Leiter: Tehran must be ‘brought to its knees’ to enable civilian uprising

The U.S. and Israeli military campaign against Iran must focus on degrading its power from the air and establishing the right conditions for the Iranian people to topple the regime, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said in an interview with CNN on Sunday.

“I think that we need boots on the ground but they’ve got to be Iranian boots. And I think they’re coming,” Leiter told CNN anchor Dana Bash.

The U.S. and Israel “planned this operation together, we’re implementing it together, there’s never been a precedent of such collaboration between two militaries. ... The war will end when there’s not an entity in Tehran that’s going to threaten the region,” the diplomat said.

However, Leiter was skeptical that this will come about though the regime’s “change of heart.” Instead, he said, the highest probability is that it will happen through the Iranian people “who have had enough.”

He noted that only last month, Iranians took to the streets in droves to protest against the Islamist regime, which responded by slaughtering thousands.

If the U.S. and Israeli militaries sufficiently degrade the regime’s power, this will help bring about the tipping point, the ambassador said.

While agreeing with the anchor that the Iranian people face a difficult challenge, weakening the regime until it is “brought to its knees” will hopefully trigger “the combustion point where the people can take charge over their own lives.”

The U.S. and Israeli task is to dismantle Tehran’s power “to the point where they no longer pose a threat to us, to the region, to the world,” he said.

Speaking about Israeli casualties caused by the ongoing barrages of Iranian missiles, Leiter said that “We cannot live anymore with a country that is malign, that is intent on destroying us; that declares that it’s going to destroy us all the time, and has now fired ballistic missiles into all of its neighbors. This has to stop.”

He added that Iran’s firing last week of two ballistic missiles at the U.S.-U.K. military base in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, over a distance of some 2,500 miles, demonstrates that those who run Tehran are “murderers who lie. It shouldn’t surprise us.”