Iran’s Supreme Leader faces a narrowing set of options after the collapse of his regional military strategy, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a letter to Ali Khamenei.
Gallant described the June US-Israeli strikes as a decisive turning point, saying Iran’s efforts to achieve regional hegemony and build a nuclear arsenal had failed, and that any attempt to rebuild would be detected and destroyed.
“What unfolded in June was not merely a military campaign,” Gallant wrote in a letter publicly published Wednesday on Substack. “It was the strategic collapse of a system you spent four decades constructing.”
Gallant said Iran’s armed forces in the region have become a liability, its air defenses were dismantled, and its nuclear program set back by years.
His remarks come weeks after the US and Israel launched coordinated military strikes that hit key Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. The attacks, which included Tomahawk cruise missiles and bunker-buster bombs, came as part of a broader twelve-day war that also targeted Iran’s regional armed forces.
Gallant said the joint strikes exposed Iran’s most sensitive military infrastructure and eliminated key personnel in Tehran, Beirut, and Damascus. He warned that Iran’s future efforts — nuclear or conventional — would not remain hidden.
Gallant offered Khamenei a stark ultimatum: “Abandon your war against a small, determined country a thousand miles from your border, and focus instead on the welfare and future of your own people,” he wrote. “But if you choose wrong again, we will be there, waiting.”
Netanyahu says Iran incapable of peace
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Iran's leadership cannot be trusted to abandon its nuclear and military ambitions, casting doubt on any future diplomatic efforts by the United States.
“That regime has a built-in DNA, and that DNA says: ‘No America, no Israel,’” Netanyahu told Fox News in an interview aired during his visit to Washington to meet President Donald Trump.
“A good deal with Iran means they stop all nuclear activity, all enrichment. They would stop building these ballistic missiles… They would also dismantle the terror axis. But I think that’s not the regime we’re dealing with.”
Netanyahu said Iran’s nuclear activity accelerated after Israel “crushed Hezbollah” in Lebanon late last year, claiming that Tehran “rushed to nuclear weapons” after the loss of its main ally.
