Toppling Iranian regime is wishful thinking, says Ehud Barak

The former Israeli prime minister warns of the dangers of a US attack, suggesting limited action might delay but not defeat Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Former Israeli PM Ehud Barak. Picture : David Geraghty / The Australian.

The United States may bomb Iran’s main nuclear facility in a one-off show of force, a former prime minister of Israel says, but joining in a full-blown war to topple the regime is wishful thinking.

Ehud Barak, who was prime minister between 1999 and 2001, outlined four scenarios that could mark the end of Israel’s war with Iran. The best of these — the fall of the autocratic Islamic regime with the might of US military support — he deemed unlikely.

“The target is the regime. It’s not easy, but together with America it could be done,” Barak said. The problem, he said, was getting a commitment from America to help topple the regime. “The problem is that I don’t think the American president will be inclined — and not just Trump, even his predecessor, would be inclined — to join in. So, it’s probably somewhat wishful thinking, except probably, a one-time shot at the Fordow site, which Israel cannot destroy,” Barak, 83, said.

He added: “You see, there are no very good choices. It’s like choosing between pneumonia or cholera.”

More likely would be a “one-time show” bombing of Fordow, Iran’s major uranium enrichment centre, where centrifuges spin at supersonic speeds burrowed deep in a rocky mountain range — something, it is believed, only an American B-2 bomber would be capable of.

Such limited action might push Iran to negotiate further and compromise on its nuclear program, Barak believed, although he contended that any gains would merely delay its nuclear plans rather than defeat them.

Then defence minister Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu with freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011.

The United States had not won any significant wars in the past 75 years, Barak said, meaning that full-scale wars were “extremely complicated” to win, especially with American military bases so close to the Iranian border that could come under short and medium-range missile attacks.

The worst scenario would end with the Iranians breaking out “as fast as they can” towards a nuclear weapon, to be exploded somewhere in the desert, “to prove their capacity”, propelled and legitimised by foreign attacks on their soil.

Despite this, and his being a harsh critic of Benjamin Netanyahu, the present prime minister, Barak supported the war with Iran, although he said it was justified only if Israel had discovered an imminent threat that required a pre-emptive action to stop Iran turning its fuel stockpile into weapons.

President Trump has said he believes Iran is “very close” to obtaining a nuclear weapon. In March Tulsi Gabbard, his director of national intelligence, said US intelligence did not believe Iran was building a nuclear weapon.

“It’s not ideal because there are a lot of risks, but Israel cannot sit idle,” Barak said. “It would have been easier 13 to 14 years ago, when we knew that if we’ll operate we will delay them by, let’s say, two or three years. Then that’s a meaningful delay.”

Barak has known Netanyahu, 75, since he was a teenager and they served together in the military’s elite Sayeret Matkal unit, known for its reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines and stealth assassinations. They participated in the rescue in Israel in 1972 of the hijacked Sabena flight, with Barak leading the commandos, and Barak later served as Netanyahu’s defence minister.

Barak has been highly critical of Netanyahu’s prolonged war in the Gaza Strip, but said the present period was his most successful in 20 months of war and that Netanyahu deserved the credit for it.

“The first four days were extremely impressive in terms of intelligence and operational capabilities. It shows the farsighted planning, accurate detailed preparation and resolute execution,” he said, adding that it had increased Israel’s regional deterrence in a “tough neighbourhood,” and improved the confidence of the Israeli public.

Barak helps a passenger to safety after taking part in the Sabena airlines rescue in 1972. Picture: IDF/ Getty Images

The public, he believed, would be ready to suffer the war if it achieved its goals, as did Londoners 85 years ago during the Blitz, when Britain stood alone against Hitler.

Londoners “stood for many months under the Blitz” because of a firm belief that they were “the only ones blocking the darkness sinking over Europe”, Barak said. “They didn’t have enough ammunition, enough forces. But they had to stand firm until Hitler would make a mistake or attack Russia — or if the Americans finally joined the battle as they did in World War I, which took until the end of 1941,” Barak said.

Israel’s operation to attack Iran, which was years in the making, was initially slated for April — a period when public trust in the government was at an all-time low. Netanyahu, embroiled in a corruption trial and under pressure to agree on a ceasefire deal that could torpedo his volatile hardline coalition, has been accused of deflecting responsibility for the Hamas terror attacks on October 7, 2023 and of seeking to extend the war to appease his government.

“There is very low level of trust in the integrity and the consideration of the prime minister,” Barak said. “I cannot imagine that people will forget those days [of October 7] and the fact that he torpedoed the hostage deal in order to keep the war alive. He kept the war alive because the moment the war stops it’s a day of reckoning for him.”

Over the past few years, Netanyahu has moved to quell the power of government institutions and watchdogs designed to keep the balance of power in check. This has accelerated during the war in Gaza, with Netanyahu firing the head of the Shin Bet, the country’s domestic security service, and moving to remove the Attorney-General.

If Netanyahu continued on this path towards a judicial coup d’état, Barak said he would call on the public to intervene, as the British did by replacing Neville Chamberlain with Churchill in 1940.

Barak believed Israel’s military operation in Iran opened a window to end the quagmire in Gaza and initiate a new world order, one without Hamas.

Yet he said the long period of war had broken with Israel’s tried and tested ways of warfare that had been in place since Israel’s founding, maxims that Netanyahu has “deliberately ignored”.

“[The war in] 1967 took six days. In 1973, it took three weeks. In 2006, it took 30 days, but never a year and a half,” Barak said. “When Israel goes to war, it had to do it very aggressively on enemy territory, to be completed very quickly in order to be able to translate the military results into diplomatic and political realities,” he said. “Always go to war with a major power beside you and always have a grip of the moral high ground. Never, ever, leave the moral high ground to the other side.”

Barak believed that Israel had lost the moral high ground in the war on Gaza, particularly among the young generation “who watch different material on television” to the Israeli public.

As in Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Barak said, you had to know where you wanted to get to in order to know which way to go. While he was confident in Israel’s direction, he could not say how long it would all take. “Israel will overcome this government and this situation. But I cannot tell you how long it will take or how many people will be buried on both sides of the conflict along the way.”

The Times