Qapla’ Israel. When They Start Vowing "Retaliation" You Know They Are On The Ropes

Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

Dear Reader

This is not shock and awe. This is humiliate and expose.

Since June 13, Israel has unleashed an aerial campaign of manned aircraft and drone attacks—Operation Rising Lion—targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, missile bases, state ministries, and even the headquarters of its state television network. These strikes not only degrade Iran’s capabilities but also send a clear message: Israel perceives Iran’s vulnerability as an invitation to escalate and shame. In the vernacular, Iran has run its mouth for a long time, and now it has been punched and has nothing to say. That’s a problem. For Iran. People keep lauding strongman regimes, and these regimes keep getting exposed. Russia, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, and now Iran. Maybe it’s time to accept that strongmen make their regimes weaker over time. The longer you have one, the more of a joke you become. Open systems of government, you know democracies are stronger states. The evidence is on the battlefield. A corrupted democracy that moves toward strongman government is binding itself for the enemy to spoil it.

Since the start of the State of Israel’s aerial offensive on June 13, the Islamic Republic of Iran has absorbed crushing military losses. These were not warning shots or gestures of deterrence: they were unambiguous messages of dominance. The airstrikes on the Defense Ministry headquarters in Tehran and on nuclear-linked installations in Isfahan were especially telling: Israel no longer sees Iran as a peer adversary deserving of formal constraint, but as a crippled regime that can be punished at will.

At will—meaning you can’t do anything about it, so surrender. That’s the message.

Air dominance is a measure of the relative power to control the skies during a war, and it comes in three levels. The lowest is air parity, where both sides can fly and fight in the air, and neither has a clear advantage. The next level is air superiority, where one side controls most of the skies, but the enemy can still try to fight back take the advantage. The highest level is air supremacy, where one side completely owns the airspace and the enemy cannot fly safely at all. In today’s Israel-Iran conflict, Israel appears to have reached at least air superiority—perhaps even air supremacy—because it is hitting deep targets inside Iran while Iran struggles to stop or even slow the attacks. Technologically, in terms of distance and infiltration, this is more impressive than June 1967, the Six-Day War.

Meanwhile, internal dissent in Iran is spreading. The Economist reports an atmosphere of exhaustion and bitterness among Iranians. Citizens in Tehran are fleeing. The regime appears politically hollowed out and socially brittle. Regime brittleness is a key concept in my methodology when I look at governments throughout history, especially dictatorships and autocratic regimes. In Iran’s case, this perceived internal weakness feeds a larger impression: that Iran’s government cannot inspire loyalty or fear if it cannot respond to Israel forcefully without resorting to overblown rhetoric. Think of a tree branch in winter. A strong, flexible branch in cold weather bends under the weight of snow. It may creak, but it adjusts—it is resilient. Now imagine a frozen, dry branch. It looks the same at first, but if too much snow or pressure hits it, it snaps suddenly. That’s brittleness: it holds up until it doesn't—and when it breaks, it breaks all at once. It looks like Israel just froze Iran.

The strategic contempt becomes even more visible in Israeli rhetoric. Prime Minister Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu floated the possibility of assassinating Iran’s Supreme Leader, declaring that Khamenei’s death would end the conflict. This is not the language of defensive strategy; it is the language of regime annihilation. The stated goals of Israeli policy now include not just the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program but also regime change. In psychological terms, Israel’s leadership does not fear Iran—not in the way it would if the nuclear threat were imminent. It loathes it and sees it as a target to be dismantled, not negotiated with.¹ The US President, Donald John Trump is now circling rather than being a restrainer. He may decide to join the frenzy as Israel chums the waters. It would make him look strong if he destroyed the Islamic Republic without putting American boots on the ground. Despite the MAGA movement being associated with “isolationism” what many get wrong is that if you look more closely, there has always been a strain of aggressive militarism under the surface; in part this is a rejection of social norms, like peace and the “international rules based order,” and the MAGA need to perform power. “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” is what the American president posted on social media on June 17, along with a threat to kill the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei. If Iran has something to offer, it should do so quickly, because whether or not they will admit it, the United States administration has issued a war threat not based on any confirmed Iranian attacks on the United States or its forces—there are no such confirmed reports currently—but because Iran appears powerless to strike back.

