(José Niño, Headline USA) A State Department cable reviewed by The Washington Post reveals that senior Israeli officials privately warned American diplomats that Iranian demonstrators will “get slaughtered” if they rise up against their government, even as Israel publicly encourages a popular revolution.
The cable, distributed by the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on Friday, conveyed an Israeli assessment that the Iranian regime is “not cracking” and remains willing to “fight to the end” despite the February 28 assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the sustained American and Israeli aerial assault.
The Iranian government killed thousands of agitators during widespread anti-government protests and riots earlier this year. Should Iranians return to the streets in large numbers, Israeli officials cautioned that “the people will get slaughtered” because the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “has the upper hand,” according to the cable. Two State Department officials confirmed the document’s authenticity.
Even with this bleak assessment, Israeli officials expressed hope for a popular uprising and pressed the United States to prepare support for protesters if one materializes.
Narges Bajoghli, an Iran expert at Johns Hopkins University, noted that Iranians have long doubted Israeli motives and that the contradictory messaging will strike many as exploitative. “I think a lot of people will feel very betrayed by this assessment,” Bajoghli said.
The Israeli Embassy in Washington maintained that Israel is “focused on eliminating the regime’s military capabilities — to everyone’s benefit.”
American and Israeli forces have struck thousands of targets across Iran, including nuclear facilities, ballistic missile depots, and police stations. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly called on the Iranian people to “cast off the yoke of this murderous regime.”
President Trump initially encouraged Iranians to “take over your government” but has since recognized the peril facing would be protesters. “They literally have people in the streets with machine guns, machine-gunning people down if they want to protest,” Trump told Fox News. “I really think that’s a big hurdle to climb for people that don’t have weapons.”
The regime’s durability represents one of several factors the administration appears to have misjudged in a conflict now entering its third week with no resolution in sight. On Monday, leading American allies refused Trump’s request to deploy warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert atfisrael the Brookings Institution, expressed surprise that Israel failed to anticipate the regime’s resilience. “That really badly informed assumption is interesting given how impressive Israeli intelligence penetration of Iran has been,” she said. “It obviously lies at the root of the strategic miscalculation that Israel and the U.S. together blundered into.”
Bajoghli argued that Israel’s readiness to advocate for an uprising regardless of the death toll reflects its longstanding goal of engineering “state collapse” in Iran. “The goal is not creating a liberal democracy for the Iranian people. It’s widening the chasm between the society and the state.”
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
