Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies and a former Israeli military intelligence official who once headed the IDF’s Iran branch, was the bluntest critic encountered by the Philippine media delegation. And he wasn’t specifically critical of Hamas or Iran. He was critical of Israel and the decisions it has made.
“We have to say that this war was a failure, strategically. Operationally, major successes,” he said, referring to the year-long escalation with Iran that culminated in a 2026 strike aimed at killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and toppling the regime.
The plan Israel presented to Washington, in his account, was to kill Khamenei, cripple the regime’s internal security apparatus, and use Kurdish forces to trigger an uprising that would install former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a secular successor. Citrinowicz calls it magical thinking dressed up as strategy.
“That plan was completely failed because it’s a fantastical plan. Those who thought about that have no understanding about Iranian culture, resilience, history,” he said.
He pointed out that killing Khamenei didn’t create an opening for Israel but installed his more radical son, Mujtaba, and empowered the IRGC.
“This war gave a lifeline to this regime,” he said, pointing out that Iran now has a leadership more willing to use its own missiles and drones directly, rather than relying on weakened proxies like Hezbollah.
“When you have this kind of intelligence superiority, you’ll be coming with a lot of hubris. We forgot the basic foundation of intelligence: culture, language, resilience, history,” he said.
Even with the war’s most concrete achievement of halting Iranian uranium enrichment Citrinowicz said it didn’t eliminate Iran’s underlying capability to build a bomb, and it left the country under a regime with fewer internal restraints than before.
He argues the war didn’t just fail to solve the Iran problem but made its problems worse with a decline in its international legitimacy that he tied less to Iran than to the war in Gaza.
“Israel’s legitimacy in the world is eroding, not because of Iran, because of what happened on the 7th of October, mainly what happened in Gaza,” he said. (By Redempto Anda)
— Based on an interview with Danny Citrinowicz, senior researcher, Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Tel Aviv.
