Much of the talk about Iran has been focused on whether the regime of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can be toppled.
While the chances of that happening have gradually risen over the last two weeks, especially with US President Donald Trump tweeting “Help is on the way” on Tuesday, most serious Iran analysts and nearly all defense officials – at this moment – still see that as a long shot.
That does not mean that the protests in the Islamic Republic do not present historic opportunities to improve security in the region.
In fact, the protests present Trump with a golden opportunity to rid the world of a number of still very real threats emanating from Tehran, mostly in the ballistic missile arena, but to a lesser extent also in the nuclear arena.
Likewise, Khamenei having his hands full and the IDF having worn down Hezbollah relentlessly with periodic narrowly tailored targeted strikes on its weapons and fighting capabilities presents a golden opportunity to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He can deal a deeper blow to the 20% of missiles and rockets that Hezbollah still possesses, even after the 2023-2024 conflict between it and Israel.
Khamenei has several priorities.
Most crucially, he wants himself and his close colleagues to stay in power.
In addition to that, as a secondary priority, he would still like the Islamic Republic to make a comeback as a regional hegemon, or at least as a regional power.
But maybe he will be willing to take certain kinds of hits on that secondary priority, rather than start a larger war with the US.
Trump could strike Iran’s ballistic missile supplies and production (which was already reduced by Israel by 50% in June) and aspects of the nuclear program that were not previously hit, but then reassure Khamenei that he will not take further action if Tehran’s response is restrained. In that situation, the ballistic missile threat could be massively reduced more than it was before, and the nuclear threat could be almost completely taken off the table.
More specifically, the Islamic Republic has made a partial ballistic missile comeback since June: in volume of missiles, in general production, and in potentially jumping forward regarding future production.
In fact, a major focus of Trump and Netanyahu’s recent meeting in Florida dealt with what would be a redline in volume or production after which Israel or the US, or both, would move forward to attack the ballistic missile program.
Iran's nuclear program status
Khamenei’s nuclear program has already been reduced much closer to zero than the ballistic missiles program, and would require a minimum of two years to rebuild, but still has some significant assets for the future.
One asset is the new nuclear facility near Natanz, being placed even deeper under a mountain than the facility at Fordow, which the US bombed in June.
This facility has been known about since at least 2022. It was not bombed because it was not yet operational, had no centrifuges to destroy, and the difficulty of using bunker busters was even more unpredictable than with Fordow.
But since June, Iran has continued to make progress on moving the facility toward an operational status.
If it did become operational and Iran started to build a new fleet of centrifuges for enriching uranium, this could represent a difficult aspect of the nuclear program to destroy.
In addition, Iran has 400 kg. or more of 60% enriched uranium – very close to the 90% weaponized level - which survived the June war. There were a variety of reasons why this was not attacked in June, and Israeli and US intelligence officials have said they have a handle on where it is, should Iran make the mistake of trying to use it.
But with the other, more threatening Iranian nuclear assets already gone, why not take it off the table entirely?
Many thought Khamenei would agree to a new nuclear deal after the June war because he could not enrich new amounts of uranium anyway, so he would not be giving up much to agree to a full uranium enrichment freeze as Trump demanded.
This has not happened. And even more than two weeks into the protests and despite threats from Trump, Khamenei seems unwilling to budge (a strong nuclear and ballistic missiles limits deal could be better than attacking, but Khamenei seems uninterested).
Iran would likely retaliate against one or more US bases in the Middle East if Trump ordered such an attack.
But if Trump made it clear that he was not going to try to topple the regime, and was “only” trying to further eliminate the nuclear and ballistic missile threats, Khamenei might moderate his response as in June. In that case, he ordered one limited attack on the American base in Qatar, which caused no deaths.
This would not end the fanatical regime of Khamenei, but it would largely remove its wider regional threat capacity and ability to threaten the US.
Similarly, Netanyahu had an unprecedented hand to play against Hezbollah.
The truth is that Iran did little to assist the Lebanese terror group during much of the 2023-2024 conflict between it and Israel. But Khamenei did order a major attack on Israel on October 1, 2024, significantly because Jerusalem had assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Generally speaking, Israel’s belief since June is that Iran will no longer help Hezbollah militarily due to the cost it would face.
Yet, there have still been concerns that Tehran could miscalculate and try to hit the Jewish state while it is deeply involved in a new operation against Hezbollah.
With Khamenei so heavily distracted by the protests at the moment, the chances that he would try to help Hezbollah against an Israeli attack are likely at an all-time low.
In addition, the IDF has already done a lot of the groundwork for such an operation.
Israel has killed over 400 Hezbollah operatives little by little since the November 2024 ceasefire.
It has also attacked many remaining strategic attack and defense assets of Hezbollah.
If in 2023-2024 there were concerns that Hezbollah could cover Israel with 6,000-8,000 missiles and rockets per day, and in fact it succeeded at covering Israel’s North with around 200 rockets per day, as well as occasional missiles fired at Tel Aviv, the estimate now is that Hezbollah would manage even fewer in counterstrikes than it did in fall 2024.
This would not be damage-free for Israel.
But if the 2023-2024 conflict removed Hezbollah’s ground invasion threat and reduced its aerial threats by 80%, a new major operation now, when the group is even more disorganized and on the run, could eliminate any rearmament gains it made in recent months, and could potentially eliminate the vast majority of its remaining aerial threat arsenal.
The combined impact could be powerful leverage to truly compel Hezbollah into a larger level of long-term disarmament.
It is hard to see either Iran’s or Hezbollah’s threats to Israel and the West being removed entirely.
Of course, if Trump’s “Help is on the way” tweet is a prelude to a paradigm shift where he helps topple the regime, there could be an even greater dramatic reduction in the Iranian threat.
But with so much focus on toppling the regimes, Israel and the US might also consider a more modest, but still historic opportunity, to reduce their capabilities to threaten other nation-states.