With a new war with Iran in its second week and Israeli political and military leaders advising patience among Israelis, what the government’s true war goals are and whether they are achievable remain elusive.
In contrast to President Donald Trump’s zigzags about why exactly he decided to send the United States into war against Iran alongside Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s messaging has remained fixated on regime change in Iran from day one.
The US-Israeli attack “will create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to free themselves from the yoke of tyranny,” Netanyahu declared at the start of the war. On Tuesday, he addressed Iranians directly about X, urging them: “Be prepared to seize the moment!”
Why do we write this?
Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has been consistent in declaring his goal in the war against Iran: regime change. But can he declare victory without it? “An exit strategy must be realistic,” warns an Israeli analyst. “Because if it is not realistic there is no way out.”
However, it is unclear whether Netanyahu’s “mission accomplished” requires overthrowing the Islamic Republic or, as some former Israeli military officers and analysts suggest, whether it would be enough to destabilize the regime and severely reduce the threat it poses, especially its nuclear program.
But even these more limited goals could be increasingly at odds with the Trump administration’s stricter timetable (and less patience) for the war as it increasingly focuses on the safe flow of oil from the region.
There is no clear Israeli response
“For Netanyahu, the end of this war is to see a greatly diminished Iran,” says retired colonel Miri Eisen, who worked in military intelligence for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Although the prime minister would like to see regime change, he says, he would probably be satisfied with less.
“He wants to see the physical threat” from Iran’s nuclear program, missiles and its regional proxies “reduced to an incredibly low level,” Eisen says. “It’s the culmination of what he’s been talking about for many, many years.”
Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters
However, with no evidence of a popular Iranian uprising, and with Trump apparently backing away from his own demands for regime change, analysts say it is unclear whether Israel has a clear plan to pursue that goal or what its alternative might be.
“What we want to happen is for the Iranian regime to change and be replaced by a pro-Western regime, more or less willing to renounce ideas of hegemony in the Middle East,” says the retired brigadier general. General Yossi Kuperwasser, who heads the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.
This would mean that Iran would abandon its nuclear project, its ballistic missile arsenal and its allied armies, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, he says.
“That’s our dream, and it’s America’s dream too,” says Kuperwasser, former head of the IDF’s military intelligence research division. But after dreams, he adds, “reality comes.”
The Iranian regime shows no signs of relenting and has chosen the hardliner Mojtaba Khamenei to replace his father, the assassinated Ali Khamenei, as supreme leader.
Iran underestimated
There are also growing fears that Israel and the United States have underestimated the response from Iran, which was weakened by the 12-day war between Israel and Iran last June but says it will fight as long as necessary.
Despite US and Israeli attacks on the regime’s missile launchers and arsenals, Iran continues to attack Israel with ballistic missiles and drone strikes around the clock and has been attacking its Arab neighbors in the Gulf region, causing oil prices to spike. Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s special envoy, could visit Israel next week, presumably to discuss next steps.
Shlomo Brom, former director of the IDF’s strategic planning division, says he does not see that the United States and Israel have established a realistic strategy to end the war.
“An exit strategy has to be realistic. Because if it’s not realistic, there’s no way out,” says the retired brigadier general, now a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a think tank in Tel Aviv.
Israel and the United States have made “enormous” military achievements on the ground, Brom says. But he adds that when they are not accompanied by realistic and achievable objectives (which are in themselves a compromise between everything that is wanted and what can really be achieved), then the war “will drag on” until Trump “gets fed up with it.”
Regime change could mean eliminating Islamic leadership entirely, Brom says, but it could also mean working with a more moderate Islamic replacement who will more easily give in to the demands of the United States and Israel and seek a better relationship with the West.
“Judging by the little information coming out of Iran,” he concludes, “I don’t see any movement toward regime change.”
The nuclear goal
If Israel and the United States abandon regime change as a goal, says Eyal Hulata, a former Israeli national security adviser, they will pursue goals that are easier to “define and also measure,” such as further degradation of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.
After the June war, Netanyahu addressed the nation and declared: “Dear citizens of Israel… we achieved a historic victory, which will last for decades.” Barely eight months later, it announced a new operation to stop the same threat.
“We have caused very devastating damage to the nuclear project (in June), but we have not finished the job,” Kuperwasser says.
Iran still has 450 kilograms (about 1,000 pounds) of highly enriched uranium in an underground tunnel, it says, and has refused, in talks with the United States before the war, to export its stockpile.
The thinking in Jerusalem was that waiting to attack would only have allowed Iran to rebuild its nuclear and missile capabilities, so the strategy was that it was best to attack now.
According to Adi Stoler, head of the international media division of the IDF spokesperson’s office, the second phase of the war, which she says has already begun, will focus on eliminating Iran’s remaining nuclear capabilities while it continues to deplete its missile arsenal and assassinate more regime officials.
“The goal is to ensure that Iran never again poses a threat to the State of Israel,” he says.
Different bets
Analysts say there are significant differences in how victory would be perceived in the United States and Israel.
For Trump, if the war can “end in a way where he is perceived as a victor, or at least can make a case for why he is the victor, that is enough for him,” Brom says.
But for Netanyahu, who is seeking to recover politically from the stain of the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, the stakes are much higher. Anything short of regime change in Iran could be seen as a failure by the Israeli public, observers say.
Meanwhile, Israelis have been taking refuge in bomb shelters attacked not only by Iran but also by its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah.
According to a poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, an overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews, 93%, support the war in Iran and the majority believe it should continue until the regime is overthrown.
“Most Israelis believe that this war is necessary to seriously degrade the military capabilities of the regime and at least attempt to overthrow it,” says Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born professor at Reichman University in Israel.
But while most Israelis are willing to endure the current difficulties, they want to know that this is the elusive “last round,” one that will defeat the existential threat that Iran has posed for decades.
That public expectation could make it even harder for Israel to stop the war on its own. Ultimately, the United States will make that decision and Israel will have no choice but to accept, says Ms. Eisen, a retired IDF colonel.
“In most of our wars, it takes an outside force to stop us,” he says.
