Netanyahu promises Iran regime change: Can Israel topple Tehran government?

Israel can inflict devastating damage on Iran, but analysts question its ability to overthrow Tehran’s government.

US President Donald Trump holds hands and speaks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in Jerusalem on October 13, 2025 [AFP]

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that overthrowing Iran’s government remains Israel’s “primary objective”, as he faces declining support in the polls before national elections next week.

His remarks came after conversations with United States President Donald Trump on Sunday and a visit to Israel by Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth. But Netanyahu offered no indication that Washington had agreed to join another offensive against Iran, let alone a campaign to bring down Iran’s leadership.

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While Israel has the firepower to inflict serious damage on Iran, analysts told Al Jazeera, it lacks a clear strategy for translating military gains into the overthrow of Iran’s government. Air strikes alone are unlikely to achieve that objective, while a ground invasion would demand a far greater military commitment, they said.

A renewed offensive would also mean confronting a state that has already survived two rounds of attacks and retains the means to retaliate – both against Israel and its Gulf neighbours who are hosting US military assets. US backing, meanwhile, remains uncertain, with experts questioning Washington’s appetite for renewed fighting as it is yet to find a credible prospect of forcing Iran’s government to surrender to its demands.

Does Israel have the firepower?

Israel’s ability to attack Iran is not in doubt, experts say. Urban Coningham, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told Al Jazeera that its offensive weapons stockpiles, and “aerial refuelling” capabilities give it a substantial advantage. “Israel could again establish air superiority and strike Iranian targets,” he said.

But while Israel can inflict serious damage, analysts are sceptical that it can accomplish regime change.

Netanyahu has portrayed Iran’s leaders as a major threat since his first term as prime minister in 1996. Addressing 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.”

Nearly 30 years later, US participation in the June 2025 war, and again in the campaign launched on February 28 this year, delivered the military intervention Netanyahu had long sought. The overthrow of Iran’s government, however, did not follow. Netanyahu himself acknowledged the limits of airpower in March, saying, “You can’t do it only from the air.”

“There has to be a ground component, as well,” he added, without explaining what that would involve.

Caglar Kurc, an assistant professor at Abdullah Gul University in Kayseri, Turkiye, said bombing could weaken Iran’s military but not necessarily eliminate its ability to fight back. “Airpower can degrade military capabilities but cannot fully destroy offensive capabilities,” he told Al Jazeera. “Well-hidden systems would survive.”

Overthrowing the government, Kurc said, would require a willingness to deploy troops and remain on the ground for years. Israel can also no longer assume that covert methods used in earlier 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 form part of another campaign. But using those capabilities risks revealing and sacrificing them, making the prospect of a tangible military gain an important consideration.

Covert operations and cyberattacks, in his assessment, do not offer a clear route to overthrowing Iran’s government. Coningham was similarly sceptical that Kurdish or Baloch armed groups could provide the ground force needed to challenge the state. In March, the Trump administration was said to be actively discussing providing arms to opposition Kurdish groups, according to CNN, which cited Kurdish and US officials. But this never progressed.

“Kurdish groups lacked the military capabilities to take on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),” he said.

Iran can still retaliate

Iran also does not need to match Israel aircraft-for-aircraft to make another offensive very costly, experts say.

Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow at RUSI, told Al Jazeera that the “Iranians likely retain sizeable stocks of missiles,” even if damage to their targeting systems may constrain their effectiveness.

“The actual antiship missile stockpiles likely remain large, both because they are comparatively easy to make, and Iran has in-housed much of the production of older Chinese ASCMs, and Iran’s southern mountains provide natural shelters against air attack,” Kaushal said.

Coningham said that, for Israel, sustaining its defences would be more difficult, with previous exchanges having drawn down interceptor stocks.

Repeated attacks also impose a financial burden, as Israel will be intercepting relatively inexpensive Iranian drones with far more costly defensive weapons. Over a prolonged exchange, that imbalance could place further pressure on Israel’s interceptor supplies, while Iran retains the capacity to mass-produce more cheap weapons for a lot longer.

