TEL AVIV -- Israel has made an impressive start to military operations against Iran, but may be not much closer to its goals than a week ago, former Knesset member Ksenia Svetlova told RFE/RL in an interview at her home in Tel Aviv on March 6.
Svetlova, who is now executive director of an NGO called ROPES (Regional Organization for Peace, Economics, and Security), said there were few examples of "regimes that fall just as a result of air strikes" and was skeptical of the idea that Iraqi Kurdish militia would want to get involved in the fight.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
RFE/RL: We are almost a week into the conflict. From an Israeli perspective, where are we? How do things stand after a week?
Ksenia Svetlova: Well, you know, in a military sense, the IDF briefs us regularly that there are fantastic achievements and that there is less [Iranian] rocket potential, that a lot of the launching stations were destroyed. And, actually, we do see less fire, less volume of fire here in Israel. I am absolutely sure that they are achieving the goals that they put ahead of them, in the military sense. Whether that will bring us to the ultimate goal – [as far as] Israel is concerned, the ultimate goal is the downfall of the regime. There is nothing else there. No agreement will be good enough. No alternative Iranian regime will be good enough within the frame of the Islamic republic. So, are we closer now to this goal than the week before? I'm not sure of that at all.
RFE/RL: So, what gives you pause then? What makes you hesitant about that?
Svetlova: Well, I know a little bit about the history of trying to collapse regimes. And I think that there is some confusion here about the nature of the Iranian regime. I'm not sure if this confusion derives from the lack of expertise currently in the American administration or some other reason, or perhaps some hubris that, with this amazing armada and this firepower, what else can happen? You know, they are [bound] to fall. But the Iranian regime, from what we know -- and again, I'm not an Iran expert, but it's a multi-layered, very well-structured revolutionary regime that prepared for this moment for 47 years. And we have very [few] examples of regimes that fell as a result of just air strikes. And even a ground invasion doesn't always promise this kind of outcome.
And that's why we hear from the White House right now mixed signals about the possibility of some ground operation there, because they understand that they cannot achieve this, you know, very specific goal of collapsing the regime, you know, as we speak. So for now, for sure, the Iranian regime, they're probably weakened by the strikes, but they're firing like crazy, you know, involving more and more states every single day. They are still controlling the streets -- from the little, scarce information that we get from Iran. Here, from Israel, I'm looking at Iran, I do not see yet any signs of collapse of the regime.
RFE/RL: The Israeli government launched these air strikes. Those air strikes were the first thing we heard about this war. Does the Israeli government have a strategy to bring down the regime beyond air strikes?
Svetlova: Well, you know, this is a combination of Israeli prowess and expertise and firepower and American might. So it's not an Israeli operation per se. And while the Israelis definitely know how to do the first strike and to overwhelm completely the systems there and to assassinate who was assassinated there -- this is of course a great achievement. But rather than that, I think that the war is being planned in the Pentagon. Not in Israel. Whether Israel has its own plans for collapsing the regime, that I don't know.
RFE/RL: Let me put it another way then. What's the hope, then, in Netanyahu's government that the Pentagon's planning to do?
Svetlova: I think that they hope that the war will first of all last long enough, that it will not end in five days or in six days, because it will definitely take much more if you want to completely destroy physically the basis of the regime. You cannot destroy the institutions per se, but you can destroy the Basij bases, you know, and the police stations and all of that. So they're doing it right now, every single day.
And then there will be, maybe, the beginning of a civil war in Iran, between the various minority militias and, Basij forces, the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps), of course, the Iranian protests will resume, and then the regime will have to fight on many fronts rather than just one, the military front. And eventually it will be so weak that it will just collapse with perhaps some push from some security agencies here and there.
I think that's the hope, realistically. Whether it's achievable or not [is] yet to be seen. But at least for now, if somebody thought -- and this is perhaps a bit of a bold comparison, to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s hope to take over Kyiv in three days, which didn't happen, obviously, and he's there for four years.
So if anybody thought that just as a result of air strikes, and I think that in Israel at the level of the public, there was this kind of hope -- well, they are hitting them so hard, how could they not collapse? And also Trump…was astonished, like, wow, they're not raising the white flag…. Well, I think that anybody who deals with the Middle East understands exactly why it's not happening.
RFE/RL: What, then, are the implications of all this for the broader region – the Persian Gulf in particular?
Svetlova: Specifically for the Arab countries, it's the loss of security. They bill themselves as this safe hub, a wonder, a miracle in the desert. They've practically positioned themselves as not so much a part of the Middle East: We are something else, we are something different. And yet the Middle East came to them, to their doorstep. And if it continues, the implications will be very broad for energy markets, of course, but also for the positioning of these countries as safe hubs. They attracted, you know, so much human capital and also financial capital, under the promise that…they will be safe.
They are not safe anymore. And if the Iranian regime survives – and there are significant chances that they will survive, I think that they will continue to terrorize these states, not only through drone attacks and so on, but also physical terror. We heard yesterday that the Saudi officials are cutting their interviews and public appearances and so on for fear being targeted. This is something they did not experience for a long, long time. It's like going back to the ‘80s, beginning of the ‘90s in this sense. And well, Israel is much more prepared for that, but the broader Middle East is not. Europe is not prepared for that at all, for the halt of supplies of gas – LNG in Qatar and so on. The Middle East cannot tolerate this international crisis. It's not a Middle Eastern crisis.
RFE/RL: Can't tolerate it -- but can't do anything about it.
Svetlova: I don't know what they can do. I'm looking at the Gulf states, with all the brand-new weapons that they acquired from the US and Europe and other countries…. They don't much have an army, a real army. So they can join or not join Donald Trump. It will be perhaps significant symbolically, but not in any other sense. What can they do? Can the US right now be pushed through the UN Security Council? No, the answer is no. So then, what can anybody do about that? When Donald Trump will feel that he [has realized] some of these goals, then it will stop, but not before that.
RFE/RL: One of the things that's being discussed quite a lot over the last couple of days is the idea of Kurdish militias from Iraq being the ground forces, effectively. I know that when you were a member of parliament, you were involved in outreach, in contact with Kurdish organizations and Kurdish communities, including in Iraq. How do you rate the likelihood of such a scenario?
Svetlova: I think that we have to differentiate between the two things. You can support Kurdish independence, the right to self-determination. I support the Palestinian right to self-determination. I also support the Kurdish right to self-determination, just like I support for myown people, the Jewish people, the right for self-determination.
How can it be achieved? Well, you know, for now, Kurds were disappointed time and again, cooperating with the United States….
I think that, first of all, many Kurds will be hesitant about engaging in something like this, which might be extremely risky, given that the regime is not collapsing yet. It's a very different thing, arming and participating in the armed struggle when you have the first signs that the regime is almost done -- you need a little push, but then it will be gone. This is not the case with the Iranian regime yet. This is first. Second, I don't think that only by arming the ethnic minorities…the West will be able to have an advantage significantly in overwhelming the Iranian regime. I think that it will actually give the Iranians more pretense to use this rally around the flag thing. And given the rising nationalism among the Iranians who are Persians, it can actually distract them from struggling with this regime because they will say, well, these are not our goals.
