Israel’s extensive airstrike campaign is intended not only to dismantle Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and missile systems, but also to strike at the very foundations of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s rule and push his government to the brink of collapse, according to Israeli, Western, and regional officials.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants Iran weakened enough to be forced into fundamental concessions on permanently abandoning its nuclear enrichment, its ballistic missile programme and its support for terrorist groups across the region, the sources said.
He also wants to leave Khamenei’s government debilitated. The campaign is about “exhausting the regime’s ability to project power and maintain internal cohesion,” one senior regional official said.
Existential Crisis
Iran’s Islamic government faces an existential crisis unlike anything since the 1979 Revolution – not even the brutal 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war posed such a direct threat to clerical rule. Israel, the Middle East’s most advanced military, can strike anywhere in Iran with drones and advanced F-35 fighter jets, assassinations by Mossad operatives, and cyberwarfare technology.
In recent days, Israel has broadened its targets to include government institutions like the police and state television headquarters in Tehran. Netanyahu’s government is planning for at least two weeks of intense airstrikes, according to four government and diplomatic sources, though the pace depends on how long it takes to eliminate Iran’s missile stockpiles and launch capacity.
Dennis Ross, a former Middle East envoy and advisor to several U.S. administrations, believes Iran is feeling the pressure and may be inching toward the negotiating table after the strikes eliminated much of Khamenei’s inner circle, damaged nuclear infrastructure and missile sites, and killed top security figures.
“I do think the regime feels vulnerable,” said Ross, now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. While he insisted Israel’s primary aim is to cripple Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes, Ross conceded that if the regime were to fall as a consequence, “Israel wouldn’t be sorry.”
Deal With U.S. Possible?
Despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s belligerent tone in recent days, he would likely accept if Tehran can offer a credible path to a deal, Ross said.
But, after Tehran offered no concessions during six previous rounds of nuclear negotiations with the U.S., Washington will need firm assurances from Iran that its goals, including the permanent abandonment of enrichment, will be met before it will support a ceasefire.
“I think the cost to them is going to be high,” he said.
For Iran, there is one key calculation: letting the 86-year-old Khamenei retreat without humiliation, two Iranian sources said. Strip him of dignity or the prospect of survival and he may choose all-out conflict, they added.
Regional governments are fearful the situation could spiral out of control, pushing Iran – an ethnically diverse nation of 90 million people that straddles the Middle East and Asia – into chaos or unleashing a conflict that could spill across its borders.
“You can’t reshape the region through belligerent force,” said Anwar Gargash, advisor to the president of the United Arab Emirates. “You might resolve some issues, but it will create others.”
Iran Isolated
Iran’s decades-old playbook – waging war from the shadows via its proxies – collapsed under an Israeli offensive following the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. Its regional Axis of Resistance crumbled, with Hamas crushed in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon defeated, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ousted by rebels, and the Houthi militia in Yemen on the defensive.
“Iran isn’t just facing Israel,” said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Programme at the Middle East Institute, based in Washington D.C. “It’s facing off the United States and European powers.”
Militarily, Tehran has few options. Israel controls the skies over Iran, having largely destroyed its air defences. Much of Iran’s stockpile of ballistic weapons is believed to have been damaged by Israeli strikes, and 400-or-so it has fired have mostly been destroyed by Israel’s multi-layered aerial defence system.
“When the missiles run out, what’s left?,” asks Vatanka.
But with the Iranian opposition fragmented and no signs of divisions within the powerful Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), which has nearly 250,000 fighters including its Basij militia volunteers, there is scant prospect Iran’s ruling elite will collapse easily.
There have been no major protests on the streets of Tehran, and many Iranians profess anger towards Israel for the attacks. Without a ground invasion or domestic uprising, regime change in Iran is a distant prospect, the officials said.
Trump’s Threat To Khamenei
On Tuesday, Trump issued a veiled threat to Khamenei, declaring that U.S. intelligence knows his location and had no intention to kill him “for now”.
“Real power now resides with his son, Mojtaba, and the IRGC, which is deeply embedded despite the loss of key commanders,” one regional source said. “They remain the regime’s spine.”
Killing Khamenei, a religious leader to millions of Shi’ites, could cause a major backlash.
Jonathan Panikoff, a former deputy U.S. national intelligence officer on the Middle East during Trump’s first term, said that if the Israeli campaign does foment regime change in Iran, it could result – at least initially – in a more hardline administration.
“What is likely to follow a theocratic Iranian government is not democracy but Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–istan,” said Panikoff, now at the Atlantic Council think-tank. “Israel might find itself in a perpetual, ongoing, and far more intense war that is no longer in the shadows.”
Israel Needs America
The next move belongs to Trump, Ross said, who must decide whether to intervene militarily to try to force Iran’s hand.
Israeli officials acknowledge that to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities – which are hidden in secure locations deep underground like the fortified Fordow site outside Tehran – it would need the U.S. to provide its largest bunker-busting bombs.
On the other hand, if Trump declares a ceasefire linked to a nuclear deal with Iran, Netanyahu will not protest provided he can credibly claim that Tehran’s threat to Israel has been fundamentally rolled back.
The message to Iran is clear, Ross said: start serious talks soon, or face a military situation far worse than today’s.
Diplomatic Solution
Mark Dubowitz, chief executive at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies think tank in Washington, said he believed Trump ultimately wanted a diplomatic solution but he was likely to allow Israel more time to pursue its military campaign to give the U.S. more leverage at the negotiating table.
Dubowitz, an Iran expert who has been consulted by the Trump administration on its policy, said Israel’s main objective appears to be setting back Iran’s nuclear programme as many years as possible. Central to that is removing its human capacity by killing nuclear and weapons scientists, and Dubowitz said his team had identified 10 to 12 more who are likely being hunted by Israel.
The Israeli strikes have already killed key members of the so-called “weaponisation group” – those Israel alleges are tasked with turning enriched uranium into an actual bomb – and eroded Iran’s ability to produce long-range missiles.
Yuli Edelstein, head of the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, and a prominent member of the ruling Likud party, said that if Washington and key European powers engage diplomatically, apply pressure, and shape a clear exit plan, “they can prevent unnecessary developments in this war.”
Dangerous Vacuum
If the conflict does escalate, regional officials fear a collapse of Khamenei’s government would not lead to democracy but to fragmentation – or worse: a civil war, fuelled by Iran’s marginalized minorities – Arabs, Kurds, Azeris, Baha’is, Baluchis and Christians – could erupt in a dangerous power vacuum.
“And that,” a Gulf source warned, “no one is ready for.”
French President Emmanuel Macron echoed that warning at this week’s G7 leaders summit, saying forced regime change in Iran would bring chaos. He cited the failures of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the 2011 NATO-backed intervention in Libya as cautionary examples.
Vatanka, of the Middle East Institute, warned that shockwaves from the collapse of the government in Tehran would not stop at Iran’s borders.
“A destabilized Iran,” he added, “could ignite unrest from Azerbaijan to Pakistan. Its collapse would reverberate across the region, destabilizing fragile states and reigniting dormant conflicts.”
(With inputs from Reuters)
