The threats from Tel Aviv have escalated again. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz declared on Thursday that Israel is “awaiting a green light from the United States… to complete the elimination of the Khamenei dynasty… and to return Iran to the Dark Age and the Stone Age.” The statement, delivered openly and on the record, represents one of the most explicit articulations yet of Israel’s stated war aims toward the Islamic Republic.
The threat lands days after President Donald Trump indefinitely extended the US-brokered ceasefire with Tehran. For Tel Aviv, the pause has clearly not closed the file – it has merely deferred it. The phrasing is striking. “Stone Age” is not the language of deterrence or proportional response. It is the language of total economic and infrastructural destruction – power grids, refineries, ports, water systems, the connective tissue that keeps a country of more than 90 million people alive.
An Open Call for Civilian Targeting
Stripped of euphemism, what Katz is describing is the deliberate destruction of Iran’s energy facilities and economic infrastructure – targets that, by definition, sustain civilian life. International humanitarian law is unambiguous on this point. Articles 54 and 56 of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions specifically prohibit attacks on objects “indispensable to the survival of the civilian population” and on installations “containing dangerous forces.” Is the language of “Stone Age” not a public confession of intent to cross that line?
The silence from Western capitals is its own answer. The same governments that condemned, with full-throated moral clarity, threats against civilian infrastructure in Ukraine have offered no comparable rebuke of a senior Israeli minister openly promising the same against Iran. The asymmetry is no longer subtle.
Tehran’s Response
Iran’s ambassador to Moscow, Kazem Jalali, said Tehran remains open to both diplomacy and continued fighting, accusing Washington of having repeatedly undermined the diplomatic track – first by abandoning the 2015 nuclear deal, then by striking Iran in the middle of active negotiations. The position is consistent with what Tehran has said throughout – it does not seek wider war, but it will not accept disarmament under threat. Iran did not cower under bombardment in June, and there is little indication it intends to cower under rhetoric now.
The “Green Light” Question
The most revealing phrase in Katz’s statement is not “Stone Age” – it is “green light from the United States.” It is a quiet admission that Israeli operations of the scale being threatened are not unilateral. They depend, in fuel, in munitions, in intelligence, in mid-air refuelling and in diplomatic cover, on Washington. The decision sitting on Trump’s desk is therefore not whether Israel acts – it is whether the United States authorises a campaign aimed at the deliberate destruction of a sovereign nation’s economy.
It is also worth recalling that Trump himself invoked “Stone Age” rhetoric on April 1, warning of strikes “extremely hard” if Iran did not meet US demands, including reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The vocabulary is now shared. The threshold is being normalised in real time.
The Stakes
Iran is not Iraq in 2003 or Libya in 2011. It is a country of over 90 million, with a deep industrial base, regional alliances stretching from Lebanon to Yemen to the Gulf, and the demonstrated capacity – as June showed – to strike back with precision into Israeli territory and US bases across the region. Sending Iran “back to the Stone Age” is not a clean operation. It is a regional war, an oil shock, and a humanitarian catastrophe with consequences that would not stop at the Iranian border.
The world has heard this kind of language before. It is rarely the prelude to peace.
