Israel’s security agencies and its Muslim Sunni allies in the Middle East can ostensibly be pleased with the situation in Iran after four years of the Trump administration. US sanctions have exacerbated Iran’s economic downturn to the point of near bankruptcy, and its international standing is not what it was, either. Its progress in the military-security arena has also taken some touch knocks.

Iran has three overarching goals in this regard: Its nuclear program, its precision missile program and its continued expansion throughout the Middle East. Two of the three have been dealt deadly blows over the past year, verging on total knockout. The driving force of its regional entrenchment, the legendary commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Al-Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, was assassinated by the Americans in January 2020, and the mastermind behind Iran’s nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was taken out (by the Israelis just last month, according to foreign media reports). Iran’s only progress has apparently been on development of its arsenal of cruise and ballistic missiles.

Both Soleimani and Fakhrizadeh were irreplaceable strategic assets. Since Soleimani’s assassination, Western intelligence has detected an Iranian pullback from various arenas and difficulty in maintaining its hold on parts of Iraq and Syria. The level of its determination in this regard has also plunged. Soleimani was also the one who constantly agitated vis-a-vis Iran’s decision-makers, and especially Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for continued investment in Iran’s regional expansion and entrenchment. His successors, according to various assessments, are not in his league.

Almost the same is true of Iran’s nuclear program. “The Iranians will find it hard to impossible to replace Fakhrizadeh,” a senior Israeli security official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “It’s not that their nuclear program will be shut down because of his death, but it will be unable to proceed at the speed they want. He was a repository of rare knowledge and there is no one in Iran of his caliber to replace him.”