SHAHROOUZ: The West should help restless Iranians overthrow the regime

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The Iranian regime's decision to launch 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles and 30 cruise missiles at Israel on Saturday may have been a show of force.

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On the contrary, it allowed the world to see the cowardice and weakness of Tehran.

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Regardless, the attack calls for a powerful response that changes the calculus. Fortunately, the best answer is readily available, and it is what the Iranian people have been waiting for.

Tehran was further humiliated on April 1 when Israeli missiles hit Iranian “diplomatic” facilities in Damascus, killing a top IRGC general. Over the past few years, the U.S. and Israel have repeatedly and easily assassinated Iranian military officials and seized Iranian secrets, showing just how deeply its enemies have infiltrated Tehran's most sensitive institutions.

So far, Iran's proxies – Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis – have done the dirty work of attacking Israel and the US, but this time, to embolden its supporters at home and on the Arab street (as well as its useful idiots abroad), Iran is attacking Israel directly. took an unprecedented step.

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But this is where their cowardice was revealed. Instead of seriously retaliating, the Iranian regime launched an airstrike, telegraphed a few days ago, knowing it would be intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system. And he immediately signaled that the missiles and drones he sent were the end of the operation.

This was not revenge by a powerful government, but a face-saving measure by a weak regime that knew it would be signing its own death warrant by engaging in a symmetrical military conflict with Israel.

The prospective attack was entirely in keeping with the behavior of the previous regime, which often tried to disguise impotence as strength. In 2020, when the US killed IRGC General Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian regime vowed “severe revenge”. Instead, all he could really muster was to shoot down a civilian plane full of Iranian-Canadians in his own airspace. (It also fired some missiles at two US bases in Iraq, causing minor damage.)

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In fact, the pattern goes back to the 1980s, when Iran's new regime made big plays about conquering Shiite holy sites in Iraq, but effectively surrendered when it began suffering humiliating defeats on the battlefield.

Israelis and the West in general now have a choice: let it go, strike hard, or attack the regime in some other way.

Of course, doing nothing is not an option because the status quo cannot hold. No nation should be allowed to continue invading embassies, taking hostages, financing terrorists, and sending assassination squads onto Western soil, all while building nuclear weapons and firing missiles at Western allies.

Although previously reluctant, the military option is certainly now on the table. If Israel interprets Iran's decision to launch a direct attack as an existential threat that requires a massive attack on Iranian military targets inside and outside the country, or a large-scale attack on Iranian territory, no reasonable person can agree with Israel. After all, Iranian leaders have spent more than four decades threatening to “wipe Israel off the map.”

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But a military attack on Iran comes with great risks. It is not clear that Israel, mired in the war in Gaza and concerned about another possible theater of war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, wants or can go to war against Iran. The civilian toll could be enormous for Iran and Israel as well.

Fortunately, there is another option.

Despite all this, the Iranian regime is hanging on by a thread. As the 2022 “Women, Life, Freedom” mass uprising showed, there is no internal legitimacy in the mullahs and the corrupt IRGC that keeps them in power. Iran's restive population is young, pro-Western, pro-Israel and ready to revolt.

The revolutionaries of 2022 lacked resources, coordination, access to the internet (something the regime shuts down when the uprising began), and training. These are all things that Israel, the US and other Western countries can easily provide. Getting rid of the Iranian regime would be a great return on such a small investment.

Iranians have shown that they are willing to give anything to overthrow this regime. After directly attacking Israel, it makes sense that the West supported them.

— Kaveh Shahruz is a lawyer and human rights activist in Toronto.

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