Popular uprisings alone do not topple totalitarian regimes, and an Iranian regime fearing for its survival could turn its gaze outward. For Israel, this means that the closer the ayatollahs feel to the abyss, the greater the danger of escalation. The decisive question is no longer how courageous the protests are, but how far the West is truly prepared to go to help overthrow the Islamist regime.

“If the regime feels it is falling, it will attack Israel without hesitation,” warns our colleague and Iran expert Eliyahu Yossian. Hundreds of dead, thousands of demonstrators, merciless repression on the streets of Tehran and provincial cities—the world holds its breath and asks whether this is the moment when the Iranian regime falters.

But Yossian, an Iranian Jew and Middle East expert, is able—due to his background—to put himself in the Arab, Iranian, and Persian way of thinking. He is one of the most sober observers of the situation and tempers the euphoria. Totalitarian regimes, he says, do not fall through a popular uprising alone. Saddam Hussein did not fall...

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