A two-week Iran-US-Israel ceasefire is still in effect despite the collapse of last weekend's Islamabad talks, where the big hang up was fierce disagreement over Iran's nuclear development. The clock is ticking amid efforts to hold more direct talks by the end of this week.
What's unlikely to help things move along is a fresh statement from Mossad Director David Barnea. While speaking at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in Jerusalem on Tuesday, he boasted that Mossad assets have been operating from the heart of Tehran and that the fight is not over until there's regime collapse or overthrow.
He said of Israel's premier intelligence agency that it operated "in the heart of Tehran" during the recent US-Israeli campaign against Iran, and further that "We brought precise intelligence to the Air Force, and we hit missiles that threatened Israel."
"But our mission has yet to be completed," the spy chief added. "We didn’t think that this mission would be completed immediately with the end of the battles. But we planned intensively for our campaign to continue and achieve results even in the period after the strikes in Tehran."
Mossad's involvement in counter-Iran action, he continued, will end "only when this radical regime is replaced."
Barnea made clear that regime change in Iran "is our mission. We will not stand by, watching, in the face of another existential threat."
Ironically, Israeli media is still trying to pour cold water on persistent reporting of an Israeli role in convincing the White House to unleash the massive bombing campaign on Iran:
Accordingly, the Mossad has rejected allegations that it has failed or that it tried to "sucker" the US into believing in delusions of regime change.
Barnea's public statement was the latest indication that he still believes regime change is possible, but that the war only helped set initial, more favorable conditions for such a change, and that significant additional work will be needed going forward.
Trump himself has at times suggested the aim is regime change, and at others has stated the opposite. But it does seem he actually believed Iranian state institutions would be quickly overthrown in some kind of brief Venezuela-style operation.
Prior reports out of Israel have painted a more realistic picture, however, stating that regime change in Iran - a country of over 90 million people and long-standing institutions - would be extremely difficult if not nearly impossible. And this is especially without ground forces, given air power is limited and does not work for this.
US wars spanning from Vietnam to Afghanistan have long demonstrated that aerial bombardment, even if massive, only goes so far. And even when there are 'boots on the ground' and nation-building, US efforts can be quickly unraveled, as the Taliban's reascendancy in Kabul in 2021 demonstrates.