Ex-Mossad analyst: War could leave Iran weakened but regime intact without missiles

Sima Shine sits in Tel Aviv, air raid sirens wailing in the background as she speaks by phone about a war now entering its fourth week. She has spent more than a decade studying Iran's inner workings, first as head of the Mossad's Research and Evaluation Division from 2003 to 2007, then as deputy director of strategic affairs at Israel's National Security Council, and now as a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies. When she talks about what this conflict is actually trying to accomplish, her answer cuts against much of the public messaging coming from Washington and Jerusalem.

The war, she explains, was never primarily about toppling the Iranian government. Yes, the Trump administration's early rhetoric—"help is on the way" to protesters, suggestions that the regime might crumble under bombardment—created confusion about the true objectives. But the intelligence communities in both countries understood something the politicians seemed reluctant to admit: you cannot bomb a system into collapse. Iran's government is not a single point of failure. Kill the supreme leader, eliminate the national security secretary, decapitate the visible hierarchy, and the machinery keeps grinding forward. The actual targets are Iran's ballistic missile arsenal and its nuclear program. Those are the capacities the campaign aims to neutralize.

What Shine emphasizes, with the weight of someone who has watched this regime for years, is something Western policymakers have consistently underestimated: the Iranian system's resilience. The regime is fighting for its existence, and when an institution believes its survival is at stake, it will sacrifice almost anything—resources, citizen welfare, economic stability—to preserve itself. Iran entered this war already crippled by water shortages and electricity crises. It will emerge far weaker: its air force degraded, its navy damaged, its missile production infrastructure destroyed, its economy in ruins. But the system itself will likely survive.

This creates a peculiar endgame. One plausible scenario, Shine suggests, is an Iran that retains its government but loses its military teeth. A weakened Islamic Republic, stripped of the tools it has used to project power across the region, might eventually face internal pressure for change—though she is careful to note this is hope rather than certainty. The regime's decision to name Mojtaba, the supreme leader's son, as his successor signals that Iran's leadership chose continuity over reform. They are not signaling openness to becoming what the West would call a "normal state."

What does Shine mean by that phrase? She points to Iran's decades-long project of exporting revolution, funding militias in Lebanon and Iraq, arming the Houthis and Hamas, conducting terrorist operations in Europe alongside criminal networks. In Iraq, pro-Iranian militias have effectively blocked the selection of prime ministers. This is not the behavior of a state concerned with its citizens' welfare or economic stability. It is the behavior of a regime willing to impoverish its own people to maintain regional influence and ideological reach. Even Saudi Arabia's foreign minister has publicly asked: what has Iran done for the Muslim world except destabilize its neighbors?

The question facing Iran's remaining leadership, Shine argues, is stark: do they want to be destroyed completely, or are they willing to negotiate? If they choose negotiation, their leverage is limited but real. Control of the Strait of Hormuz remains in their hands. Iran is already signaling that after the war, it intends to impose transit fees on ships passing through this chokepoint, essentially monetizing the strategic geography it controls. This will be their currency in any peace talks.

There is a risk Shine acknowledges but does not dwell on: if Iran's leadership is systematically eliminated, who will be left to sign an agreement? The figures killed so far—Ali Larijani, the security apparatus's strongman, and others—were radical figures, not pragmatists. As the targeting continues, the remaining leadership may become even more hardline, even less inclined toward compromise. And even if a deal is struck, there is no guarantee that weakened militias scattered across Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon will honor it. A decapitated Iranian state might lack the authority to control its own proxies.

Yet Shine's underlying conviction is that instability in Iran serves no one's interests, least of all Israel's. A failed state, a nation consumed by civil war, would not respond to rational calculation. It is better to have a weakened but functioning government you can negotiate with than a chaotic power vacuum. The war has already lasted far longer than the lightning strike some imagined. What comes next depends on whether Iran's leadership can be forced to choose survival through compromise over survival through escalation.