If escalation was the word of the year in 2024 and obliterate is the word of the month for June 2025, now be prepared to mumble “regime change” for the remainder of 2025 and going into 2026.
As far as Israel is concerned, the idea of igniting regime change in Iran did not end with the 12-day war that just (we think) ended. In fact, if there is no new nuclear agreement, if Iran retains adequate quantities of highly enriched uranium—which apparently it does—and if it has residual capabilities to produce a military nuclear device, Israel’s fixation with regime change in Tehran may possibly shift from fantasy to policy.
For Benjamin Netanyahu, it is not a fantasy but rather the providential fulfillment of his political raison d’être, ordaining himself as the savior of Western civilization. In more earthly and concrete terms, he views this as an opportunity to turn the calamitous debacle of the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack into a strategic triumph in 2025. “We are changing the landscape of the Middle East,” he has ceremoniously declared on several occasions recently, hinting that he envisions Israel as an omnipotent hegemonic power in the region.
The Iranian regime is a vile, violent, oppressive, terror-sponsoring theocratic entity. But none of that means that regime change, however attractive an idea it is to entertain, is a feasible option through external means. “Regime change” usually refers to an internal transition from one type of government to another through revolution or a coup. History is replete with such processes.
External regime change is something completely different. It means the deposing of a leader or an entire government through foreign military intervention or a comprehensive political destabilization and undermining campaign. There are four examples of success in modern history: Germany and Japan in 1945, following a devastating world war, two atom bombs, and a protracted American occupation to install the change; the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, deposing Manuel Noriega; and the U.S.-instigated coup d’état in Iran in 1953 that led to the fall of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and triggered a series of events culminating in the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Readers of The New Republic surely also recall the U.S. Marines overthrowing Queen Lili’okalani of Hawaii in 1893. But other than that, attempts at regime change were extravagant debacles and lasting quagmires: Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and most recently Iraq in and since 2003. And this was the United States, the world’s greatest and most powerful superpower, not Israel.
At the outset of the war, Israel’s declared prime war objective was “to eliminate Iran’s military nuclear infrastructure” and target its arsenal of ballistic missiles and launchers. Israel denied any grandiose ideas of regime change in Iran and said only that if that happens, it would be a welcome bonus.
But gradually, with military and intelligence successes, euphoria settled in, the appetite grew, and “regime change” chatter began to accumulate. “The Ayatollah’s regime must come down,” “[Supreme leader Ali] Khamenei is a modern-day Hitler who must not exist,” “We are targeting the regime in order to destabilize it,” and “The Iranian people should rise and rid themselves of the regime” were all statements made by Netanyahu and especially Defense Minister Israel Katz, who produced a daily “regime change” fortune-cookie gem.
The rhetoric was accompanied and reinforced by a series of quality assassinations of top Iranian military and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, or IRGC, officers, including two chiefs of staff and the Air Force commander. Soon, as Israel’s overwhelming military successes were visible, the erratic Donald Trump joined the party and offered contradictory blurts on regime change.
First, he giddily said, “It’s not politically correct to use the term ‘regime change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to Make Iran Great Again, MIGA!!!, why wouldn’t there be a regime change???” Two days later, on board Air Force One en route to a NATO summit in the Netherlands, he changed tone entirely, saying that he does not want to see “regime change” in Iran because “it will create chaos.”
Trump may have floated the idea of regime change to pressure Iran to end the war and subsequently engage in negotiations on a new nuclear deal. But for Israel, it is a different matter altogether and a policy option that feeds off its own logic and sense of triumphalism. Netanyahu’s regime change fantasy basically means that a country of 10 million thinks it can somehow topple a regime in a country of 90 million 1,000 miles away without being responsible for the consequences. In fact, Netanyahu, at the time not in power, preached exactly that in a September 2002 hearing at the U.S. House of Representatives, in which he advocated a U.S. invasion of Iraq, claiming it will “reverberate into Iran.” That, of course, never happened; indeed, the U.S. quagmire in Iraq only strengthened Iran in the region.
Now consider that Israel has failed for 21 months to force regime change in Gaza, a territory with 2.3 million inhabitants that’s one mile away. This fact seems to have escaped Netanyahu’s delusions of grandeur. But however unviable it may seem, Netanyahu sees both a historical imperative and strategic logic in the idea of “regime change” in Iran.
There are several basic assumptions underlying this logic: First, Iran’s nuclear program was heavily damaged but not “obliterated,” as Trump boasted, nor set back years, as Israel declared. Second, Iran possibly retained the 400 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium it stockpiled and may have the capacity to manufacture more centrifuges to enrich further to the required 90 percent military-grade level. Third, there is currently no ironclad nuclear agreement that places Iran under stringent supervision and a verification regime. Fourth, there is the notion that Israel accomplished three formidable things throughout 2024 and particularly during the 12-day war in June 2025: a further critical geopolitical weakening of Iran, which was deprived of its network of proxies and the hospitable Assad regime in Syria, deep intelligence penetration of Iran, and dominant and enduring air superiority.
Taken together, these premises present Israel with two fundamental policy options. First, employ aerial superiority and maneuvering room and be ready to engage in a cyclical war every time there is actionable intelligence indicating that Iran is making progress in its nuclear efforts. That risks an Iranian decision to accelerate nuclear efforts and break out from its diminished but still existent “nuclear threshold” status. Alternatively, design a regime destabilization campaign through discord, chaos, assassinations, and subterfuge. But guess what? Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln are not hanging around in a bar in Tehran waiting to take over from the mullahs.
Through a process of elimination, and assuming there is no enforceable nuclear deal in the foreseeable future, Israel may elect to attempt to instigate regime change. It is patently impractical through external intervention, and it is doubtful the U.S. will join, but Israel may be betting on pressure that would generate an internal uprising in the near future.
The problem is, who will carry the burden of the repercussions? The dismantling of the Iraqi state, a regime change heralded at the time as a great triumph, led to the creation of ISIS. What if the mullahs are replaced by a military dictatorship intent on acquiring nuclear weapons? Will Israel then talk about a second “regime change”?