The days of the Iranian regime are “numbered,” but it won’t be Israel or the United States that delivers the final blow, according to a former Israel Defense Forces spokesman.
The Iranian regime will fall “not so much because of U.S. and Israeli action, but because of … the crimes that they have perpetrated against the Iranian people,” retired Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, who now serves as a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Daily Signal.
The regime has shown “a complete disregard for their own people that, I think, is the Rubicon that they crossed, and that’s what eventually is going to bring them down,” he said, adding, Iran’s “fate will be decided by the Iranian people.”
The U.S. launched Operation Epic Fury in partnership with Israel on Feb. 28, two months after anti-regime protests broke out on the streets of Iran.
Soaring inflation and a failing economy sparked the protests in Iran, which were met with a brutal crackdown by the regime. An accurate death toll is not known due to regime-imposed internet blackouts, but the regime is believed to have killed about 30,000 of its own people in efforts to stamp out the protests.
Anti-regime protest movements have flared up in Iran multiple times since the regime took power following the Iranian Revolution 47 years ago.
There have been more than half a dozen large protest movements in Iran over the past 47 years, but the protests have ended in civilian injuries and deaths, giving the regime “a monopoly on violence,” said Eylon Levy, a former spokesman for the state of Israel. However, this is changing, Levy added.
Israel is focused on “bombing the institutions responsible for the repression of protesters,” he said, “hoping that the Iranian people will then rise up and the state that oppressed them before will not be able to crack down as it did in the past.”
With the U.S. and Israel weakening the regime through targeted strikes on military leadership and infrastructure, the Iranian people will have the chance to succeed at doing what other protest movements have failed to do, he said: establish “a free Iran that will be at peace with its neighbors.”
Previous protests have included organized elements of Iranian civil society, such as Iranian labor unions, Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum, explained.
The Iranian regime has “taken a beating” in the past 12 days, according to Roman. The U.S. has struck more than 5,000 targets in Iran, taking out missile launchers, ships, and other key regime military infrastructure.
“I think that if there were millions of Iranians who went to the streets now, and if the U.S. and Israel did the job of arming those protesters and turning them into an armed rebellion, it might be a little bit more malleable to get [regime change] done,” Roman said.
Many in Iran have weapons experience, Roman said, referencing the nation’s multiple armed groups as well as those who used to serve in Iran’s security forces.
“What’s the other option, to get 36,000 more people mowed down in the streets? At least give them a fighting chance,” Roman said.
