Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said overthrowing Iran’s government remains Israel’s “main goal” as it faces declining support in polls ahead of next week’s national elections.
His remarks followed conversations with US President Donald Trump on Sunday and a visit to Israel by Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth. But Netanyahu has given no indication that Washington has agreed to join another offensive against Iran, much less a campaign to overthrow Iranian leadership.
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Even if Israel has the firepower to inflict serious damage on Iran, analysts told Al Jazeera, it lacks a clear strategy for translating its military gains into toppling the Iranian government. Airstrikes alone are unlikely to achieve this goal, while a ground invasion would require a much greater military commitment, they said.
A new offensive would also mean confronting a state that has already survived two rounds of attacks and retains the means to fight back – both against Israel and its Gulf neighbors who host US military assets. US support, meanwhile, remains uncertain, with experts questioning Washington’s appetite for renewed fighting as it has yet to find a credible prospect of forcing the Iranian government to surrender to its demands.
Does Israel have the firepower?
There is no doubt about Israel’s ability to attack Iran, experts say. Urban Coningham, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told Al Jazeera that its stockpiles of offensive weapons and “air-to-air refueling” capabilities give it a substantial advantage. “Israel could once again establish air superiority and strike Iranian targets,” he said.
But even if Israel can inflict serious damage, analysts remain skeptical of its ability to bring about regime change.
Netanyahu has portrayed Iran’s leaders as a major threat since his first term as prime minister in 1996. Speaking to the US Congress in July, he said: “The most dangerous of these regimes is Iran, which has married cruel despotism with fanatical militancy.” »
Nearly 30 years later, American participation in the June 2025 war, and then again in the campaign launched on February 28 of this year, resulted in the military intervention Netanyahu had long sought. However, the overthrow of the Iranian government did not follow. Netanyahu himself acknowledged the limits of air power in March, saying, “You can’t do it just from the air.”
“There must also be a land component,” he added, without explaining what that would entail.
Caglar Kurc, an assistant professor at Abdullah Gul University in Kayseri, Turkey, said the bombings could weaken the Iranian military but would not necessarily eliminate its ability to fight back. “Air power can degrade military capabilities but cannot completely destroy offensive capabilities,” he told Al Jazeera. “Well-hidden systems would survive. »
To overthrow the government, Kurc said, one would have to be prepared to deploy troops and stay on the ground for years. Israel also can no longer assume that covert methods used in past attacks would prove equally effective again.
Coningham described intelligence assets as “use and burn” because deploying these methods risks exposing networks that Iranian security services will investigate and disrupt.
Israel still has “human intelligence assets on the ground”, he said, while “cyberattacks” could also be part of another campaign. But using these capabilities risks revealing and sacrificing them, making the prospect of tangible military gain an important consideration.
He said covert operations and cyberattacks do not offer a clear path to overthrowing the Iranian government. Coningham was also skeptical about the ability of Kurdish or Baloch armed groups to provide the ground force needed to challenge the state. In March, the Trump administration reportedly actively discussed providing weapons to Kurdish opposition groups, according to CNN, citing Kurdish and U.S. officials. But it never progressed.
“Kurdish groups did not have the military capabilities to confront the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),” he said.
Iran can still retaliate
Nor does Iran need to match Israel plane for plane to launch a new, very costly offensive, experts say.
Sidharth Kaushal, a senior researcher at RUSI, told Al Jazeera that “the Iranians likely hold significant stockpiles of missiles,” although damage to their targeting systems may limit their effectiveness.
“Current stockpiles of anti-ship missiles likely remain large, both because they are relatively easy to manufacture, and Iran has hosted much of the production of older Chinese ASCMs, and southern Iran’s mountains provide natural shelters from air attack,” Kaushal said.
Coningham said that for Israel, maintaining its defenses would be more difficult as previous exchanges had reduced interceptor stockpiles.
The repeated attacks also impose a financial burden, as Israel will intercept relatively cheap Iranian drones with much more expensive defensive weapons. Over the course of a prolonged exchange, this imbalance could place additional pressure on Israel’s interceptor supplies, while Iran retains the ability to mass-produce cheaper weapons for much longer.
Would Washington join in another attack?
Analysts consider this unlikely, highlighting the divergent political interests between Tel Aviv and Washington, with Trump facing pressure to avoid further escalation ahead of the US midterm elections.
The Financial Times reported this week that an Israeli proposal for new strikes had failed to win Trump’s approval, even though it suggested disagreement over immediate action rather than Washington completely ruling out future attacks.
Without Trump’s involvement, Coningham said, Israel would not have the U.S. capabilities to strike deeply buried facilities. These include the 30,000-pound GBU-57 bunker busting bombs that U.S. B-2 bombers dropped on Iran’s Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities in June 2025. Designed to penetrate deeply buried targets, these weapons gave Washington an offensive capability that Israel could not match on its own.
Coningham also suggested that if Israel were to attack without U.S. support, Iran could focus its retaliation on Israeli territory while avoiding U.S. targets and disruption of the Strait of Hormuz.
Such an approach would seek to punish Israel without drawing Washington directly into the fighting, which could further isolate a country already largely ostracized by the international community over its genocide in Gaza.
But analysts say the main obstacle that could ultimately prevent Israel from attacking Iran is the gap between its ability to destroy military targets and its ability to impose political change in Iran.
“You cannot change the regime unless you are prepared to deploy troops and stay in the country for a few years. Israel cannot control Iran. The United States would not engage in another regime change, which could take decades,” Kurc added.
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