Destroying the Islamic Republic is not the same as saving Iran - opinion

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s video message to a Jewish-Kurdish conference in London was notable for one line in particular. He described the Kurds as a people spread across four countries who have “not yet achieved political independence,” and argued for stronger ties between Jews and Kurds.

Nothing is surprising about Israel seeking closer relations with Kurdish communities, and Sa’ar was speaking about Kurds across four countries, not specifically about Iran. But that distinction does not survive the journey.

In Iran, and among Iranians abroad, a senior Israeli official raising Kurdish political independence while the Islamic Republic is under attack is heard as a statement about Iran. It is heard that way because the argument that Israel’s interest lies in encouraging Iran’s ethnic and regional movements surfaces regularly in Israeli strategic commentary.

The timing therefore matters. As the Islamic Republic comes under growing military, economic, and domestic pressure, Israel faces a broader question than how far it can weaken Tehran: does it want to weaken the regime, or weaken Iran itself?

One possible strategy is to reduce the Iranian state’s capacity so severely that the Islamic Republic can no longer project power across the region. From that perspective, stronger ethnic and regional movements can look useful. They tie down the center and reduce Tehran’s ability to rebuild the networks that have threatened Israel for decades. That logic is understandable. It is also risky.

Weak states do not simply become weak adversaries. In the Middle East, the collapse of central authority has often created space for militias, foreign intervention, and conflicts that are much harder to contain. Iran is not Syria or Libya.

It has close to 90 million people, sits across several strategic corridors, and borders Turkey, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A fragmented Iran would not necessarily be a safer Iran. It could be the beginning of several new conflicts at once.

There is another path: maintain pressure on the Islamic Republic while making clear that the objective is not the dismemberment of Iran. That means supporting the possibility of political change without trying to design Iran’s future from outside. Regime change and state collapse are not the same thing.

This matters because something unusual has happened in the relationship between Israelis and Iranians. For decades, the Islamic Republic tried to make hostility toward Israel part of Iran’s political identity. Yet among parts of Iranian society, especially in the Iranian diaspora, the opposite has happened. Demonstrations have displayed the Lion and Sun flag alongside Israeli, American, and host-country flags.

Inside Iran, the security apparatus is widely experienced as an instrument of domestic repression rather than national defense, and blows against it are not universally mourned, but even celebrated. On the Israeli side, there has been a noticeable effort to distinguish between Iran and the Islamic Republic, with public messages of solidarity directed at Iranians themselves.

None of this should be romanticized. It does not mean that Iranians broadly support Israel, nor that a future democratic Iran would automatically become an Israeli ally. Public attitudes can change quickly, especially during war. But four decades of interstate hostility have not produced equivalent hostility between the two societies.

If Israel comes to be seen as supporting the breakup of Iran, this opening could close quickly. Many Iranians who strongly oppose the Islamic Republic are just as strongly attached to the country’s territorial integrity. Kurdish, Arab, Baluch, and other opposition movements are part of Iran’s political landscape, but separatist groups have not demonstrated broad national support and cannot redraw Iran’s borders without major and sustained outside backing.

The regional consequences would also be serious. Turkey, Iraq, and Pakistan all have their own minority and territorial concerns. None would look casually at a process of fragmentation next door. What begins as a way to weaken Tehran could draw neighboring states, local armed groups, and outside powers into a much less predictable conflict.

Israel therefore has to think beyond the immediate military balance. Is the long-term goal an Iran too weak to pose a threat, or an Iran whose political transformation removes the basis for that threat?

Liberation and reconstruction, and which is more difficult

The second outcome is harder, and Israel cannot produce it; Iran’s political future will ultimately be decided by Iranians. But a territorially intact, post-Islamic Republic Iran moving toward a secular liberal democracy and a less confrontational foreign policy is not implausible. If it happens, the consequences for regional politics would be enormous.

The Abraham Accords showed how quickly supposedly fixed alignments can shift. A future rapprochement between Iran and Israel, sometimes imagined as a “Cyrus Accord,” would go much further. It would reconnect two ancient civilizations with a long historical relationship and reshape the strategic balance of the Middle East.

In the Book of Ezra, Cyrus the Great is remembered not simply for allowing the Jews to leave Babylon, but for enabling their return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the temple. Israeli leaders have often invoked that history when speaking about Iran, usually casting Cyrus as the foreign liberator.

The analogy is being run backward. Cyrus is remembered not for dismantling a state but for restoring a people’s political existence and underwriting its rebuilding. Liberation and reconstruction are different political problems, and the second is the harder one.

Israel may be able to help weaken the Islamic Republic. What follows is another matter. If its strategy contributes to the collapse of the Iranian state itself, it may trade one dangerous enemy for a generation of instability.

If it distinguishes clearly between the regime and the country, it can help preserve something far more valuable: the possibility that today’s adversary could, one day, become a strategic partner.

The writer is an associate professor of International Relations at Leiden University in the Netherlands, specializing in political conflict, violence, and Middle East politics.