All signs point to Iran wanting revenge on Israel after its humiliating defeat in the 12-Day War of 2025.
So warns Brigadier General (Ret.) Amir Avivi, the founder and CEO of Israel’s Defense and Security Forum (IDSF). Far from heeding the lesson that both the United States under President Donald Trump and Israel are serious when they say they will not allow the unacceptable threat of a nuclear-armed Iran that acts belligerently toward the “Big Satan” and “Little Satan,” Avivi says the regime has only intensified its military buildup — producing ballistic missiles on a massive scale, refocusing on its nuclear program, and strengthening its air defenses. With Iranian missiles pointed at Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior military leaders have warned repeatedly over the last two weeks that any attack would trigger massive retaliation.
And a preemptive Iranian attack on Israel is one of three war scenarios facing Israel that Avivi outlined during a strategic briefing this week. During the 12-Day-War, Iran was unable to overwhelm Israel with missiles, managing to fire only a dozen or two at a time. Avivi warns that in a preemptive strike by Iran now, Israel could see as many as 500 missiles launched instantly. This, he explains, is unacceptable:
Even with the great air defense of Israel, it’s very challenging and problematic. This we cannot have. I’m really hoping, and this is the message the IDSF is sending to the government and the military: it’s not an option. It’s not an option that they shoot first.
The fact that a first attack by Iran would be unacceptable is why, if intelligence warrants it, Israel might strike first, even before the U.S. This second scenario could happen in the next several days or weeks, says Avivi. He hopes for a third scenario, which he views as the best option: a U.S.-led attack to destroy not only Iran’s nuclear, ballistic, and air defense capabilities, as well as the Basij forces that have been slaughtering Iranians protesting the regime in the streets, but also to bring down the regime. Avivi acknowledges that “bringing down a regime is not like attacking military sites. It’s a very different kind of operation and therefore it requires a lot of thinking and a lot of preparations.”
While many isolationists would argue that careful thinking should lead to avoiding preparations to prevent getting bogged down in another regime-change war in the Middle East, Avivi says the situation in Iran is different. The 12-Day War has broken Iran’s deterrence both globally and internally, prompting Europe to reimpose sanctions and sparking protests among the Iranian people against the regime. Avivi explains why there’s reason for optimism:
And it also depends not only on the military but on the Iranian people: if they will seize the moment and rise and fight or not. I believe that if the U.S. starts the attack on the Iranian regime, the Iranian people will rise and will fight and will storm the centers of government of this regime. And I’m very, very optimistic that we’re going to see a regime change in this coming year. And this is going to change end to end the whole Middle East. It’s not only going to completely change the reality in Iran, but will, like domino, bring the fall of also the proxies of Hezbollah, possibly the Houthis, the militias in Iraq.
Until that broader shift occurs, however, these proxies will continue to pose a real threat. During the 12-day war, they did nothing while Iran was attacked. Avivi says that Iran had been building up Hezbollah for 20 years, but at the moment of truth they were absent. He explains that the Iranians are sending the message to their proxies that that can’t happen again. So we should expect to see these proxies shooting at Israel and the U.S. in a war.
Still, Avivi is very confident that by the end of the likely coming war, the Iranian regime will be gone and the Shia axis decapitated. But even then, Israel will have to ensure that a Sunni axis does not take over, as happened when ISIS controlled vast territories in the Middle East before it was suppressed. This can be prevented by extending the Abraham Accords and the Western-Israeli Sunni alliance all the way to Indonesia.
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Avivi ends with a hopeful yet urgent message: with such a promising future possible, it’s time to seize the moment.
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