Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that bringing down Iran’s government is still Israel’s “primary objective,” even as his standing in opinion polls weakens ahead of national elections next week. His comments followed talks with United States President Donald Trump on Sunday and a trip to Israel by Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth. Netanyahu, however, gave no sign that Washington had agreed to join a new offensive against Iran, let alone a push to remove its leadership.
Analysts say Israel has the firepower to inflict serious damage on Iran but lacks a clear strategy for converting battlefield gains into the collapse of its government. Air strikes on their own are unlikely to reach that goal, they said, while a ground invasion would require a much bigger military commitment.
Why air strikes may fall short of regime change
Netanyahu has cast Iran’s leaders as a serious danger since his first term as prime minister, which began in 1996. In a speech to the US Congress that July, he said, “The most dangerous of these regimes is Iran, that has wed a cruel despotism to a fanatic militancy.”
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Nearly three decades later, US involvement in a June 2025 war, and again in a campaign launched on February 28 this year, delivered the military intervention he had long pushed for. The collapse of Iran’s government did not follow. Netanyahu himself acknowledged in March that airpower has limits, saying, “You can’t do it only from the air.”
He added that “There has to be a ground component, as well,” but did not explain what that would involve. Caglar Kurc, an assistant professor at Abdullah Gul University in Kayseri, Turkiye, said bombing could weaken Iran’s military without fully removing its ability to fight back. “Airpower can degrade military capabilities but cannot fully destroy offensive capabilities,” he said. “Well-hidden systems would survive.”
Covert operations, Kurdish groups and Iran’s remaining arsenal
Urban Coningham, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said Israel could still rely on human intelligence assets inside Iran, and that cyberattacks might feature in another campaign. He warned, however, that using these tools risks exposing and losing them. He described intelligence assets as “use and burn,” because deploying them can expose networks that Iranian security services will track down and disrupt.
Coningham was also doubtful that Kurdish or Baloch armed groups could supply the ground force needed to challenge the state. In March, reported, citing Kurdish and US officials, that the Trump administration had been discussing arms for opposition Kurdish groups, but that the plan never advanced. Coningham argued that the Kurdish groups did not have the military strength to confront the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Iran also does not need to match Israel’s air power to make another offensive costly, experts said. Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow at RUSI, said Iran likely still holds significant missile stocks, even if damage to its targeting systems limits how well they perform. He said Iran’s antiship missile stockpiles probably remain large, partly because they are relatively simple to produce and much of the production of older Chinese-designed missiles has been moved in-house. He also pointed to Iran’s southern mountains as natural shelter from air attack.
US backing and the limits of an Israel-only strike
Analysts see little chance that Israel would act alone, pointing to diverging political interests between Jerusalem and Washington. Trump faces pressure to avoid renewed escalation before the US midterm elections. The Financial Times reported this week that an Israeli proposal for fresh strikes had not won Trump’s approval, though it framed the dispute as being about immediate action rather than a permanent US refusal.
Coningham said that without Trump’s participation, Israel would lack the US capability to strike deeply buried facilities. He pointed to the 30,000-pound GBU-57 bunker-busting bombs that US B-2 bombers dropped on Iran’s Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities in June 2025. Those weapons gave Washington an offensive reach that Israel could not match alone.
Coningham also suggested that, if Israel attacked without US support, Iran might focus its retaliation on Israeli territory while avoiding US targets and disruption to the Strait of Hormuz. Analysts nonetheless argue that the central obstacle is the gap between destroying military targets and forcing political change inside Iran. Kurc summed up the problem: “You cannot change a regime unless you are prepared to deploy troops and stay in the country for some years. Israel cannot control Iran. The United States would not engage in another regime change, which could take decades.”