In the expanded Star Trek fandom, the strategy of least respect (vuvHa’chu’wI’ to’) is a military tactic of the alien warrior species the Klingons, aimed to display disdain rather than the total destruction of the opponent. Instead of obliterating an enemy force, Klingons using this strategy would deliberately disable their ships and bypass them, demonstrating such overwhelming superiority that the enemy is proven unworthy of full engagement. Sometimes just passing them by if the enemy had no weapons worthy of the name, even if fired upon. But they fought to demonstrate impunity. This approach humiliates opponents, crushes morale, and asserts dominance by seizing their territory or objectives with minimal resistance as they look on. Complete Battlespace embarassement. It embodies the Klingon ethos of honor through bold action with the added dagger twist of psychological warfare: the enemy is defeated and disrespected. Qapla’ Israel.

That unanswered disrespect has shifted the threshold of acceptable action. The goal is no longer deterrence; it is degradation, humiliation, and provocation to rebellion and regime change. Iran’s slow and inconsistent retaliation only confirms Israel’s judgment: Tehran can bluster, but it cannot control the tempo or scope of escalation. Its threats are confirmation of being hobbled. If it could hit back with the same verocity of Israel, then it would just do so.

Iran has responded, yes—but poorly, oh so poorly for a supposed Shia giant. Its missile strikes hit parts of Tel Aviv and Haifa. But these were more symbolic than strategic, and they did not interrupt Israel’s momentum. Israel, emboldened by Iran’s vulnerability and animated by decades of hostility, has thrown out the old playbook of deterrence. It now strikes at the heart of Iran’s state capacity not out of necessity, but out of perceived opportunity.

The Iranian regime is not just under attack; it is being treated as irrelevant, with direct Israeli appeals being made to the “people” of Iran. When I was a young university student, I heard the renowned Jewish educator Avraham Infeld speak on the nature of power. He discussed the temptation of power, but also the dangerous allure of powerlessness to the powerful. When there is rivalry or hatred or some form of high animosity, powerlessness tempts the powerful to act against their target. Iran has, for decades, created high animosity with Israel. This was the choice of the Iranian revolutionaries.

Under the Pahlavi dynasty, which ruled the Imperial State of Iran from 1925 to 1979, the government maintained a discreet but strategic alliance with Israel, driven by shared regional interests. Both countries were non-Arab and aligned with the West, so they were alarmed by Arab nationalism and concerned about Soviet support for Arab regimes. Though Iran never formally recognized Israel, the two cooperated extensively on intelligence, military, and economic matters: Iran supplied oil; Israel offered technical assistance and security training. This was Cold War realpolitik. Iran and Israel do not have naturally conflicting strategic interests.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution changed everything. Fighting the Jewish state became part of the revolutionary ideology. Yet Iran and Israel do not share a border, and their ability to fight at sea is severely constrained because they do not share a common sea lane or unobstructed waterway. So Iran used proxies to threaten Israel in Lebanon and Syria, and Israel used its secret agents and cyberwarfare against Iran. Iranian rhetoric against Israel has created severe resentment in Israel—and in the United States as well. For decades, Iran’s nuclear program has been held up as a threat to the Western world, the United States, and the existence of Israel. "Why does an oil giant need atomic energy?" Israel and its supporters have asked for a quarter-century. However, Iran never reached the point of having a nuclear bomb. Why? Was that never its goal? If so, why talk tough against the United States, a nuclear superpower?

Yet all that rhetoric has been rendered into hot air and puffery by American-led technological advances, which Israel benefits from.² It is not 2005, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a household bogeyman in the West, seen as the next threat after Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Two decades later, Iran has no bomb, but the United States and Israel have aerial warfighting systems that can devastate the regime without using ground forces. In that case, Iran should have changed its policy to one of accommodation and bridge-building—not just ending its weapons program, but ending its support for terrorism and atomic energy altogether. It needed a diplomatic revolution, because, as it now appears, it was too weak to talk so tough. It needed to go to the corner, sit down, tell the corner man to throw in the towl and then shut up. In international relations, power renders the final verdict, and if you start beef with another state, but do not have the power to deter that state from cooking you, you are making bad choices. That does not mean Israel should attack Iran, it means that if Iran is bent on being Israel’s rhetorical enemy while being an incompetent state, then Israel is likely to determine that forcing a decision now is better than waiting. Powerlessness tempts more than power. As Israel has been planning this for perhaps years, that means that Iran’s weakness has been known for a while.

Iran is learning what everyone who is knowledgeable about war psychology already knows: weakness + enmity breeds contempt.

1. This is the sort of English up with which I will not put. - Winston Churchill, who did not mind ending sentences with prepositions.

2. Ukraine and Israel have changed warfare, and while the USA is supporting them it should get on with securing itself from similar attacks from a watching China. Guard that border and the ports.