Mossad’s Next Challenge

Excerpt

Israel’s and America’s attacks on Iran may prove pivotal for the Middle East if all the blows the clerical regime has absorbed since October 7, 2023, lead eventually to the collapse of the Islamic Republic. If the theocracy remains, however, or if an Islamist military dictatorship replaces it, the picture is a little different: Sunni-ruled Syria and its ally, Turkey, will benefit from the fact that Iranian allies will no longer dominate the northern Levant. And the Sunni Gulf Arabs may tremble less before the badly battered Shiite Persians; they will still want outsiders to protect them. Ironically, though, Israel may acutely feel a sense of déjà vu. Having done everyone’s heavy lifting against the Islamic Republic and allowed President Donald Trump to claim he’d restored a bit of America’s hard-power credibility, Jerusalem will still face a virulently antisemitic regime likely still seeking a nuclear weapon. 

The Islamic Republic’s leadership is surely aware that Israel has nuclear weapons loaded on planes and perhaps on submarines, ready to strike its enemies. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction—or as Winston Churchill more colorfully put it, “safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation”—may be enough to hold vengeful Iranian Islamists with atomic arms at bay. 

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Iranian-targets officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, is a resident scholar at FDD.