The Islamic Republic of Iran has again launched hundreds of missiles at Israel. Israelis are in bomb shelters, and Israel’s many anti-missile systems are in overdrive defending Israeli towns and cities from Iranian rockets. Iranian missiles have reportedly scored dozens of hits across central and southern Israel.
When Iran last struck at Israel six months ago, it launched 300 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones in an attempt to overwhelm Israeli defense. Only seven or eight got through. That was not the success pundits claimed. Had any of those missiles had chemical, biological, or radiological warheads, the cost of one missile getting through would be too great to bear.
With the latest salvo, Israel cannot afford to wait. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s antipathy toward Israel is ideological; no magical diplomatic formula can finesse the enmity. As Khamenei confronts his own mortality, he wants to fulfill his life’s ambition: ending the Jewish state.
I have always opposed carrying out military action on Iran. No longer. But the Iranian people are not the enemy; they are the fellow victims of the Islamic Republic.
The Israelis—and Americans, Europeans, and moderate Arab states—should systematically target and destroy every manifestation of the Islamic Republic but steer clear of targeting Iranians themselves.
Israel and its allies should knock every air base and airport offline. Israeli warplanes should target Iran’s missile batteries. Iran’s naval officers and sailors should abandon ships, as Israel and its allies should sink every single Iranian naval vessel. Special Forces should seize, but seek to preserve, every Iranian oil terminal.
Israel should broadcast: Every Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) general who wishes to remain alive should turn himself in to Evin Prison. Any IRGC officer will be considered a combatant subject to elimination. Khamenei should receive no such courtesy warning, nor should members of his office. Likewise, Israel should consider his potential successors to be legitimate targets.
Had the Islamic Republic crashed down under its own weight, the danger would be that the Revolutionary Guard Corps would use its power and purse to block the aspirations of the Iranian people. Eliminating both the leader and his Praetorian Guard is necessary to help the Iranian people free themselves.
That the United States will not want to act militarily is fine; frankly, the world stopped believing the White House is capable of world leadership several administrations ago. But the White House can use its diplomatic influence to begin organizing a Marshall Plan for Iran to help the Iranian people pick up the pieces after 45 years of facing the regime’s tyranny.
The important thing is that, excepting offshore oil terminals, neither the United States nor Israel should put boots on the ground. This is not an occupation. Iran is not Iraq. Iranians are more cosmopolitan, capable, and primed to rejoin the world.
Just under 120 years ago, the Iranians launched a constitutional revolution to achieve parliamentary democracy. Russian intervention, and then Reza Shah’s military dictatorship, prevented them from keeping their achievement, but the precedent is Iranian. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement showed that the current regime has no legitimacy.
President Joe Biden can today choose his legacy: the betrayal of freedom in Afghanistan and the appeasement of Iran, or bringing Iranians real and lasting freedom in a way that will reverberate throughout the region. Kill the head of the octopus—the Islamic Republic—and the tentacles whither.
