US-Israeli task force established to stoke internal pressure in Iran – report

Israel and the US have established a joint task force geared toward exploiting and amplifying internal pressure on the Iranian regime, Channel 10 news reports.

The report says a recent meeting in Washington between Israel’s National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat and his American counterpart, John Bolton, focused on strategy for turning up the heat on the government in Tehran.

The Islamic Republic has seen multiple mass protests and the reported deaths of several demonstrators in the past week, due to a water crisis and worsening economic conditions triggered by the US pullout from the nuclear deal.

The report quotes a senior Israeli official as saying that the goal of the task force isn’t to topple the regime. (“No one thinks” that can be done, he is quoted as saying.)

Rather, he says, its aim is to exploit internal pressure in Iran in order to force the ayatollahs to “change their behavior.”

The report says the task force has met several times, and links its activities to recent attempts by senior Israeli and American officials to address the Iranian people directly over social media: Prime Minister Netanyahu with a number of videos on Facebook, and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Twitter.