In recent weeks, and especially in the past few days, Iranian regime officials have issued a growing number of threats about restoring Iran's nuclear capabilities and presenting them as a vital deterrent tool for the regime. At the same time, reports are multiplying about efforts to rebuild Iran's missile production systems, which appear to be in full swing.
There are even reports that Iran is refilling its long-range missile depots and replenishing the stockpiles it had before the war with Israel, roughly 2,000 missiles. It should be stressed that Iran is apparently missing a significant number of launchers, which makes the missile count far less threatening than it sounds.
These threats are aimed squarely at Israel, the IDF and senior Israeli officials. Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who has avoided public appearances since the war except for rare and limited events, seems to be gradually regaining confidence.
Last Saturday he once again called Israel a cancerous growth in the Middle East and said it should be removed once and for all. As usual, he spoke in the third person, allowing himself plausible deniability and implying that the destruction of Israel would happen on its own or be carried out by masses of Muslims rising up against Israel, without direct Iranian involvement. He has used this formulation on other occasions as well.
At first glance all of this sounds intimidating, and any Israeli might interpret the outcome of the war with Iran in a pessimistic way, very different from the early days that followed Israel's decisive victory over the Iranian regime. But beneath the media noise that Iran is generating, it is important not to forget several key points about the country's current condition.
1. As part of its centuries old toolbox for dealing with enemies, Iran regularly inflates its power and exaggerates its enemies' weaknesses. The regime operates many websites and countless social media accounts to project an image, usually a false one, of overwhelming strength, vast resources and limitless capabilities with the sole purpose of deterring adversaries and discouraging them from attacking or provoking Iran.
This practice is known in Persian as rajez khani, which literally means boasting chants. Historically, a particularly strong Iranian fighter would step out of his unit and confront the opposing army's front line, shouting boasts about his own strength and that of the Iranian forces. The hope was that the enemy, intimidated by this display, would retreat and avoid battle. This is part of Iran's strategic tradition of prevention rather than response, the opposite of the Israeli doctrine.
2. Iran is currently run by a corrupt and low quality group of politicians and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials, who oscillate between conspiracy theories and corruption. Many secretly hold Western passports so they can flee when necessary, and many of their children already live in the West and manage assets purchased with Iran's oil money. This is why the regime's rhetoric about defending Iran to the last drop of blood is nothing more than propaganda, largely shaped by Russian and Chinese intelligence methods that taught Iranian officials how to deceive the public and sell them hollow nationalism. Israel, by contrast, can rely on high caliber professionals, especially in the security sphere, along with officials who are loyal to the state, which preserves Israel's strategic advantage.
3. Under Khamenei's leadership, Iran has turned into a suicidal state. The regime is obsessively draining the country's natural resources and environment to fund its terror networks, missile programs and nuclear ambitions, as well as its propaganda machine that recruits foreign elements in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East to target the West and Israel. This is how Iran reached the point where it lacks sufficient water and electricity at home while financing kindergartens for tribal children in Africa or building mosques in South America.
For all these reasons, the Iranian threat must be viewed in its proper proportions. They should neither be exaggerated nor dismissed. This is a sensitive and crucial moment in which facts must prevail over public fear. The Israeli public deserves to know the full picture: Iran has a large number of missiles but lacks launchers; Israel is successfully disrupting Hezbollah terrorist operatives and blocking their efforts to rearm, despite Iran's obsessive attempts to transfer funds and weapons to Hezbollah.
Iran's historic weakness is its inability to compromise when necessary, which has led to the downfall of its rulers and empires throughout history, from Alexander's conquest, which began with a modest demand for a narrow coastal strip near Athens, to the Arab conquest, to the fall of the last shah in 1979. The Iranian regime will pay the price for its arrogance and blind threats, and perhaps the Iranian people themselves will ultimately help bring that about. Until then, Israel remains highly focused on the specifics of the Iranian threat and is not swayed by the regime's combative rhetoric.
