The , nor an exit strategy from the , the Israeli analyst told Vima Nomi Bar Yaakovwhich believes that the world will never be the same again. Nomi Bar Yaakov, a veteran of peace talks in Geneva and a senior fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Studies, points out that after a possible “beheading” of the Iranian leadership by Israel, less experienced and riskier people will take power in Tehran.
Israeli analyst Nomi Bar Yaakov,
Do the US and Israel have the same goals in Iran?
The first question is what those goals are. I don’t think that each of the countries has clear goals, we see this in the contradictory statements, mainly from the American side, from Trump, from the Secretaries of State and War Rubio and Hegseth. , who has been planning this war for 40 years, has seized the opportunity and his main goal is to eliminate the threat from Iran, which comes from its nuclear ambitions, from its ballistic missile program, from the regime that for 47 years says it will eliminate Israel.
In Israel they have declared that they aim to destroy all military capabilities and to change the regime. We’ve seen them take out one leader after another, but I’m worried about how this will turn out. Israel knows very well that if the Iranians take to the streets now, they will be slaughtered because the security apparatus is wide and deep. The leadership is “decapitated” but replaced by others, as each authority has four levels of leadership that are constantly renewed. The issue is that they exterminate people who have experience like Ali Larijani, who have lived the wars, who know diplomacy, who knew how to control people and money, who recognized the limits. I fear they will be replaced by younger, more hardened and less experienced, more risk-taking. And I think that Israel did not take this into account even though it is a great risk. So the US and Israel have some common goals, they also have different ones.
Who risks more politically, Netanyahu or Trump?
The stakes for Trump are too great. The more the US spends, the more military losses it has, the more expensive the oil and the lower the stock market, the more difficult the situation will become for Trump. He will be forced to stop the war and declare a great victory when oil prices reach a level he deems intolerable and the stock market falls too far.
Netanyahu managed to get a lot of support for the war, he managed to convince the people that Iran is an existential threat to Israel. Of course, no one in the US believed that their existence was threatened by Iran, regardless of what Trump said. For Netanyahu, the problem is that if there is no regime change in Iran, which doesn’t seem to be happening, then the people will wonder what he achieved with this war, and I don’t think he will be convinced by the argument to eliminate the threat of the nuclear and ballistic program, because last June after the end of the 12-day war he said that he had achieved a great victory, that he had completely eliminated the threat. So why did he go to war again?
What is Netanyahu’s plan?
In addition to destroying as much of Iran’s arsenal as possible so that it is unable to threaten Israel and the rest of the Western world, Bibi also cares about himself. He is trying to avoid a prison sentence. From a legal point of view, in the course of the trial it appeared that he was in danger of going to prison unless he was re-elected prime minister. So the war in Iran and Lebanon removes that possibility. But we have to look at it as a whole, i.e. not cynically say that this is the only reason he started the war. For 40 years he has been talking about the threat from Iran, he has written books about it. Part of his strategy is to stay in power. But he considers regime change in Iran necessary and considers Hezbollah not only a proxy, but a part of Iran.
Did Netanyahu really succeed in dragging Trump into war against Iran?
Of course he succeeded in luring Trump into war, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted. Of course Trump will never admit it, but it is clear that Netanyahu started this war. Seven times he visited the White House to get the approval, especially in the seventh meeting they agreed on the date and all the details.
How will the war end?
I don’t think anyone knows how the war will end because it’s clear they don’t have an exit strategy and it wasn’t determined from the start what the end would be. The end will come either when there are heavy losses for the US and Israel, or when oil prices for the Americans go up a lot. But if Trump for his part declares the end of the war saying that he has achieved a great victory, this will not mean that the Iranians will stop attacking the Gulf countries and Israel. There is also the big question mark of when Yemen’s Houthis will enter the war. The effects of the war will be very serious and long-term for the economy, for the security of the region and for the whole world. The world will never be the same again. Much is at stake and we are far from the end.