Would Washington join another attack?

Analysts consider this unlikely, pointing to diverging political interests between Tel Aviv and Washington, with Trump facing pressure to avoid renewed escalation before the US midterm elections.

The Financial Times reported this week that an Israeli proposal for renewed strikes had failed to secure Trump’s approval, although it suggested disagreement about immediate action rather than Washington ruling out future attacks altogether.

Without Trump’s participation, Coningham said, Israel would lack US capabilities for striking deeply buried facilities. These include 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. Designed to penetrate deeply buried targets, the weapons gave Washington an offensive capability Israel could not match on its own.

Coningham also suggested that, if Israel were to attack without US support, Iran might concentrate its retaliation on Israeli territory while avoiding US targets and disruption to the Strait of Hormuz.

Such an approach would seek to punish Israel without drawing Washington directly into the fighting, potentially further isolating a country already widely ostracised by the international community amid its genocide in Gaza.

But analysts say the central obstacle that could ultimately prevent Israel from attacking Iran is the gap between its ability to destroy military targets and its capacity to force political change within Iran.

“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,” Kurc added.

以色列可以对伊朗造成毁灭性打击，但分析人士质疑其推翻德黑兰政府的能力。

2025年10月13日，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普在耶路撒冷以色列议会（克内塞特）与以色列总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡手牵手交谈。[法新社]

以色列总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡表示，推翻伊朗政府仍然是以色列的“首要目标”，而他在下周全国大选前的民调中支持率正在下降。

内塔尼亚胡发表上述言论之前，他周日与美国总统唐纳德·特朗普进行了会谈，五角大楼负责人皮特·赫格塞斯也访问了以色列。但内塔尼亚胡并未表示华盛顿已同意加入对伊朗的另一次军事行动，更不用说推翻伊朗领导层的行动了。

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分析人士告诉半岛电视台，虽然以色列拥有对伊朗造成严重打击的火力，但它缺乏将军事胜利转化为推翻伊朗政府的明确战略。他们表示，仅靠空袭不太可能实现这一目标，而地面入侵则需要投入更大的军事力量。

再次发动攻势意味着要面对一个已经挺过两轮袭击且仍有能力进行报复的国家——既可以报复以色列，也可以报复那些驻扎着美国军事设施的海湾邻国。与此同时，美国的支持仍然不明朗，专家质疑华盛顿是否真的愿意再次开战，因为美国尚未找到迫使伊朗政府屈服于其要求的切实可行方案。

以色列有这样的火力吗？

专家表示，以色列打击伊朗的能力毋庸置疑。英国皇家联合军种研究所（RUSI）研究员厄本·康宁汉姆告诉半岛电视台，以色列的进攻性武器储备和“空中加油”能力使其拥有显著优势。“以色列可以再次夺取制空权并打击伊朗目标，”他说。

但尽管以色列能够造成严重破坏，分析人士仍怀疑它能否实现政权更迭。

自1996年首次担任总理以来，内塔尼亚胡一直将伊朗领导人描绘成一个重大威胁。同年7月，他在美国国会发表讲话时说：“这些政权中最危险的是伊朗，它将残酷的专制主义与狂热的武装主义结合在一起。”

近30年后，美国参与了2025年6月的战争，以及今年2月28日发起的军事行动，实现了内塔尼亚胡长期以来寻求的军事干预。然而，伊朗政府并未因此被推翻。内塔尼亚胡本人在3月份也承认了空中力量的局限性，他说：“你不可能只靠空中力量就做到这一点。”

“还需要地面部分，”他补充道，但没有解释这将涉及哪些方面。

土耳其开塞利阿卜杜拉·古尔大学助理教授卡格拉尔·库尔茨表示，轰炸可能会削弱伊朗的军事力量，但未必能彻底消除其反击能力。他告诉半岛电视台：“空中力量可以削弱军事能力，但无法完全摧毁进攻能力。隐蔽性好的系统能够幸存下来。”

