Netanyahu is in a mess of his own making and Israel is in a worse place because of it. I’ll explain why:
On August 12th 2025, weeks after Trump prematurely forced an end to the 12-day war and saving Khamenei’s life,
@netanyahu sent a message to the people of Iran that couldn’t be any more clear: “take to the streets, you are not alone, I stand with you, Israel stands with you.”
He repeated that same message again on September 30th, 2025.
In December, anti-regime protests broke out in multiple major cities across the country and by early January it spread nationwide. On January 6th, 2026, Crown Prince
@PahlaviReza issued a first of its kind call to protest for Jan 8th and 9th. By then, Netanyahu and Israel had weeks, if not months, to prepare for the moment.
On January 8th and 9th, millions of Iranians took to the streets across the entire country. Towns, villages, major cities, you name it, in all 4 corners of the country. In many locations protesters either took over government institutions or got very close to doing it. The regime itself claims that many cities fell on Jan 8th and 9th.
What did Netanyahu or Israel do? Absolutely nothing. Sat back and watched thousands upon thousands of protesters get massacred by the regime. The once in a lifetime golden opportunity to help people take down the regime with negligible cost for Israel and very little effort from the IDF was lost just like that.
What could Israel do on those 2 nights and didn’t?
- Khamenei and his top commanders could have been taken out just like they were on Feb 28th
- The regime security council meeting on the evening of Jan 8th, in which the order of the brutal crackdown was decided, signed, and transmitted down the chain of command, could have been targeted. This would have broken the regime’s command and control at a time it was the closest to collapse as it has ever been.
- Protesters in a couple of major cities could have received air support from drones. The mere existence of them in the skies overhead without even firing a single shot could have been the deciding factor on the ground, let alone them targeting some of basij or IRGC forces in Tehran.
- IRIB could have been targeted. IRIB shutting down would have been the most devastating blow to the moral of the regime forces and a significant boost for the protesters’.
The mess we’re all in today is the direct result of Netanyahu’s deadly inaction on Jan 8th and 9th but the mistakes didn’t end there.
The second mistake was letting Trump completely rule the direction of the war in the first 3 weeks. Primarily, complying with Trump’s no-kill list that included the Army and Police leadership as well as the regime figures like Ghalibaf and Araghchi who are now fooling Trump with an illusion of a “peace” deal. Israel should have taken the lead and decided its own targets based on its own interests.
I’m not saying all these to be the captain hindsight here. I’m saying it because I think it’s possible that in the near future, we end up in similar situations and we simply cannot have these mistakes made again because the next opportunity could be our last.
همانطور که پدر بنیانگذار ما تئودور هرتسل درباره کشور یهودیان گفت: «اگر بخواهید، این یک رؤیا نیست.»
و من به شما میگویم، اگر بخواهید، ایران آزاد یک رویا نیست.
اکنون زمان عمل است.
اکنون زمان مبارزه برای آزادی است.
ایران برای ایرانی