Senior Israeli official admits squeezing Iran at odds with stabilizing energy markets

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recognizes that taking care of the energy markets and global economy is at odds with efforts to continue squeezing Iran, and the question is how both of these aims can be advanced at the same time, a senior Israeli official says during a briefing with reporters in Washington, without offering a solution.

While the regime appears to have withstood the worst of what the US and Israel were able to throw at it over the last four months, the regime is now much weaker than it seems and is facing unprecedented economic turmoil and even a renewal of small protests against it, the senior Israeli official asserts.

“The regime is very afraid of the possibility that the public will take to the streets over the economic situation,” the official adds, pointing to what he says is a 90% inflation rate in Iran.

While Netanyahu in the early days of the war spoke about regime change as a very realistic possibility, the senior Israeli official appears to acknowledge it will not happen organically under current conditions, with unarmed protesters.

Accordingly, Netanyahu and Trump “discussed [during their meeting yesterday] additional economic pressure [against Iran] through kinetic and non-kinetic means,” the senior Israeli official says.

While the official acknowledges that the final decision on how to proceed belongs to Trump, Netanyahu will not wait for an American green light if Iran decides to attack Israel first.

The official suspects Iran has refrained from doing so to date because it knows the response will be overwhelming and because Israel has achieved a degree of deterrence.