Everyone’s talking about regime change.
I also want regime change.
I desperately want regime change.
Nothing would make me happier than to see the Iranian people rise up and take back their country.
But this is a messy war, and the mullahs are fighting back harder than what many experts predicted.
At the same time, they’re also taking quite a beating.
The U.S.-Israeli combined force has already struck more than 5,500 Iranian targets, systematically dismantling the country’s air, ground and naval forces, its command and control, nuclear and ballistic missile stockpiles and production capacity, and terrorist infrastructure.
According to Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command, Iran’s ballistic missile attacks have decreased by 90 percent and its drone attacks have decreased by 83 percent since the start of the war. Soon, it’s expected that Iran’s ability to strike the U.S. and its allies will be eliminated. “We’re not just hitting what they have,” Cooper says. “We’re destroying their ability to rebuild.”
That said, the regime is far from dead. With its back against the wall and nothing to lose, it is targeting oil fields and disrupting oil shipments to cause maximum damage to America and the world’s economy. It still has plenty of missiles that it is launching at Israel, American bases and Gulf countries.
Regime change, in other words, won’t happen overnight.
There is, however, another regime “change” that looms on the horizon.
Regime humiliation.
It’s hard to tell from the bluster emanating from Tehran, but what is more humiliating than to have your decades-long calls of “Death to Israel” thrown right back at your face?
The mullahs made a career out of promising Israel’s destruction. Now they’re worried about their own.
Maybe they ought to rename the war, “No, you won’t.”
A few years ago, Iran was surrounding Israel with a “wall of fire” through its terror proxies in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. It was ready to land what it hoped would be a finishing blow to the “little Satan.”
Today, the Islamic Republic is fighting to survive.
No one should ever get complacent, but it’s astonishing to realize how far this evil regime has fallen.
After years of terrorizing Israelis with existential threats, it is now worried about its own existence.
In a region where the projection of power is everything, that is humiliation.
When you can no longer credibly threaten your sworn enemy, that is humiliation.
In a culture where honor reigns supreme, that is humiliation.
The mullahs know all this. That is why they’re firing away with all they’ve got, desperate to regain some of their mystique. Their strategy is to inflict as much economic pain as possible and hope that Trump will fold.
“We are in a historic window of opportunity, probably a one-time thing,” Israeli analyst Yuval Elbashan writes in YNET. “Trump in the White House is giving Israel undreamed-of backing to crush and dismember the Iranian snake as much as possible.”
The snake is in the ER.
Whether the war ends tomorrow or in a month, it’s good for the world that a global military threat has been crippled.
Sure, even this crippled regime will claim “victory” if it survives. It can’t afford to betray any signs of humiliation.
Israelis, at least, will know better.
