One of the many lessons we learned during the nearly two weeks of war between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran is that the Tehran regime is built upon cowardice and incompetence.
The Israeli and, later, U.S. strikes against the regime’s military industrial complex—its nuclear facilities, its top commanders, its nuclear scientists, its missile factories and its propaganda stations among multiple targets—underscored the impotence of its armed forces. Faced with deadly, targeted strikes based upon intelligence that suggested a breathtaking penetration of Iran’s power centers by the Mossad, Iran could only lash out at Israel’s civilian population centers as a riposte, its missile attacks decreasing as its stocks were fast depleted by repeated Israeli bombing.
That’s not to diminish the horrible suffering endured by Israelis on those long, sleepless nights, with at least 28 dead and hundreds wounded during the barrages. My point is that Iran never looked like a contender, never mind a winner, in a war against a better-trained, better-armed, better-disciplined force with a high morale. Think of the warnings over the past 20 years about the dangers of attacking the ayatollahs: They’ll unleash a nuclear weapon, they’ll have Hezbollah send 150,000 missiles into Israel, they’ll have terrorists invade the Jewish state by land and sea from Syria and Lebanon. None of that happened or even looked like it would happen.
What did happen was that, without an Israeli attack on Iran, its Hamas proxy carried out a despicable pogrom in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023: Future historians will identify this as the event that led to the regime’s final unraveling, with June 2025 being as significant a moment in this war as June 1944 was in World War II.
Anyone who understands the fundamental nature of this long and terrible war against the Jewish state should feel encouraged, and even elated, as we move forward. But we are neither. We remain both weary and wary, constantly troubled by the similarities between this phase of Jewish history with the horrors of past phases.
This is a vulnerability that the Iranian regime, which is down but not out, can skillfully exploit. The regime that produces careless officers and cowed soldiers nevertheless excels at terrorism and spreading the fear of terrorism.
Even if the regime implodes or is overthrown before it marks the 50th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in 2029, the ayatollahs can go to their graves satisfied by the destruction they wrought during the lifetime of the Islamic Republic. There was the bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983, the bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires in 1994, the missile attack on U.S. personnel at the Ain al-Asad Airbase in Iraq in 2020, among dozens of examples. As long as it survives, the regime’s goal is to add to that list as copiously as possible.
In this post-Oct. 7 world, Iran’s rulers have one advantage that they didn’t enjoy before: the alignment of significant swathes of the Western public, even in countries that might themselves be targeted for a terrorist outrage. In the words of a piece of antisemitic graffiti daubed last week on a synagogue in Melbourne, Australia: “Iran Is Da Bomb.”
I am not, of course, talking about the great majority of our fellow citizens. But Iran doesn’t need the great majority. What it needs—and what it has now—is a visible, angry movement with significant numbers. For nearly two years, Iran’s state media has lovingly covered the mass demonstrations in Western capitals celebrating the Oct. 7 atrocities and demanding Israel’s elimination as a sovereign state. Part of the reason it has done so is the realization that Jewish communities in the Diaspora, demonized as an Israeli “Fifth Column,” don’t have the protection of the Israel Defense Forces. They have to depend on increasingly unreliable, increasingly politicized police services in any number of cities, as well as contend with widespread indifference or even contempt among elected officials, university administrators, journalists, talking heads and similar influencers. That remains the case, even though, as I recently argued, elements of the pro-Hamas movement have grown frustrated with protest, as happened with the remnants of the New Left in the early 1970s. Now, as back then, a turn towards armed violence is discernible.
This beast is fed by the worsening political atmosphere. This has already resulted in an eye-watering increase in the number of hate crimes against Jews inside and outside the United States, including verbal abuse, vandalism, beatings and worse. In the United States, Jews compose less than 2% of the population but are the victims of 15% of hate crimes, according to FBI data in 2024. The Iranians know all this and are prepared to weaponize that knowledge.
They know, too, that there are Americans who will deploy arson, guns and homemade bombs against Jewish citizens, as has already occurred on three separate occasions this year. They know that among those under 40, especially, an unthinking culture of “Palestinianism” has set in—a philosophy of life that excludes any suffering that isn’t Palestinian, ignores any wrongdoing that is not Israeli, and recycles some of the most venomous myths about Jewish influence and Jewish power as justification. In such an environment, violence becomes a credible, morally worthy option.
Terrorism will also enable Iran to remind the outside world that it can strike at their heartlands as well, which is why Jewish people and facilities are the most obvious but not the only targets. Exiled Iranian opposition figures and media outlets have already discovered that the regime will come after them for the purposes of harassment or even assassination. Western diplomats and intelligence officials are also in the firing line—in that regard, no one should forget the kidnapping, vile torture and murder of CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley by Iranian-backed terrorists in 1985. The regime behind Buckley’s fate is the same regime that rules Iran today.
Jews need to be especially vigilant. They need to learn self-defense techniques. If they can legally acquire a gun for self-defense purposes, they should seriously consider doing so. But beyond these security measures, we need to focus on political life. A difficult few months lie ahead, with the distinct possibility that the ceasefire between Jerusalem and Tehran will disintegrate. And in November, New York City’s mayoral election, in which the Democratic Party is fielding an antisemitic candidate who rejects Israel’s right to exist as a democratic, Jewish state, will become another rallying point for pro-Hamas agitators worldwide.
That’s maybe why, even though we are winning the battle, it sometimes feels like we’re losing the war.