2040: The year Iran predicts Israel will be destroyed. Now is the time to prepare - opinion

The eminent Jewish writer, Nobel Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel famously said that "the greatest tragedy of the Jewish people is that they listened to the promises of their friends and not the threats of their enemies." The wisdom of that insight is illustrated every time we hear the supreme leader Ali Khamenei speaking of the terrible fate his regime has planned for the state of Israel.

In a social media post in 2015, Khamenei told Israelis that their state would be destroyed by 2040. “God willing, there will be nothing of the Zionist regime in 25 years,” he wrote. As Wiesel would advise, we should take the supreme leader at his word, and understand that he will do everything possible to realize that genocidal goal, in cooperation with the forces that support him at home and abroad.

The Islamic Republic is developing a comprehensive strategy to bring about Israel’s elimination as a sovereign state. In military terms, this is built around both conventional and nuclear capabilities. The regime has invested heavily in conventional weapons to attack Israel, as demonstrated by the unprecedented attack on the Jewish state on the night of April 13, when Tehran launched over 300 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones. At the same time, the Islamic Republic has doggedly pursued its nuclear weapon ambitions, in the first place as a means of deterring Israel from defending itself against conventional attacks; and in the second place, to give it weapons of mass destruction to destroy Israel.

Iran turns up the heat on Israel

In parallel, Iran is turning the heat up on its “ring of fire” encircling Israel, combining military strategy with lawfare and propaganda efforts. Israel is being dragged into a regional war on several fronts, including Judea and Samaria and Gaza, where Iran’s proxy Hamas holds sway; Lebanon, where its most powerful ally Hezbollah continues to be the most powerful element in that shattered country; Yemen, where Houthi rebels backed by Tehran have declared their support for Hamas by all but shutting down commercial traffic through the Red Sea with missile attacks on civilian shipping; Iraq, where the Iranians have armed and trained Islamist militias; and Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has emerged unchallenged from the civil war, thanks to the backing of Iran and Russia.

In addition to these military fronts, Khamenei has launched a campaign of lawfare and diplomatic warfare, supporting attempts at the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice to demonize Israel, and providing financial and political support to the increasingly vocal pro-Hamas protest movements in the US. and throughout the West.

In that sense, the “election,” or more precisely Khamenei’s selection, of Masoud Pezekshian as Iran’s new president through a ballot vetted and controlled by the supreme leader and his Guardian Council is something of a masterstroke. Pezekshian is depicted in large parts of the western media as a “moderate” and a “reformer,” which plays directly into Khamenei’s hands. Indeed, the supreme leader understands what many western politicians and commentators do not — that Pezekshian is a regime loyalist before anything else. What we are witnessing is another honeytrap like the one laid a decade ago, when President Hassan Rouhani and his Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, both wolves in sheep’s clothing, successfully negotiated a nuclear deal with sunset clauses that allowed for the rapid expansion and weaponization of their nuclear program after 2030. Western leaders pretended that this wouldn’t matter because the Islamic Republic would be moderate by then. Western leaders cannot make the same mistake again.

Yet they may well do so: Israelis cannot ignore the prospect that they will be forced to stand alone. If the West falters, attention will increasingly shift to the restive Iranian people, who have protested in the millions against the regime since 2009, and who will do so again once Pezekshian’s false credentials as a reformer become painfully apparent.

The time has come for a new approach to the Islamic Republic. Monitoring the regime’s dangerous uranium enrichment activities is not enough. What is required is a comprehensive campaign built upon two pillars: preventing weaponization of the nuclear program and promoting counter-measures — among them sanctions targeting Iran’s banking system and energy sector, cyberwarfare, and providing maximum support (funds, weapons and intel) to the opposition in Iran and outside— that will weaken the regime to the point of collapse.

We recognize that there is no “silver bullet” and that some measures will work, while others won’t. Some covert activities have already proven their value. For example, the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests that exploded in 2022 following the murder by the regime’s morality police of a young Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, for allegedly violating the misogynistic hijab law, were greatly assisted by the exposure of medical reports which showed that she died from regime beatings and not, as the regime claimed, because of ill health.  

History demonstrates that every time the US. poses a credible military threat, the Iranians changed their behavior.

President Reagan sank part of the Iranian navy and the regime stopped interfering with international shipping.

President Bush invaded Iraq and the regime suspended its nuclear enrichment. President Trump killed IRGC-Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani and the regime stopped expanding its nuclear program until Joe Biden’s election and his abandonment of Trump’s maximum pressure campaign. Unfortunately, the Biden administration does not have a strategy for dealing with Iran, apart from the release of billions of dollars in oil assets, the feeble enforcement of sanctions, and a demonstrated fear of using American power. Khamenei feels confident about developing his nuclear weapons program and building conventional weapons systems with which to attack both Israel and the US.

Israel too must change its stance. It must make clear that despite the IDF name, the Israel Defense Forces can — and will — go on the offensive. For years, Israel has been focused on preventing escalation, but that did not prevent the attack of April 13. When enemies feel they will not pay a painful price for aggression, their confidence is boosted, and a full-scale war becomes more likely. The strategy now needs to be turned on its head. By 2040, if not sooner, it is the Islamic Republic, and not Israel, that should be consigned to the ash heap of history. With intelligence and determination, that goal can become a reality.

Brig. Gen. (res.) Jacob Nagel is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a professor at the Technion. He served as National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu and as acting head of the National Security Council. Mark Dubowitz is FDD’s chief executive and an expert on Iran’s nuclear program and sanctions. In 2019, he was sanctioned by Iran.