库尔茨表示，推翻以色列政府需要做好部署军队并在当地驻扎数年的准备。以色列也不能再想当然地认为，以往袭击中使用的秘密手段会再次奏效。

康宁汉姆将情报资产描述为“用完即弃”，因为部署这些方法可能会暴露伊朗安全部门将调查和破坏的网络。

他表示，以色列仍然拥有“地面人力情报资源”，而“网络攻击”也可能成为另一场行动的一部分。但使用这些能力存在暴露和牺牲的风险，因此能否取得切实的军事胜利是一个重要的考量因素。

在他看来，秘密行动和网络攻击并不能提供推翻伊朗政府的明确途径。康宁汉姆同样怀疑库尔德或俾路支武装团体能否提供挑战伊朗政府所需的地面力量。据美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）援引库尔德和美国官员的话报道，今年3月，特朗普政府曾积极讨论向库尔德反对派团体提供武器。但此事最终不了了之。

他说：“库尔德武装缺乏与伊斯兰革命卫队（IRGC）对抗的军事能力。”

伊朗仍然可以进行报复

专家表示，伊朗也不需要与以色列在飞机数量上展开对决，就能使另一次进攻付出非常高昂的代价。

皇家联合军种研究所 (RUSI) 高级研究员 Sidharth Kaushal 告诉半岛电视台，“伊朗人可能仍然保留着大量的导弹库存”，即使其目标定位系统受损可能会限制其效能。

考沙尔说：“伊朗的反舰导弹实际库存可能仍然很大，原因有二：一是反舰导弹相对容易制造；二是伊朗已经自主生产了大部分老式中国反舰导弹；三是伊朗南部的山脉提供了抵御空袭的天然掩体。”

康宁汉姆表示，对于以色列来说，维持其防御能力将更加困难，因为之前的交火已经消耗了拦截器库存。

反复的袭击也会造成财政负担，因为以色列需要用价格高昂得多的防御性武器来拦截相对廉价的伊朗无人机。长期的交战可能会进一步加剧以色列拦截武器的供应压力，而伊朗则拥有更长时间大规模生产廉价武器的能力。

华盛顿会参与另一次进攻吗？

分析人士认为这种情况不太可能发生，他们指出特拉维夫和华盛顿之间存在政治利益分歧，特朗普在美国中期选举前面临着避免局势再次升级的压力。

《金融时报》本周报道称，以色列提出的重新发动空袭的提议未能获得特朗普的批准，但这表明双方在立即采取行动的问题上存在分歧，而不是华盛顿完全排除未来发动袭击的可能性。

康宁汉姆表示，如果没有特朗普的参与，以色列将缺乏美国打击深埋地下设施的能力。这其中包括美国B-2轰炸机于2025年6月投掷在伊朗福尔多和纳坦兹核设施上的3万磅GBU-57钻地炸弹。这种武器旨在穿透深埋目标，赋予了华盛顿以色列自身无法匹敌的进攻能力。

康宁汉姆还表示，如果以色列在没有美国支持的情况下发动攻击，伊朗可能会将报复行动集中在以色列领土上，同时避免攻击美国目标和扰乱霍尔木兹海峡。

这种做法旨在惩罚以色列，但又不让华盛顿直接卷入冲突，这可能会进一步孤立这个因在加沙实施种族灭绝而被国际社会广泛排斥的国家。

但分析人士表示，最终可能阻止以色列攻击伊朗的核心障碍是其摧毁军事目标的能力与其迫使伊朗进行政治变革的能力之间的差距。

库尔茨补充说：“除非你准备好部署军队并在该国驻扎数年，否则你不可能改变一个政权。以色列无法控制伊朗。美国也不会再参与一次政权更迭，因为那可能需要几十年时间。”