Speaking to "Vikerhommik" Friday, Hvostov said: "I feel like Israel also doesn't exactly know now. That's what's so terrible – that the president of the United States doesn't know what he's doing, yet it seems like Israel doesn't either. It seems like they're acting according to a scheme of 'we strike first and then see how things develop'."

Hvostov recalled that during the initial phase of the conflict, Israel declared its primary task the destruction of Iran's air defense and missile systems, but this has now been successfully completed.

"The second phase should then have been the destruction of all nuclear facilities, which is now partly complete," Hvostov went on. "Certainly, the main complex – a place called Frodo, which is hollowed out inside a mountain – they haven't been able to reach yet, and now they're waiting for American help."

However, on Thursday, while visiting a hospital in Tel Aviv hit during an Iranian attack, Israel's defense minister Israel Katz said that the country's goal now could be regime change in Iran.

"So now it seems it's not just about ending the nuclear program, but also taking down the entire Iranian leadership and creating some kind of revolutionary situation, so that the Iranian people would rise up and change the state's political structure and leadership system," Hvostov commented.

The expert expressed doubt about this outcome's prospects, however, pointing out that typically a rally-round-the-flag effect is seen between populace and leadership when a country is being invaded – Ukraine being a good example of this in recent years.

U.S. and 'TACO'

Touching on the recent words and actions of the U.S. and its president Donald Trump with regard to the Israel-Iran conflict, Hvostov noted that, in his view, Trump cannot decide what role the U.S. should yet take on.

"Just look at Trump's recent remarks – when asked what he was going to do about Iran, he said [something like], 'nobody knows what I'll do, whether I'll go into Iran or not with military force'," Hvostov said.

He added that while recently there had been the news that Trump was giving the Iranian regime two weeks to think, earlier that time frame had been 48 hours.
This could be seen as a manifestation of the posited "TACO" phenomenon.

"Yes, this is again the TACO – Trump Always Chickens Out – he always pulls back or gets cold feet," Hvostov said. "So now, regarding the Israel-Iran war, people are again speculating that maybe Trump is simply a coward who's afraid to make world-history-defining decisions."

Hvostov also referenced past U.S. military actions in the Middle East, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, conducted on the pretext of that country under Saddam Hussein having developed weapons of mass destruction, which later turned out not to be the case – the claim had been produced by the U.K. government of the time, though the U.S. had already bombed targets in Iraq suspected of housing potential weapons of mass destruction facilities in 1998's Operation Desert Fox.

"The worst thing that could happen is if the U.S. ends up intervening in the Iran war but does so incompetently," Hvostov noted. "Just as they messed everything up in Iraq and in Afghanistan. If something similar happens in Iran, then Iran would become some sort of major-scale Yemen – a war of all against all, a state of permanent chaos which just simmers. It's a vast country – 90 million people – and it would boil over far beyond Iran's borders. So right now, everyone is in this nervous anticipation of what's going to happen," Hvostov concluded.

Hvostov also touched more deeply on the influence of Israel as a nuclear power with regard to its relations with Western countries – in other words its strikes on Iran as a potential emerging nuclear power while Israel is itself an (X) nuclear power.

The expert likened the phenomenon to Russia's nuclear threats and their effects on U.S. support for Ukraine: "Yes, the West supports Israel, but not because of some huge love for Israel, but in a way, we are afraid of that country."

Israel has dubbed the ongoing action, which started a week ago, Operation Rising Lion. Some observers have pointed to the pre-1979 Iran flag, which featured a lion in its center.

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