Tel Aviv’s bet is no longer centered on movement in the Iranian street as much as it is now directed at striking the real power nodes inside the state. In this view, success is measured by the erosion of the regime’s military, industrial, and command capacity.
According to this approach, the latest strikes weakened morale inside some security bodies and pushed some of their members into defensive and confused behavior, but they did not break the security grip over the cities or create a broad popular breach against the regime so far.
Detail
Israel’s security establishment believes that the accumulated military pressure, together with economic deterioration and public anger, is placing the Iranian regime on a path of deep erosion that could lead to collapse, whether during the war or at a later stage.
Israel is acting on the assumption that time must be used precisely to strike the regime’s structure before any potential settlement that the stronger ally may resort to.
In this context, Amir Avivi, the former Israeli defense official close to the current government, said the top priority is:
• destroying industries,
• eliminating senior commanders,
• and dealing with ballistic missile launchers.
These phrases sum up the core of current Israeli thinking: pressure the centers of power without counting on a street caught between two fires.
Also falling within this track are the strikes in which Israel said it killed IRGC Navy commander Alireza Tangsiri along with senior naval commanders, with the aim of dismantling command-and-control chains and weakening the ability to run the war from within.
In other words, Tel Aviv is not saying that the Iranian street no longer matters, but it is treating it as a possible later card, not as part of the first tools of war. The priority now is to destroy industry, scatter the leadership, and disable missile capability, because these are the pillars that keep the regime standing even if morale collapses.
What next?
If this is truly Israel’s priority, then how many more precision strikes will it seek to carry out against centers of power before any deal or de-escalation imposes a new ceiling on the war?
