Former IRGC Commander-in-Chief Mohsen Rezaei said on Wednesday that Iran exposed a 7-stage Israeli plot designed to overthrow the state.
In a televised interview, Rezaei said his country will set the timing of any future war with Israel and warned against falling into “the trap of negotiation” with the US on the country’s nuclear program.
Rezaei, now a member of the Expediency Council, unveiled a new account of the 12-day war with Israel that started on June 13.
“We shot down 80 Israeli drones during the recent aggression, and the wreckage of 32 of them is now in Iran's possession, including highly advanced Hermes and Heron drones. Our radars have recorded 80 hits,” he said.
Commenting on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington this week, the Iranian General said, “It was an organized advertisement campaign in the White House.”
Following the 12-day war, Rezaei said due to popular pressure, the US and Israel had to launch a campaign claiming they won the war.
“Israel and America were defeated,” he said, adding that to cover this defeat, Trump had to lash out at some international media outlets like CNN, saying, 'You are lying, we won.’”
He said to examine whether Israel won, one should look at what the war has achieved and what it cost.
“According to an Israeli Finance Ministry report, the 12-day war cost approximately $20 billion. In just 12 days, the Israeli military used US-made THAAD missiles equivalent to two years of manufacture,” he said.
Seven Targets
Rezaei then uncovered a plan, in which Israel, in coordination with the US, spent over a year in training from Greece to the Mediterranean with an aim to first assassinate the Leader of the Iranian Revolution and Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) figures, then trigger nationwide chaos, infiltrate counter-revolutionaries into Tehran, divide Iran into several regions, and attack Iranian military and economic infrastructure.
“Their final goal,” Rezaei stated, “was controlling skies from the Mediterranean to China’s borders.”
However, the Iranian official said their scheme collapsed spectacularly: Israeli strikes on the site of the SNSC meeting caused “zero casualties” due to strategic relocation, while border incursions failed utterly, he said.
Rezaei assessed that the enemy achieved only 10% of their first-stage objectives, while suffering 65% at the military level and 80% at the political and social levels.
Commenting on Iran’s indirect negotiations with the US, he said military readiness must go in line with the diplomatic efforts but added that “the field must be ahead of diplomacy. That's what the Houthis did.”
Strategic Opportunity
On Monday, Trump said he would like to lift sanctions on Iran at some point.
And in an eye-catching post on X suggesting Tehran sees economic ties as a potential element in any deal, President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Monday that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei believed American investors can come to Iran with “no obstacles to their activities.”
Reuters reported on Tuesday that Iranian rulers face two unpalatable options: renewed strikes if they do not surrender their nuclear ambitions and humiliation at home if they do.
That means they may try to make talks drag out, unwilling to fully quit their nuclear project and presenting a difficulty for a US president impatient for a deal and its economic benefits for the US, Western and regional officials say.
For Israel, the fallback option is clear, the person familiar with Netanyahu's strategy said: a policy of sustained containment through periodic strikes to prevent any nuclear resurgence.
In the wake of its air war against Iran, Israel has reasserted itself as the region's unrivalled military power, more willing than ever to use force and more capable of doing so with precision and relative impunity.
Washington, meanwhile, is hedging its bets. While Israeli and US hawks still hope for regime change in Tehran, Trump appears unwilling to shoulder the huge military, political and economic costs that such a project would demand.
Trump rapidly claimed victory after the US attack. And while he has said he would consider bombing Iran again if it continued to enrich uranium to worrisome levels, he has portrayed the June 22 operation as a bold, surgical one-off.
The US may support Israel’s military actions, even supplying advanced weaponry, but it is betting mainly on economic pressure and diplomatic leverage to force Tehran’s hand. The result is a fragile standoff, with no clear endgame, the diplomats said.
Netanyahu sees a fleeting strategic opportunity, one that demands acceleration, not hesitation, the source close to him said. In his calculus, the time to strike harder is now, before Iran regains its footing, the source said.
Iran's air defenses are battered, its nuclear infrastructure weakened, its proxies decapitated and its deterrence shaken. But Tehran’s window to regroup and rebuild will grow with time, says the person familiar with Netanyahu's strategy.
So for Netanyahu, this is unfinished business -- strategic, existential, and far from over, the diplomats and the two Middle East officials said.
