Victory Is Not Close

A very harmful thought right now is that we are already close to victory.

I wrote even before the war: if Israel truly intended to neutralize the Iranian threat, it should have struck earlier, in January, against the backdrop of Iran’s internal protests.
Time cannot be turned back now. But at the very least, we are obliged to look reality in the eye.

It seems that a scenario of internal revolt in Iran, driven by high-profile assassinations and strikes against the regime, really was taken into account.
If that was the main scenario, it did not work.

And that should not surprise anyone.
The January protests were crushed brutally.
The regime showed that it is ready to hold on to power through terror, arrests, and executions.
To rely on Iranian society to carry the process through on its own is to build state strategy on hope.

But the other convenient illusion does not save the situation either.
A war of aerial attrition is not a solution.
Israel is already paying for it with lives, with damage to the home front, and with heavy economic losses.
And the Chief of Staff is saying quite clearly that the war is now roughly at its midpoint, not nearing the end.

Betting on separatist groups or dubious armed organizations does not look like a solution either.
Such a scenario would create chaos, deepen fears of the country’s disintegration, and push part of Iranian society to rally around the regime.
And most importantly, there is no basis for assuming that something better would emerge in place of the current government.

So the conclusion for now is unpleasant, but simple:
without regime change there is no victory, and an easy path to regime change is no longer visible on the horizon.

That is exactly why it is especially dangerous to get used, already now, to the thought that we have almost won.
A thought like that prepares society not for a hard continuation of the war, but for fatigue and disappointment.

Only one question remains:
when the government entered this war, did it actually have a real Plan B?
Because if not, then once again we will be the ones paying for its failures.