“The Iranians are now at their lowest point since the end of the Iran–Iraq War in 1988,” said Oded Ailam, a former senior official in the Mossad and a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, during an interview on March 1, 2026, on the second day of Israel’s “Operation Roaring Lion.”
Ailam explained that Iran now finds itself, for the first time, engaged in a campaign across seven arenas simultaneously, while being completely isolated, not only from the Arab world but also from its historical patrons, China and Russia.
According to Ailam, Iran’s current strategy is a desperate attempt to exert massive pressure on the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, by targeting symbols of status and tourism, such as shutting down the world’s busiest airports in Dubai. The objective is to drive Gulf leaders to rush to Washington and plead with President Trump to halt the campaign.
However, Ailam assessed that the move could backfire: “I very much hope they will join the kinetic attack. There is a message in that and a force multiplier… The strikes against the Gulf states are extremely severe, and this may be precisely what pushes them across the line from participating in defense to taking an active role in the offensive.”
Regarding the future of the regime after the elimination of Khamenei, Ailam tempered expectations of a popular uprising and shifted the focus inward, toward Iran’s security apparatus. “The Iranian people are currently a less significant factor because they are experiencing post-trauma and fear,” he explained. “The question is whether an internal coup will occur within the army, which numbers 560,000 personnel, or even within the Revolutionary Guards.”
He recalled the United States’ historical experience in engineering military coups and said that the Americans are likely already maintaining clandestine channels with insiders who feel the ship is sinking: “The question is when people will say to themselves, this story is over and we need to save ourselves.”
The next targets: the collapse of the regime, not the people
Ailam estimated that at this stage Israel and the United States, operating in full coordination between CENTCOM and the Air Force, will avoid striking oil facilities in order to prevent economic devastation for the Iranian people. Instead, the focus will shift to “clear symbols of the regime”:
- Basij and Revolutionary Guard headquarters.
- Courts of notoriously harsh judges.
- Detention facilities such as the infamous Evin Prison, with the aim of freeing political prisoners.
“They are operating very methodically,” Ailam concluded. “This synchronization is the result of years of joint training. We won then, and we will win this time as well.”
