Iranian ex-officers to Israeli TV: Israel should bomb Khamenei’s home, help topple regime
In report showing them with blurred faces, men identified as ex-air force colonel and disillusioned IRGC officer say ‘the power of the Israeli army must help the Iranian nation’
A man said to be a retired colonel in the Iranian air force urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to facilitate a coup by striking the home of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 broadcast on Saturday.
“Netanyahu needs to order an attack on Khamenei’s home,” the man said.
“And we, the military can take over sensitive political centers and officially announce Iran’s freedom and friendship with Israel,” he added.
The man — whose face was blurred and who used the pseudonym Arash — also claimed 95 percent of Iranians were pleased with the IDF’s retaliatory strikes on military sites in the Islamic Republic, which he said has “taken us, the people, hostage.”
The man said Iranians “have this kind of wish that Israel will go further” than it had in the April and October retaliatory strikes “so that the nation will be emboldened and take to the streets.”
“They themselves will cut [the regime’s] roots from the country,” he added, noting the weakening of Iran’s air defenses and its regional proxies.
Also speaking to Channel 12, a man said to have been a cleric in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — which is separate from the military and answers directly to Khamenei — urged Israel to attack Iran.
“I don’t see Israel as criminal. We say ‘death to Israel,’ but Israel doesn’t say ‘death to Iran,'” said the man, whose face was also blurred and who used the pseudonym Javad.
“We’ve been friends days since the days of Cyrus [the Great],” he said. “Cyrus saved the Jews of Babylon. Now we expect something in return — that you lend us a hand of friendship, that the power of the Israeli army come to help the Iranian nation.”
Arash and Javad were both said to be speaking to Israel’s Channel 12 from inside Iran — an exceptional feat, given the country’s tight censorship and its leaders’ open commitment to destroy Israel.
As part of that cause, Iran supports an “Axis of Resistance” network of regional proxies, which includes Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Gaza’s Hamas and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Arash said he had been forced to resign from the military after he refused to help train Hamas in guerrilla tactics and urban warfare. It was unclear when the episode had taken place.
He noted Israel’s recent successes against Iran’s proxies in the wars in Gaza and Lebanon that followed October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.
Hezbollah, unprovoked, began attacking Israel a day later. In September the following year, Israel stepped up operations against Hezbollah, detonating booby-trapped pagers it had covertly sold to the terror group and assassinating its long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah.
“Israel has hurt the leaders of the resistance movements. In the pager attack and others, Nasrallah himself said they took a heavy blow,” said Arash. “What the IRGC thinks now is that Hamas won’t recuperate. Hezbollah won’t recuperate. Where do they place their stock? In Yemen.”
Asked about Israel’s attack on Iran’s air defenses in late October — which followed Iran’s October 1 missile attack that sent millions of Israelis into bomb shelters — Arash said that the Islamic Republic’s airspace was “wide open.”
“The computer system that receives orders and launches missiles at planes — those systems have been taken completely offline,” he said.
Arash said Israel’s attack mainly hit “sites with S-300 anti-ballistic missile silos that Russia gave Iran, as well as drones.”
“Now they have no advanced anti-plane systems,” he said. “They have the same old systems we used in the [1980-1988] Iran-Iraq War, two pipes that we sit behind and shoot out of.”
A former Israeli intelligence officer interviewed by Channel 12 explained that the Iran-Iraq War had been the reason Tehran did not disband its military, which was loyal to the deposed shah, immediately after the 1979 revolution that heralded the Islamic Republic.
Then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini had planned to replace the military with the IRGC, but the war’s manpower crunch required him to keep the military intact, the Israeli officer said.
The officer added that the Iranian military remains underfunded and had relatively little influence over decision-making, compared with the IRGC. The latter, he said, is identified with Iran’s hardliners and had been the driving force behind Iran’s attacks on Israel last year.
Arash, the retired Iranian officer, said that “all the soldiers in the military feel estranged from the IRGC, from this regime. I can even say that 60% of soldiers in the IRGC hate it.”
Javad, a former IRGC mullah, said, “The military generally comprises the lower classes, so they have negative thoughts about the regime, compared with the IRGC.”
Javad also reported that the IRGC was “shocked” by Israel’s assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh at a Guard guesthouse in Tehran in July.
“You can see the IRGC didn’t put out a statement,” he said.
He also noted that the IRGC “has lost a very strong front in Syria” when Iran-backed President Bashar al-Assad was deposed in December. “That front has fallen to Israel’s hands. Now, the Syrian regime is attacking Lebanon on behalf of Israel’s interests. And that was a very fatal blow.”
According to Channel 12, Javad had become recently disillusioned with the Islamic Republic after the regime harassed him over a personal matter. The falling-out was said to have cost Javad his religious privileges and hurt his social status.
“I’m a Shiite, and until this incident, there have been many videos of me taking part in rallies and such,” he said. “But I’m happy my mind has opened up. I consider them enemies, those who say Israel… is corrupt, when they themselves are corrupt.”
“The corruption at the top has doubled,” he said. “The corruption and prostitution in Iran have doubled.”
He proceeded to illustrate his compatriots’ discontent with their government’s generous support for Palestinian terror groups even as Iranians suffer from international sanctions on their economy.
“I was in Tehran on a mission,” he said. “One of the IRGC kids said, jokingly, ‘death to Palestine,’ and we all laughed.”
“Even so,” Javad added, “he knew that if he really wanted to say something tomorrow… [the regime] will easily assassinate him.”
The interviews were broadcast as the US struck Houthi targets in Yemen and warned Iran to stop supporting the rebels, who have threatened to resume attacks on Red Sea shipping and Israel. Iran responded on Sunday that Washington has “no authority” to dictate Iran’s foreign policy.
Meanwhile, Khamenei last week rejected US President Donald Trump’s offer to negotiate a deal for the White House to lift sanctions on Iran in exchange for oversight of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities.
Trump — who scrapped such a deal in his first term — has indicated the alternative to a deal would be airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Though Tehran has said its nuclear program is strictly peaceful, it has enriched uranium to near-weapons-grade levels unfit for civilian use.
Israeli officials have repeatedly indicated that Jerusalem could take advantage of Iran’s low air defenses to strike the nuclear facilities.
Speaking to Channel 12, Javad said, “I live with the hope… that in coming months I’ll see this happen. Israel against Iran — in the end it’s in the hands of the US. The Iranians understand that, too.”
The Times of Israel Community.