For all its bluster, Iran's regime hangs on by a thread
You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.
The Iranian regime’s decision to launch 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles and 30 cruise missiles at Israel on Saturday may have been designed to signal strength.
Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.
Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.
Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.
Don't have an account? Create Account
Instead, it allowed the world to see Tehran’s cowardice and weakness.
Regardless, the attack requires a forceful response that changes the calculus. Thankfully, the best response is readily available and it is one that Iran’s people have long wanted.
When Israeli missiles hit Iran’s ostensibly “diplomatic” facilities in Damascus on April 1, killing a leading IRGC general, Tehran was again humiliated. In the past few years, the U.S. and Israel have repeatedly and easily killed Iranian military officials and taken Iranian secrets, showing just how deeply its enemies have infiltrated Tehran’s most sensitive institutions.
Until now, Iran’s proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis — have done the dirty work of attacking Israel and the U.S. But this time, to project strength for its supporters at home and on the Arab street (as well as its useful idiots abroad), Iran took the unprecedented step of attacking Israel directly.
Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond.
By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.
A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.
The next issue of Your Midday Sun will soon be in your inbox.
We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again
But here is where their cowardice was on full display. Rather than hit back in earnest, the Iranian regime engaged in an air attack, telegraphed for days in advance, which it must have known would be thwarted by the Israeli Iron Dome missile defence system. And it immediately signalled that the missiles and drones it had sent were the end of the operation.
This was not the retaliation of a powerful government, but a face-saving measure by a weak regime that knows it would be signing its own death warrant by engaging in a symmetric military conflict with Israel.
The performative attack was entirely consistent with past regime behaviour, which often seeks to dress up impotence as power. Back in 2020 when the U.S. killed IRGC’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s regime promised “hard revenge.” Instead, all it could really muster was shooting down a civilian plane full of Iranian-Canadians over its own airspace. (It also fired some missiles at two U.S. bases in Iraq doing minimal damage.)
In fact, the pattern goes all the way back to the 1980s, when Iran’s then-new regime talked a big game about conquering holy Shi’a sites in Iraq but effectively surrendered when it began suffering humiliating battlefield defeats.
The Israelis, and the West in general, now have a choice to make: Let this go, hit back hard, or attack the regime in some other way.
Surely, doing nothing is not an option since the status quo cannot hold. No state should be permitted to continue invading embassies, taking hostages, funding terrorists, and sending assassination squads to Western soil, all while developing nukes and shooting missiles at Western allies.
While there may have been reluctance in the past, the military option is certainly now on the table. No reasonable person could disagree with Israel if it interpreted Iran’s decision to launch a direct assault as an existential threat requiring a widespread attack on Iranian military installations inside and outside the country, or a full-scale attack on Iranian territory. Iran’s leaders, after all, have spent over four decades threatening to “wipe Israel off the map.”
But a military attack on Iran comes with great risk. Already bogged down in a war in Gaza and concerned about another potential theatre of war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, it is not obvious that Israel wants to, or can, fight a full war against Iran. The civilian cost, too, can be enormous both on the Iranian and Israeli sides.
Luckily, there is another option.
For all its bluster, Iran’s regime hangs on by a thread. As the massive Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022 showed, the mullahs, and the corrupt IRGC that keeps them in power, lack internal legitimacy. Iran’s restive population is young, pro-Western, pro-Israel, and ready to revolt.
What the 2022 revolutionaries lacked was resources, coordination, internet access (something the regime shuts down any time an uprising begins), and training. These are all things that Israel, the U.S. and other Western countries can readily provide. Getting rid of Iran’s regime would be an amazing return on such a small investment.
Iranians have shown themselves ready to give everything to topple this regime. After the direct attack on Israel, it is only rational that the West support them.
— Kaveh Shahrooz is a lawyer and human rights activist in Toronto.
Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
visit website
