Iran

Former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant Publishes Open Letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei

Yanki Farber

Former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant published an open letter on Friday morning addressed to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the letter, Gallant highlighted Israel’s achievements since the outbreak of the “Iron Swords” war on October 7, 2023, and warned Khamenei that Israel has “eyes and ears everywhere.” He cautioned that any continued pursuit of nuclear weapons by Iran would come at a devastating cost.

Here’s the Full Letter:

To Supreme Leader Khamenei,

We’ve never met, but I believe we know a great deal about each other.

I’ve been studying you for nearly three decades, tracking every key decision of your leadership. I’ve followed your doctrine and the network of proxies you carefully built across the region. I watched as you succeeded Khomeini, consolidated power, and sought to establish Iranian regional hegemony. I came to understand not only your goals, but the methods you believed would achieve them.

As Defense Minister, I was responsible for unifying decades of Israeli intelligence, air power, and strategic doctrine into one coordinated military plan. That plan sliced through your so-called “ring of fire” like a hot knife through butter—and ultimately led to its collapse. It culminated in a 12-day war jointly conducted by Israel and the United States, targeting Iran’s nuclear program, air defenses, missile production infrastructure, and top military leadership.

What happened in June 2025 was more than just a military operation—it was a strategic collapse of a system you had spent four decades building.

Your “ring of fire” aimed to surround Israel with pressure points and distractions: Hamas in the south, Hezbollah in the north, Syria and Iraq to the east, and the Houthis in the southeast. (Thankfully, the Mediterranean lies to our west.)

Your strategy was to wage a proxy war of attrition against Israel, developing terror armies that could one day overrun and destroy us. You built an arsenal of heavy, precise, long-range missiles to unleash mass destruction in a coordinated assault. And at the heart of your strategy was your primary goal: a nuclear weapon that would shield Iran from regime change and secure regional dominance, first over Israel, then beyond.

But your ring never closed in. It failed.

The October 7th, 2023 massacre led by Yahya Sinwar was made possible by your arms, training, intelligence, and funding for Hamas. Perhaps he went further than you intended. But the consequences are yours to bear.

His massacre was not met with fear. It was met with resolve, defiance, and a cold, steely belief that Israel would do whatever it takes to defend itself from evil—no matter the cost.

The Israeli people did not break under the weight of grief and pain. Our nation stood firm. As you now know all too well, we responded—not only with determination but with precision. In many cases, even now, you do not know how you were attacked, from where, or with what.

What followed was not one strike—it was a sequence.

Israel systematically dismantled Hamas leadership, Hezbollah’s command centers and weapons stockpiles, and Iran’s missile production sites. We flew over Tehran just as we fly over Tel Aviv. We eliminated senior military leaders and nuclear scientists. We struck S-300 air defense systems. We dismantled your air defenses. Your nuclear program and infrastructure were set back by years.

Your much-hyped “shield” failed to protect you. But more than physical damage, something deeper was revealed:
We see everything. We hear everything. We are everywhere.

We knew your timelines. Your locations. Your communications. Your conversations with your closest allies—most of whom are no longer with you, in Beirut, Damascus, or Tehran. We knew your contingency plans. Your leadership succession strategies. Even your blind spots.

In many ways, we knew more about you than you knew about yourselves.

Now ask yourself:
Can you build a secret nuclear program when you have no secrets?
Pursuing nuclear weapons now isn’t a gamble—it’s a fantasy. A leap of faith in systems that have already failed you.

Hope is not a strategy.

Will you risk your future, and the future of your nation, on a race you cannot conceal and likely cannot finish? A nuclear program requires conventional offensive and defensive capabilities to protect it. But those have already proven ineffective.

Since October 7, Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly requested permission to go to war. And time and again, you refused. You made it clear that Hezbollah is your strategic reserve, to be activated only if Iran itself is attacked or attacks Israel directly. But when the moment came—when your core infrastructure was struck and your doctrine collapsed—he was nowhere to be found. The shield you trusted was never deployed.

Hezbollah’s weapons lie buried with its commanders. Hamas is neutralized. Assad is gone. His successor has taken a different path. The Gulf states now work against you, not with you. Iraq resists your grip. The region has moved on.

You are a country of 90 million people, sixty times larger than Israel. And yet today, you are more exposed than ever.

Your proxy network—once the core of your regional strategy—is now your greatest vulnerability. Their atrocities gave us legitimacy. Their failure gave us the freedom to act.

You still have choices—but none are easy. And none are ideal.

You could try to rebuild your proxies, but we will destroy them. What took you decades to create, we can now dismantle in months.

You could accelerate your nuclear program, but what you build, we will likely see. And what we see, we will strike. And what we strike, you’ll struggle to replace.

You could negotiate—but can your regime, built on resistance and ideological rigidity, withstand the compromises that path demands?

This is not a question of tactics—it is a structural reality.

Nuclear programs require people, infrastructure, and coordination. You built yours in the analog age. Today, satellites, cyber tools, human assets, and data analysis reveal what was once hidden.

With each passing month, the gap widens. Our knowledge deepens. Our target list grows. Your options narrow.

You still have time, but not much.

You’ve shown restraint before. You avoided war with the U.S. during the 2003 Iraq invasion. You maintained stability through regional turmoil. You’ve even abandoned allies when survival demanded it.

This is one of those defining moments.

As you consider your next steps, remember: we knew who your people were, what roles they held, and where they lived.
Look around the room. Ask yourself: Who is truly loyal?

And with that in mind, you now face a choice:

Continue your pursuit of nuclear weapons—without cover, without protection, and with diminished offensive capability? We will know. We will stop it. And you will pay a heavy price.

Try to rebuild your conventional arsenal, knowing it will take decades? We will disrupt, sabotage, and dismantle it again.

Or, abandon your war against a small but resolute nation, a thousand miles from your border, and focus instead on the well-being and future of your people.

But if you choose wrong again, we’ll be there, waiting.

General Yoav Gallant

Former Israeli Minister of Defense