Defeating the Islamic Republic

Charting a strategy to defeat the Islamic imperialists currently ruling Iran

Is peace with Persia possible? I asked Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States the other week. “With Persia? Yes that’s possible,” he answered me, “but not with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Most of us observing Iran over the decades have seen an increasing tension between these two entities: an authoritarian, ultra-orthodox regime using hatred for Israel to justify its brutal rule, and a growing segment of Persian civil society who is fed up with living under religious oppression. Every strategy Israel develops to respond to the Islamic Republic’s April 14 attack should be calculated to target the former and strengthen the later.

Unfortunately, over the past two decades, we’ve treated the Islamic Republic as Iran. Netanyahu’s strategy against Iran was a reflection of his strategy for Hamas: military strength to build deterrence alongside acceptance on the political and economic fronts. To win the war against the Islamic Republic we need to free ourselves from this defensive conceptual frame. Alongside the alleged covert actions underway, we need to wage open political and economic war on the Islamic Republic. We need a grand strategy to achieve peace with Persia.

To make peace with Persia we should openly and loudly declare three main objectives:

1. Eliminate the Islamic Republic’s international credibility and work towards its removal from any and all international bodies
2. Undermine the Islamic Republic’s territorial cohesion by strengthening those national peoples it occupies by giving them a world stage
3. Bankrupt the Islamic Republic through targeted actions against the Islamic Republic’s sources of funds, mobilizing the international coalition that shares our objective

To eliminate the Islamic Republic’s international credibility we should start by bringing the charge of attempted genocide against the Islamic Republic before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Since Israel has already recognized the ICJ’s ruling by participating in the outrageous suit against us, we should bring this case to show what real attempted genocide looks like. The leaders of the Islamic Republic have decades of explicit calls to annihilate Israel, and the April 14 attack was one of history’s largest launches of munitions from one sovereign country to another. That the attack was unsuccessful does not remove their guilt. Attempted murder is established when a person takes a substantial step towards committing murder, with the specific intent to kill. Our survival doesn’t negate the crime. Representatives of a convicted genocidal regime should not be allowed to chair international bodies.

To undermine the Islamic Republic’s imperial aspirations, Israel should openly support the self-determination of the myriad peoples Iran brutally occupied: the Kurds and the Baluchis, Azeris, Ahwaz, Bakhtiaris, Lors, among others, who make up close to half of Iran’s population. The recent military action by Pakistan in Iran shows how sensitive this underbelly already is to the Islamic Republic. Israel should amplify their calls for freedom through international public diplomacy campaigns, doubling down on its status as the only self-determining minority in the Middle East. The only country established by a historic people who lived on the land before the Islamic imperial conquests.

In addition, Israel should offer peace to the people of Lebanon and Syria, who have also been occupied by the Islamic Republic. Israel should call on its allies to step up their political and economic support for their decolonization. Israel and its allies should offer a compelling alternative vision for the Middle East, one free from imperialism. Emphasizing that the majority of its citizens come from the Middle East and North Africa, Israel should declare that peace would be a contribution towards healing the historic wounds caused by the expulsion of Jews from the lands in which they lived for millennia.

To bankrupt the Islamic Republic, Israel should celebrate the new sanctions on Iran proposed by the US and EU, and request to go further: to ask its new allies in the Middle East to engage in a sustained increase of petroleum production to significantly curtail the Islamic Republic’s coffers. The Iranian economy is extremely sensitive to oil price shocks. At the moment, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries threatened by Iran are underproducing. By flooding the market with cheap oil for a sustained period, the Islamic Republic will be extremely challenged to continue paying its bills, and especially weaken its ability to subsidize its Ring of Fire. The price to our allies will be less than what they will pay if a full scale regional war breaks out.

Declaring War on the Islamic Republic by publicly announcing these three objectives will reset the global conversation and build on the alliance that defended Israel from the attempted genocide of April 14. By working to eliminate the Islamic Republic’s international support, undermining its territorial integrity, and bankrupting its extremist regime, we will harm the enemy in a way no conventional aerial strike can. By taking the fight to the enemy on the diplomatic, political, and economic dimensions – and reserving the right to military action when necessary to preempt kinetic action by the Islamic Republic – we can achieve victory over the Islamic Republic and peace with Persia.