Israel’s counterattacks on Iran underscore high stakes in the Middle East.

Despite the many charges of aggression, mass murder, and worse that the Iranian regime chooses to level against Israel, there is no disguising the fact that it is Iran that seeks to destroy Israel, not the other way around.

On April 13, Iran – which essentially means the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – committed a major strategic blunder. Israel’s audacious attack on the Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus on April 1 took out seven Iranian military advisers, including Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC).

Such an operation would normally have provoked Iranian ire and an armed response on northern Israel from Hezbollah. Not this time. Instead, the incident was the trigger for a fundamental shift in Iranian policy that has led to negative consequences for Iran, which are still to be fully worked through. They may, in the final analysis, prove existential.

For 45 years – namely, since the Islamic Republic of Iran’s founding in 1979 – the Iranian regime had pursued its self-imposed mission of encompassing the destruction of Israel and its people through funding, arming and supporting organizations, groups and militias prepared to attack the Jewish state.

At some point in the period leading up to April 13, Khamenei decided that the time had arrived to change tactics. It must have been intense analysis and calculation by his advisers that led him to break the principle that had guided Iran’s foreign strategy for so long and finally launch Iran’s first direct onslaught on Israel.

‘Israel Has Never Been Weaker’

What were the possible factors? “Israel has never been weaker. It is bogged down in its war in Gaza. It hasn’t succeeded in eliminating Hamas or recovering its remaining hostages. It is being condemned on all sides for vast numbers of civilian deaths. Hezbollah is attacking it daily on its northern border. Houthi missiles are getting through its defenses. It is the subject of an investigation by the International Court of Justice on a charge of genocide.

“Imagine the effect of a direct Iranian attack. Think of bombs falling on Israeli cities. Think of Israelis in their hundreds slaughtered and injured. Israel will be humbled. The Abraham Accords will disintegrate, and any hope of their extension will be snuffed out.”

Khamenei’s military advisers must have convinced him that a massive fleet of kamikaze UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) would overwhelm Israel’s defenses, and at least some 50% of the missiles would get through. The aerial assault involved hundreds of drones, and cruise and ballistic missiles.

Instead, Khamenei’s anticipated military and propaganda triumph turned into a humiliation. What Iran’s military strategists failed to take into account was the united support of Israel’s allies, and Iran’s unpopularity in the Arab world (Iranians may be Muslim, but they are not Arabs).

They surely did not count on Jordan and Saudi Arabia helping to block Iran’s UAVs from reaching Israel, nor that the UK and France would join the U.S. in backing Israel’s Iron Dome in shooting down the Iranian missiles. Their subsequent failure was to underestimate both the chutzpah and effectiveness of Israel’s security and armed forces. Following the aerial assault of April 13, the Iranians were taken by surprise time and again.

Within a week, Israel had responded with airstrikes on Iranian military sites in Syria and Iran. Against a background of continuing tit-for-tat skirmishes, Israel pursued its hunt for the Hamas leaders responsible for the barbaric October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, and the Hezbollah leaders who supported them.

The targeted elimination of Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas’s military wing, on July 13 was followed by the even more telling retribution visited on Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’s political wing. In a special humiliation for the regime, he was killed in the heart of Iran’s capital, Tehran, by an explosion in his guesthouse, on July 31.

Then came September 17-18, when hand-held communication devices, such as pagers and walkie-talkies, manufactured specifically for Hezbollah and distributed widely to its operatives, were detonated remotely. The result was at least 42 fatalities and over 3,000 injuries, the vast majority of them Hezbollah operatives. Though Israel made no claim, the world assumed it was responsible.

Albert Einstein is reputed to have said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” Whatever Khamenei’s thinking – perhaps he believed his first aerial assault on Israel had been underpowered – he opted for a second, bigger and more focused attempt. He decided to use some 200 advanced Fattah-1 and Khaibar Shekan missiles, and target military and intelligence locations.

However, this second Iranian attack, on October 1, was only marginally more damaging than the first. Once again, most missiles were intercepted by Israeli and U.S. defense systems, including support from U.S. naval vessels stationed nearby.

How and when Israel would retaliate became the subject of intense media speculation.

The theorizing was temporarily suspended when Iran’s prize collaborator, the head of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, was shot dead by the IDF on October 16. While welcoming the news as “a good day for Israel, for the United States and for the world,” U.S. President Joe Biden made it clear that he did not want Israel to target Iran’s nuclear and oil installations for fear of triggering an all-out war.

Israel’s response on October 25 respected Biden’s wish and consisted of heavy air strikes on Iranian military targets in Syria and Hezbollah’s military infrastructure.

So Israel and Iran are undoubtedly in conflict, if not formally at war. Anyone can see why no truce can be meaningful.

The objective of the Iranian Islamic regime, from its founding in 1979, has been to acquire as much power and influence as possible in order to achieve the key objectives laid down by the regime’s original supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Khameini affirmed repeatedly that the very purpose of his revolution was to destroy Western-style democracy and its way of life and to impose Shi’ite Islam on the whole world. He identified the United States and Israel as his prime targets but included what was then the USSR.

“We wish to cause the corrupt roots of Zionism, capitalism and communism to wither throughout the world,” Khomeini said. “We wish, as does God almighty, to destroy the systems which are based on these three foundations, and to promote the Islamic order of the prophet.”

By this, he meant his strict Shi’ite interpretation of Islam, for elsewhere he had declared that the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, situated in the heart of Sunni Saudi Arabia, were in the hands of “a band of heretics.” These objectives have driven the regime ever since, and continue to be its raison d’etre.

“We shall export our revolution to the whole world,” declared Khomeini. “Until the cry ‘There is no god but Allah’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.”

In short, Iran’s leaders want to destroy the world as we know it. They want to achieve political dominance in the Middle East, overthrow Western-style democracy of which America is the prime exponent, wipe out the State of Israel, and impose Shi’ite Islam across the globe.

Whether the West wishes to acknowledge it or not, in combating Iran, Israel is fighting for the free world as a whole.

The writer is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. Follow him at: www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com