Lt. Col. (res.) Amit Yagur, a former senior official in the IDF’s Planning Directorate and Military Intelligence Directorate, appeared Sunday on Israel This Morning, hosted by Tal Meir, to lay out an incisive strategic assessment of the internal realities eroding the Iranian regime. While global analysis often fixates on Tehran’s military stockpiles and regional proxies, Yagur turned the spotlight onto the severe internal pressures eating away at the ayatollahs from within and dictating their aggressive posture abroad.
Opening his assessment, Yagur pushed back against the international tendency to view Iran as a monolithic, stable power, stressing that realities on the ground tell a vastly different story: “We talk about Iran as a body that faces no internal problems, that it generates no internal pressure—yet there is a massive internal problem.”
Beneath state propaganda, severe unrest and infrastructural crises fester, driven by suppressed revolts across the periphery that receive little international coverage. A prime example occurred in the southeastern province of Baluchistan, where fierce clashes erupted. While the regime deliberately conceals the true extent of the unrest—reporting nominal casualties among security personnel—the security crisis on the ground is far more severe.
Concurrently, Yagur pointed to crippling water shortages ravaging provinces like Khorasan, an acute infrastructural crisis that fuels public resentment. Terrified of losing societal control, the regime is responding with brutal social coercion, including aggressive nationwide enforcement of mandatory hijab laws. This draconian maneuver betrays leadership panic over its waning domestic authority.
According to Yagur’s analysis, these compounding internal pressures are driving Tehran to unleash its proxies and heat the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz out of sheer existential desperation: “This escalation via proxies and operations in Hormuz is a calculated escalation designed to scrape the edges and test how much pain they can inflict on the other side.”
The regime’s overarching intent is to manufacture external crises to divert domestic attention away from home-front failures. Addressing recent strikes on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh—which killed and wounded multiple civilians, including an American national—Yagur noted this was a premeditated strategic probe meant to test international resolve. Should Saudi Arabia conclude that it cannot absorb repeated hits on its civil aviation hubs, a regional escalation could force direct allied intervention.
Yagur also scrutinized the broader international arena, casting skepticism on assumptions that the impending U.S. congressional midterms paralyze White House decision-making: “I am not convinced the midterms are as decisive a factor as people portray. Everyone talks about it, but it might not be a factor at all.”
He stressed that isolated, tactical retaliatory strikes by world powers will fail to alter the strategic equation. The only true objective must be the total dismantlement of the clerical regime: “The central issue we must focus on is toppling the regime. That must be the objective. If that can be achieved in the current window, fine—military action is part of the equation. Anything that does not lead to the fall of the regime, meaning yet another strike after which Iran rebuilds, is utterly insufficient.”
Current American deployments across the region—including surging naval strike carrier groups and intensive drills—signal that the coming weeks will prove pivotal, especially as Tehran risks overplaying its hand under the mistaken belief that Washington will withhold force over political timing.