A New Iranian Regime Could Be Even Worse?

Israel Worries That a New Iranian Regime Could Be Even Worse

Hugh Fitzgerald

The Israelis are clearly determined to create the conditions that will enable the people of Iran to rise up against their oppressors. The IDF has been systematically hitting the Basij commanders, Basij troops, and even the checkpoints the Basij have set up throughout Tehran, with their Iranians collaborating with the Israelis supplying their coordinates to the IDF. Thus handfuls of Basij members at each checkpoint are being systematically destroyed by Israeli strikes, thus making the possible suppression of protesters much more difficult than before. Israel believes it must create the conditions for a popular uprising to succeed, because if the Islamic Republic remains in power, Israelis fear that the regime to follow — after the assassinations of so many of the Iranian leaders — could well be more dangerous than the present one. More on Israel’s worry can be found here: “War could leave Iran with a more radical, nuclear-ambitious regime, IDF sources say,” by Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post, March 19, 2026:

There are concerns in Israel that the war with Iran could end with an Islamic regime far more radical and nuclear-weapons seeking than that which preceded it, IDF sources said on Thursday.

This, despite all of the substantial progress made so far in the war.

The comment was not a prediction of a likely outcome, but merely a straightforward assessment of the range of potential outcomes at this sensitive stage of the battle….

Over the last week, there have even been an increasing number of videos released showing the Air Force bomb specific smaller level checkpoints which could have been used to keep protesters off a given street.

Yet, after all of these achievements, neither the IDF nor the US have announced any operations to destroy or dilute Iran’s 400 kg. stockpile of 60% enriched uranium now under the rubble at Isfahan or at the Pickaxe Mountain facility near Natanz, which many fear  even America’s largest bunker busters cannot penetrate.

Have the IDF and US not announced planned attacks to find and destroy, or dilute if necessary, Iran’s 400 kg. of uranium enriched to a level of 60%, which is just one step below weapons-grade, because they have no such plans, or because they do?

There is the threat that Iran may be able to retrieve this enriched uranium from under the rubble at Pickaxe Mountain. And that Iran would then, within a few weeks, be able to produce a single nuclear bomb that could be devastating whether dropped on Israel or on, say, the Saudi oilfields.

The war aims of Israel and the U.S. at this time are not the same. The Americans do not seek regime change right now, but want to continue to destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles, missile production plants, missile launchers, and drone production plants, so that Tehran can no longer attack Israel and the Sunni Arab states of the Gulf. The Americans are also determined to sink Iran’s entire navy so as to make it harder for Iran to threaten shipping in the Persian Gulf and especially in the Strait of Hormuz.

The IDF wants to decapitate Iran’s leadership, leading to disarray and panic among its clerics, military commanders, and forces of repression in the Basij and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, so that the present regime will be unable to suppress nationwide protests. The assumption is that the regime that would replace the present one would be prepared to end Iran’s nuclear program. But there are Israelis who worry that the protesters may not come out in sufficient numbers, and that the regime will remain in place, but with new leaders who will be even more hardline and hellbent on obtaining nuclear weapons than those they replaced.