Israel Official Says Iran War 'Inevitable' and US Should Strike Now

An Israeli diplomat has told Newsweek that a large-scale confrontation with Iran was guaranteed to come and called on U.S. President Joe Biden to take direct action against the Islamic Republic sooner than later.

"It's inevitable," Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, a special envoy of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, told Newsweek in reference to the looming possibility of a war with Iran as regional tensions threatened to boil over into a serious escalation.

The ominous prediction comes as Iran threatens to exact vengeance against Israel over the unclaimed killing of Hamas Political Bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh two weeks ago in Tehran. The United States has since scrambled to avoid a major retaliation by pushing both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Haniyeh's successor, Yahya Sinwar, toward a ceasefire to their raging war in Gaza.

With a new round of long-deadlocked talks beginning Thursday, Hassan-Nahoum, former deputy mayor of the disputed holy city of Jerusalem that sits at the center of the decadeslong Israeli-Palestinian conflict now in the throes of its deadliest crisis, said that Iran's rhetoric has created a "very heavy atmosphere in Israel."

The anxiety has gotten to the point that she believes Iran and its allies "are winning the psychological warfare."

It's not just Israel, however. She said the specter of a major Iranian strike appears to be haunting much of the region, including Arab states that Hassan-Nahoum asserted are increasingly on board with a plan to take down the Islamic Republic, even if Israel's ally, the U.S., was not.

"I don't think America has understood that the ultimate goal here has to be regime change in Iran," Hassan-Nahoum said.

Israeli Plans for American War

It's a war that Hassan-Nahoum said the U.S. could win "in half a day."

"All America would have to do is target the nuclear infrastructure with hardware that only America has. We can't do this on our own," she said. "With bunker bombs, etc., they could destroy the nuclear infrastructure, then they could destroy four different infrastructure and energy points in Iran, and then the people would take over."

While Iran has deepened its partnership with Russia in recent year, including in the field of defense, Hassan-Nahoum argued that recent setbacks in the ongoing war in Ukraine would prove an obstacle for Moscow should it seek to shield the Islamic Republic from a U.S. attack.

"Russia is not in the position to help Iran right now. So, this would be the critical moment," Hassan-Nahoum said. "They've been put on the defense by Ukraine right now. This would be the best time."

At the same time, she was skeptical the White House would seek to engage in such action. Biden has ordered strikes against Iran-aligned militias in Iraq, Syria and Yemen throughout the conflict, but no U.S. administration has ever openly conducted a direct attack on Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution toppled a U.S.-backed monarchy.

Even former President Donald Trump, who ordered the killing of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Major General Qassem Soleimani in a January 2020 airstrike in Iraq, ultimately opted not to pursue attack plans against the Islamic Republic during several moments of U.S.-Iran crisis throughout his term in office.

And even if successful, many have expressed concern over the potential consequences of an Iranian state collapse in a region where various militant groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS) have sought to reassert their presence.

For Biden, however, Hassan-Nahoum argued that such a decision would put the outgoing U.S. leader on the level of former United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who declared war on Nazi Germany after its invasion of Poland 85 years ago.

"If Biden wanted to be Churchill and leave with a legacy, I know it's crazy, but that's what he would do," Hassan-Nahoum. "But I doubt he will do it."

The Israeli diplomat also deployed a World War II-era analogy to describe Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and what she believed to be the need to overthrow the Islamic Republic by force.

"Eventually, just as the world had to deal with Hitler, the world will have to deal with Khamenei and the Islamic Republic of Iran," Hassan-Nahoum said. "All everybody's doing now is kicking the can down the road."

Newsweek reached out to the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, the U.S. State Department and the White House for comment.

A Lack of Strategy

Iranian officials, including Khamenei, as well as leaders of allied groups have also repeatedly accused Netanyahu and his government of being engaged in Nazi-like tactics, particularly since the outbreak of the war in Gaza last October.

The conflict began with a surprise attack by Hamas that Israeli officials estimate left about 1,200 people dead and around 240 more taken hostage, around half of whom are believed to remain in captivity. The Gaza Health Ministry has estimated that approximately 40,000 have been killed in the densely populated territory throughout the war that ensued.

The Israeli campaign has garnered mounting international criticism over reports of mounting civilian casualties, including censures from some Arab states that have pursued stronger ties with Israel and a U.S. administration that recently approved a new $20 billion arms package for its ally. The war has also spurred widespread protests and has factored heavily into foreign policy debates in the lead-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election in November.

