The senior Israeli defense sources noted that tackling Iran's ballistic missile threat was among the military's primary goals in the war.
As doubts about the prospect of imminent regime change in Iran spike, senior defense sources have told The Jerusalem Post this is not and never was a military goal.
Rather, the IDF always hoped to enhance the conditions that might make regime change in Iran possible if the domestic opposition to the government would be ready to take to the streets again in sufficient numbers to topple the regime, the sources said.
The military would look positively at regime change and wanted to try to help the process, but it never had illusions that military action by itself would guarantee such an outcome, they said.
This message might contrast with the public line of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vacillated between calling publicly for Iranian protesters to erupt into the streets to bring about immediate regime change, as opposed to talking about it as a potential event and process that might take at least a year.
The distinction is important to the IDF, which feels the public should view the current war as a success based on the limited mission parameters defined for beforehand.
Zamir emphasizes importance of destroying Iran's launchers
Defense sources were adamant that the IDF has consistently focused on substantially reducing the threat posed by the Iranian regime, as opposed to imminent regime change itself.
In his one major public speech, a recording released on March 5, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir emphasized the importance of having destroyed the vast majority of Iran’s ballistic-missile launchers as the first and most crucial goal.
Putting off attacking the ballistic-missile threat would have allowed it to grow significantly, he said. The Post understands that the Iranians were producing 150-200 missiles per month and were on their way to producing 300 per month.
Such a pace could have doubled or even tripled the missile arsenal within a year or two and led to a volume of missiles that could have overwhelmed Israel’s missile shield.
“We will further dismantle the regime and its military capabilities,” Zamir said in his March 5 speech, adding that “we are stripping the regime of its military capabilities, strategically isolating them, and bringing them to a point of weakness unlike any it has known.”
While those already hoping for regime change may have considered Zamir’s remarks to be a specific commitment, his wording carefully tiptoed around the issue, suggesting only that the IDF’s actions could make such an outcome more likely, without stating that it intended to bring it about directly.
Besides these two goals, the IDF has also attacked various nuclear sites.
