Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei (Photo: All Israel News Staff edit)
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL – Israel’s air strikes on Iranian military facilities in the wee hours of Saturday morning were not as big and destructive as many Israelis wanted.
But they were very effective in destroying Iran’s entire air defense system, both the regime’s key radar systems and the Russian-built S-300 anti-aircraft missile batteries that protect Tehran and vital Iranian nuclear sites.
Thus, Israel’s three waves of attacks on Saturday “cleared the path” for the IDF to launch much larger and far more destructive attacks in the future.
What’s more, by ordering Hezbollah to try to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently – sending suicide drones to attack Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea – the Iranian regime has opened the door for Israel to launch a decapitation strike to kill Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his top deputies.
That’s the case that former IDF international spokesman Jonathan Conricus made as we recorded an episode of my “Inside The Epicenter” podcast that my wife Lynn and I host for The Joshua Fund .
Conricus is a lieutenant colonel in the IDF Reserves.
He is also a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
ISRAEL’S ATTACK ON SATURDAY ‘SETS THE STAGE’ FOR FAR BIGGER ATTACKS
“As time will go by, we will have more and granular detail” about the full impact of Saturday’s strikes, Conricus told me.
“What I think is important now is to understand that this is – this basically sets the stage” for much larger attacks.
“I’ve been saying for many weeks that Israel needs to do a strategic change, that it needs to start attacking and undermining and weakening the Iranian regime,” Conricus said.
He noted, however, that there is a difference between what Israel wants to accomplish and the “geopolitical reality of how we interact with our American ally.”
Both U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have made it clear they are strongly opposed to Israel decapitating the Iranian regime, much less attacking and destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities and oil refineries.
By contrast, former President Donald Trump has made it clear he thinks Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should attack Iran much harder than what Biden and Harris are allowing.
That said, Conricus thinks Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made a shrewd play.
“What Israel did on Saturday, I think, was setting the stage and preparing itself well for the future, which will come.”
“There will be a second Israeli significant strike against Iran, and perhaps the third one. I can easily see it happen,” Conricus said.
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT ON NETANYAHU ‘GIVES ISRAEL EVERY RIGHT IT NEEDS’ TO LAUNCH DECAPITATION STRIKE AGAINST IRAN’S LEADERS
Conricus noted that on Oct. 19, “Hezbollah – Iran’s most important proxy – fired a UAV, a lethal UAV, towards the private home of the Israeli prime minister.”
He called this “a direct assault on the democratically elected leader of Israel.”
“In my mind, that gives Israel every right it needs in order to strike the heads of the Iranian regime in Iran as well because there is no way that Hezbollah did that without direct and explicit support and approval by the Iranians.”
Fortunately, neither Netanyahu nor his wife Sara, or any of their family members, were in the house at the time.
But Netanyahu immediately issued a statement that read, “The attempt by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah to assassinate me and my wife today was a grave mistake.”
“This will not deter me or the State of Israel from continuing our just war against our enemies in order to secure our future,” he said.
The attack was the first time that one of Israel’s enemies has directly tried to assassinate Netanyahu since the Oct. 7 war began 387 days ago.
WILL IRAN LAUNCH 1,000 BALLISTIC MISSILES AT ISRAEL?
“The Iranian regime has had its nose bloodied,” Conricus observed. “As the days will go by, there will be more information which will be embarrassing for the Iranians. They won’t be able to lie and deceive about it.”
“And then the dilemma will be, okay, do they strike back?”
“Because if and when Iran attacks Israel again, their level of exposure is significantly higher,” he noted.
“It’s now a totally different calculation for Iran. I think they will soon understand that they are exposed, that their air defenses – which they have spent a lot of money on – do not deliver.”
“Their critical assets – their regime headquarters and their nuclear plants and their economic infrastructure – is there for the taking if Israel launches another strike. And that is, of course, a very important calculation.”
Conricus said he wasn’t sure how Iranian leaders would respond.
“I think this can go two ways,” he said.
“If it goes one way, let’s say the de-escalatory path, then what this will force the Iranians to do is to tell their proxies, ‘Let’s go for a diplomatic solution in Lebanon, and let’s count our losses or consolidate our losses with Gaza, because we, the Iranians, are exposed. And if the Israelis go for another round, we will be paying the price.’”
The other way is that Iran will keep its promise of unleashing a barrage of upwards of 1,000 ballistic missiles at the Jewish state, hoping to overwhelm Israel’s multi-layered missile defense system and cause catastrophic damage to Israeli cities and critical infrastructure.