Hassan-Nahoum suspected Iran had a hand in promoting critical narratives of Israel in the U.S. At the same time, she acknowledged that her government had failed to muster up the necessary strategy to compete in the information space.

"We have the communications warfare that every day gets harder," Hassan-Nahoum said. "And I'm very critical of the Israeli government because they don't have a strategy. We are losing the communications battle."

"You have to go into two select channels to be able to get any type of balanced coverage of what's going on any kind of content about the war," she added. "And my conclusion is that people just don't know what war is in America. Any war that America has ever fought has been overseas, it's never been here on the homefront."

A "Divine Wrath"

For Israel, the war has taken on an increasingly multi-front nature as well.

A number of other non-state actors aligned with the Iran-led Axis of Resistance coalition have also launched attacks on Israel throughout the conflict. These include the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, Yemen's Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthi movement, and the Lebanese Hezbollah, which has also voiced threats of retaliation against Israel over the killing of a top military official in Beirut just hours before Haniyeh's death in Tehran.

As the White House urged both Israel and Hamas to achieve a long-sought ceasefire and the Pentagon moved additional assets to the region, National Security Council Communications Adviser John Kirby told Newsweek last week that the U.S. was "ready to defend Israel and our own interests," while at the same time was engaging "in some pretty intense diplomacy here across the region" to prevent a major escalation.

Days later, the Iranian Mission to the United Nations told Newsweek in a statement that Tehran would support a deal that was endorsed by Hamas but would simultaneously uphold its right to retaliate over Haniyeh's killing on Iranian soil.

"Our priority is to establish a lasting ceasefire in Gaza; any agreement accepted by Hamas will also be recognized by us," the Iranian Mission said at the time. "The Israeli regime has violated our national security and sovereignty through its recent act of terrorism."

"We have the legitimate right to self-defense—a matter totally unrelated to the Gaza ceasefire," the Iranian Mission added. "However, we hope that our response will be timed and conducted in a manner not to the detriment of the potential ceasefire."

The Iranian statement also acknowledged that "direct and intermediary official channels to exchange messages have always existed between Iran and the United States, the details of which both parties prefer to remain untold."

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Kirby reiterated the Biden administration's commitment to support Israel's defense against an Iranian attack, which he said "could come with little or no warning and certainly could come in the coming days."

"We're still working very hard, diplomatically, to prevent that outcome, to prevent there being an attack, we also have to be ready for one," Kirby said. "And I would tell you that we are. We have devoted more capability to the region, air and sea, particularly."

Meanwhile, Khamenei doubled down on his warnings Wednesday, citing the Quran as stating, "a non-tactical retreat in any domain—whether military, political, or economic—will incur divine wrath."

The Nuclear Option

Last month, responding to Israeli threats of potential preemptive action two weeks before Haniyeh's assassination, Iranian Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani told Newsweek that his country "will make use of all our conventional capacities and potentials when it comes to facing and confronting the threats made by the Zionist regime."

Bagheri also asserted at the time that Iran remained "an accountable and responsible" member of the International Atomic Energy Agency and signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Iran has always denied that its nuclear program was geared toward producing a nuclear weapon, a position officials attribute to a fatwa, or Islamic ruling, issued by Khamenei in the 1990s. Israel, which possesses nuclear weapons of its own, has long accused the Islamic Republic of secretly harboring plans to produce a weapon of mass destruction, however, and has engaged in covert campaigns of assassinations and sabotage targeting sites and personnel linked to Iran's nuclear activities.

Talk of potential shifts in Iran's nuclear posture emerged in the public domain in April, after Iran offered a preview of its conventional capabilities in an unprecedented direct strike on Israel in response to the killing of its senior military officials at a consular building in Syria. Israeli officials reported a 99 percent interception rate against the barrage of hundreds of missiles and drones, some of which were downed by U.S., U.K., French and even Jordanian systems.

Hassan-Nahoum called it a "statistical miracle" that only one person was reportedly wounded in the attack. But as the threat of another, potentially larger-scale and more diverse attack without the level of notice offered in the previous round hangs over Israel, she wondered, "Can we repeat that miracle?"

"Would the attack be as vicious? Will it be two days and not one night in seven hours? Would we be ready for it? Remember, the last time we pretty much knew the plan," she said. "That's all a part of it."

Now, she argued that a preemptive strike is only made all the more urgent by the possibility of Iran eventually passing the nuclear threshold, something the U.S. has repeatedly stated it would pursue "all options" to prevent.

If Iran did manage to acquire such a capability, she said, "We're all in trouble."

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