It's hard to imagine them accepting some ill-conceived "regime change" imposed by the US, or anything short of real democracy.  A democratic Iran would transform the entire regional situation, probably eventually aligning with Israel and the West, or at worst becoming a non-aligned but non-aggressive power like India.

As the war unfolded, I feared that Trump would come blundering in with some massive indiscriminate attack and kill a lot of civilians, thus destroying the chance for positive change by triggering a wave of anti-Western outrage.  So far, at least, that hasn't happened.  Trump has bombed a few nuclear targets, but not attacked population centers.  Despite his bluster, it appears that the targets were damaged but far from "totally obliterated", and Trump's own officials admit they don't know yet how effective the attacks were, even at Fordow which was the main target.  The report linked above notes (scroll down) that Israel has bombed Fordow again since the US attack, showing that they don't consider it to have been "obliterated".  In short, the US intrusion into the war was a brief and almost irrelevant sideshow, just the usual Trumpian sound and fury signifying very little.  Hopefully, so it will remain.

I'll be watching the situation in Iran closely, with anxious but hopeful eyes.