Jerusalem, undoubtedly, will strike back at Tehran.
It likely will be big, loud and intended to reestablish Israeli deterrence in the Mideast.
But it must come with an endgame.
Iran is a target-rich environment for Israel Defense Forces planners — and Tehran is vulnerable to attack, particularly given Israel’s own extensive intercontinental-ballistic-missile arsenal and F-35 stealth fighter-bomber fleet.
Israel’s menu options are nearly endless.
Iranian leadership, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command and control, conventional military bases, air-defense systems, Iran’s oil export industry — and its nuclear-weapons program.
The last presents Jerusalem a very real and existential danger.
All the more after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demonstrated Iran’s willingness to cross the Rubicon Saturday by attacking Israel directly.
Eliminating that threat is not an easy lift.
Iran has 38 known nuclear-program facilities spread throughout a country only marginally smaller than the state of Alaska.
Destroying Tehran’s emerging nuclear-weapons capacity will entail destroying centrifuge facilities at the Natanz and Fordow fuel-enrichment plants, where Iran is likely in the process of enriching uranium to a 90% weapons-grade level.
It also requires taking out numerous undeclared sites, ICBM production facilities, launch sites and existing stockpiles of weapon systems capable of carrying a nuclear payload and delivering it — including, potentially, Iranian submarines.
But will it be enough regardless of what the IDF hits?
Not likely.
Israel is going to climb the escalation ladder.
But Jerusalem alongside Washington should consider a multilayered approach to eliminating Iran as a regional threat (and potentially a direct threat to America) rather than, as Team Biden prefers, simply appeasing it.
For decades, the West has ignored opportunities to exploit significant Iranian domestic opposition to the ayatollahs.
President Barack Obama withheld support for the 2009 Green Movement, then ignored Iran’s declining influence after the early 2010s Arab Spring.
And President Biden’s done the same as women bravely stand up to the suppression of women’s rights only to be brutally tortured and many murdered by Iran’s notorious “morality squads” or executed after sham trials.
Dissidents, women in particular, may be the secret sauce of smiting the ayatollahs — and realigning Iran into a representative democracy.
Israel’s security could, allegorically speaking, depend on the West’s ability to build an army of modern-day Iranian “Esthers.”
Esther was the Jewish queen who foiled Haman’s sixth-century BCE plot to kill Persia’s Jews.
Washington has opted to ignore the repeated domestic waves of Iranian efforts to topple the mullahs.
The Obama and Biden administrations instead looked to check Iran and its nuclear-weapons program by concentrating on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — in which America released more than $150 billion of Iranian frozen assets in hard US currency.
Iran has used that money to fund Hamas, Hezbollah and other IRGC-sponsored militias, including Yemen’s Houthis.
Biden even considered lifting sanctions in 2021 if Tehran returned to the JCPOA.
Removing the Houthis from the Foreign Terrorist Organization list was Biden’s first misstep in that direction.
Simply put, Khamenei and his mullahs need to go. Negotiating is no longer an option.
Biden and Israel should recall the Trump administration’s “maximum-pressure campaign” against Iran helped fuel the domestic unrest that gave Iranian women a rare opening to begin protesting against the mullahs — a movement that quickly became countrywide.
To that end, as the IDF dials in its reprisal aims, Jerusalem should consider targets likely to destabilize Khamenei’s regime.
Hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities and defense industries are the right strategic moves, but taking out the ayatollah’s domestic instruments of power might prove equally as valuable.
Israel’s David-versus-Goliath opportunity is at hand.
Purposely striking Khamenei’s police forces, morality courts and other highly visible pressure points in Tehran and elsewhere could prove to be a slingshot-like force multiplier.
Especially if the United States recognizes the opening it’s likely to create — and begins actively aiding and funding Iranian dissidents to take on Khamenei at a grassroots level, while Israel’s militarily takes on Iran from high above.
Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Khamenei’s morality police murdered for not wearing a hijab properly, is Iran’s guiding star in waiting and the would-be face of its potential deliverance.
Empowering her legacy by tapping into Iran’s dissidents might prove to be Israel and Washington’s ultimate endgame for Iran and its people’s own deliverance.
Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer.
