SHLOMO BEN-AMI
TEL AVIV – In 2017, Iran unveiled a digital clock counting down the days to the destruction of Israel in 2040. The display, located in Tehran’s Palestine Square, embodies the Islamic Republic’s long-held commitment to annihilating the Jewish state. Some view this promise as a mere rhetorical exercise to rally support at home and throughout the Muslim world. But as the Gaza war drags on and seems poised to expand, many in Israel, including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, see an actionable plan that Iran seeks to execute, the consequences be damned.
The drive to eliminate Israel is rooted in the Shia eschatological belief that the Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam and Islamic messiah, will reappear at the end of the world. The Iranian regime increasingly sees Israel’s eradication as a necessary step for the Mahdi’s return. The founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, attributed Islam’s historical decline to a foreign conspiracy, accusing Western powers of using Zionism to penetrate the Middle East. From this perspective, liberating Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem from Israeli control and destroying the Zionist regime would redeem and renew contemporary Islam.
Worryingly, many in the Iranian regime have indicated that the time is right to achieve this sacred goal. In 2020, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader, called the Zionist regime a “cancerous tumor” that will “undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed.” Late last year, Hossein Salami, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, vowed to remove Israel “from the face of existence” after an Israeli airstrike in Damascus killed a high-ranking Iranian general.
From Adolf Hitler to Vladimir Putin and even Osama bin Laden, history has taught us to take threats of ideologically inspired attacks at face value. But the Islamic Republic has amply demonstrated its cautiousness – being radical doesn’t necessarily mean being irrational and suicidal. Rather than a historic showdown, nuclear or conventional, Iran seems to be waging a long-term war of attrition against Israel.
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