What Israel does over the next few days and weeks will have long-lasting effects on Iran-Israel relations. If Israel is seen as remaining on the sidelines while mass killing and executions continue, that perception will harden across Iranian society and persist for generations to come.
The facts on the ground are stark, even if precise numbers remain contested because the regime has imposed a nationwide communications blackout. Major investigations and sustained reporting show Iranian security forces firing directly into crowds in several cities. They document mass, unlawful killings on an unprecedented scale, carried out under cover of the shutdown, and warn of accelerated prosecutions and heightened execution risks. At the same time, estimates of the death toll range widely, from at least 12,000 to as high as 20,000.
Israel is a capable state. In this region, outcomes are shaped by capability and speed, not by statements alone. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly signaled solidarity with the Iranian people and pointed to a future beyond the Islamic Republic, telling Iranians: “You are not alone. Israel stands with you.”
Such signals create real expectations inside Iran. If Jerusalem’s posture now appears passive, Tehran wins twice: It stabilizes its internal coercion system through mass violence, and it poisons the foundations for any future normalization by embedding the belief that Israel acts only when it is directly attacked.
Israel must act
If Israel instead acts – decisively and intelligently – to help Iranians bring down the regime by degrading its repression capacity, a very different strategic horizon opens up. A post-Islamic Republic alignment would represent the most stabilizing potential realignment in the Middle East: Iran and Israel as partners rather than permanent enemies, cooperating on security, intelligence, and economic reconstruction.
That is the logic behind a “Cyrus Accords” framework: normalization coupled with a ceiling-less scope for economic, security, and military partnership once Iran becomes a normal state.
The opportunity is also Israel’s. If the regime survives, the Jewish state will face the same adversary – only more ruthless, more radicalized, and more determined to rebuild coercive capacity after having tested it domestically.
Steps it should take
The correct policy posture is straightforward.
- Israel should treat Iran’s internal repression machine as inseparable from the same IRGC and ideological ecosystem that drives external aggression. If that machine holds, the regime holds.
- Israel has the general capability to disrupt surveillance, censorship enforcement, and domestic command-and-control in the digital domain. The target is the regime’s ability to coordinate violence efficiently. If Tehran imposes an internet blackout to facilitate repression, the response should be a counter-blackout against the regime’s operational digital systems: internal security networks, censorship infrastructure, and state command-and-control.
- Apply military pressure to break the repression chain of command. The objective is to neutralize the regime’s military and political leadership responsible for mass killings – and the internal security leadership beneath them – by denying them the ability to direct or execute crackdowns. This can be achieved by degrading the physical units, headquarters, command posts, and enabling infrastructure on which they rely, while minimizing collateral harm.
Israel's actions will determine Iran's future
Such an approach is the only one that can be defended strategically and legally, and it reduces Iran’s ability to brand its citizens’ uprising as a foreign-directed project.
This is a strategic assessment, not a moral abstraction. In the Middle East, credibility is cumulative, and so are public perceptions. How Israel chooses now will shape how Iranians view the Jewish state for generations, and it will define Netanyahu’s legacy: whether the Jewish state he leads treated the Islamic Republic’s internal collapse as a peripheral event, or as the opening to a durable regional realignment and long-term Israeli security.
The regime is cornered. Israel’s choice now will help decide whether it survives.
The author is an Energy and Industrial Policy expert focused on Iran. Follow him on X: @Aidin_FreeIran