Why Iran strikes havent caused a Rebellion in Iran. NY Times

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Israel Thought It Could Spur Rebellion Inside Iran. That Hasn’t Happened.

President Trump’s hopes that an Israeli plan to ignite an internal uprising against Iran’s theocratic government could bring the war to a swift end have so far been dashed.




As the United States and Israel prepared to go to war with Iran, the head of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, went to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a plan.

Within days of the war’s beginning, said David Barnea, the Mossad chief, his service would likely be able to galvanize the Iranian opposition — igniting riots and other acts of rebellion that could even lead to the collapse of Iran’s government. Mr. Barnea also presented the proposal to senior Trump administration officials during a visit to Washington in mid-January.

Mr. Netanyahu adopted the plan. Despite doubts about its viability among senior American officials and some officials in other Israeli intelligence agencies, both he and President Trump seemed to embrace an optimistic outlook. Killing Iran’s leaders at the outset of the conflict, followed by a series of intelligence operations intended to encourage regime change, they thought, could lead to a mass uprising that might bring about a swift end to the war.

“Take over your government: It will be yours to take,” Mr. Trump told Iranians in his initial address at the war’s start, after saying they should first seek shelter from the bombing.





Three weeks into the war, an Iranian uprising has not yet materialized. American and Israeli intelligence assessments have concluded that the theocratic Iranian government is weakened but intact, and that widespread fear of Iran’s military and police forces has dampened prospects both for nascent rebellion in the country and for ethnic militias outside of Iran to launch cross-border incursions.

The belief that Israel and the United States could help instigate widespread revolt was a foundational flaw in the preparations for a war that has spread across the Middle East. Instead of imploding from within, Iran’s government has dug in and escalated the conflict, striking blows and counterblows against military bases, cities and ships around the Persian Gulf, and against vulnerable oil and gas installations.

Behind the scenes, however, Mr. Netanyahu has expressed frustration that Mossad’s promises to foment revolt in Iran have not materialized. In one security meeting days after the war began, the prime minister vented that Mr. Trump might decide to end the war any day and that Mossad’s operations had yet to bear fruit.

In the run-up to the war, current and former American and Israeli officials said, Mr. Netanyahu invoked Mossad’s optimism about a possibility of an Iranian uprising to help convince Mr. Trump that bringing about the collapse of the Iranian government was a realistic goal.

Many senior American officials, as well as intelligence analysts at the Israel Defense Forces military intelligence agency, AMAN, viewed the Israeli plan for a mass uprising during the conflict with skepticism. U.S. military leaders told Mr. Trump that Iranians would not come out to protest while the United States and Israel were dropping bombs. Intelligence officials had assessed that the possibility of a mass uprising threatening the theocratic government was low, and doubted that the U.S.-Israeli attack would ignite any kind of civil war.

Nate Swanson, a former State Department and White House official who was on the Trump administration’s Iran negotiating team led by Steve Witkoff until July, said he had never seen a “serious plan” to promote an uprising in Iran within the U.S. government in his many years working on Iran policy.

“A lot of protesters are not coming into the street because they’ll get shot,” said Mr. Swanson, now at the Atlantic Council. “They’re going to get slaughtered. That’s one thing. But the second thing is that there’s a good chunk of people who just want a better life, and they’re just sidelined right now. They don’t like the regime, but they don’t want to die opposing it. That 60 percent is going to stay home.”

He added, “You still have fervent anti-regime folks, but they’re not armed, and they’re not bringing the majority of the population into the streets.”

Mr. Trump appeared to have arrived at the same conclusion two weeks into the war. On March 12, he noted that Iran has security forces in the streets “machine-gunning people down if they want to protest.”

“So I really think that’s a big hurdle to climb for people that don’t have weapons,” he said on Fox News Radio. “I think that’s a very big hurdle. So it’ll happen, but it probably will be maybe not immediately.”