Listening to recent statements by US leaders about the goals of the war, one sometimes hears two very different messages. On the one hand, President Donald Trump speaks of Iranian citizens taking to the streets and overthrowing the regime. On the other hand, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks of targeted strikes on Iran’s military capabilities and neutralizing its nuclear program.
This difference is not merely a matter of style – it reflects two distinct approaches to defining the objective of the war in Iran, both in Israel and in the United States. One approach, promoted mainly by professional security officials, focuses on the practical objective of “undermining the regime.” The other ventures further into the far more ambiguous territory of “toppling the regime.”
What may sound like a semantic distinction is actually the decisive question: what is the optimal exit point? When is the right time to end the war?
The goal of undermining the regime focuses on tangible outcomes: striking Iran’s strategic leadership in order to achieve two effects – eroding the regime’s confidence in its own resilience in a way that curtails its ability to conduct military operations, and “decapitating” the hawks by eliminating key figures in the Iranian leadership who block compromise.
The practical objective is not to change the nature of the Iranian regime but to compel Iran to accept Israeli-American conditions: zero uranium enrichment and the removal of highly enriched uranium from Iran, restrictions on the production and development of surface-to-surface missiles, and an end to support for regional proxies. In effect, this approach seeks to turn Iran into a state that de facto no longer poses a threat to Israel and its neighbors.
Significance of eliminating Iran's supreme leader
If this is indeed the objective, then the goal was effectively achieved on the very first day of the campaign, with the elimination of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and his close advisory circle. The removal of the supreme leader carries significance that is not merely symbolic but strategic: he was the central decision-maker and the figure who had represented and enforced a policy of deep mistrust toward the West since the 2015 nuclear agreement.
His elimination opens the path for the rise of a new governing elite from within the regime – one that may not necessarily be less radical on the public level than its predecessor, but that might, behind the scenes, be capable of accepting compromises and rethinking basic assumptions.
A sober look at the campaign suggests that if undermining the regime is the objective, there is little more to gain from prolonging the fighting. One can eliminate additional ministers, sink more Iranian ships, and destroy dozens more missile launchers, but these actions carry limited strategic value.
Israel and the United States are gradually entering a realm of diminishing returns with each passing day. Every additional day introduces new risks: harm to Israel’s home front, to air force pilots, to American soldiers, and to Iranian civilians. Each day also increases the risk of escalation, entanglement, and a shift in momentum.
Toppling the regime, by contrast, is a far vaguer objective – more wishful thinking than an operational plan with a clear beginning, middle, and end. The familiar model from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the campaign against Slobodan Milošević in Serbia was one of external military pressure triggering internal collapse – a self-implosion of the regime.
But a closer look suggests that several critical developments would still need to occur before the Iranian regime, which has been preparing for an internal crisis for the past eight months, could collapse from within. These include fractures within its core institutions, such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the emergence of an opposition leadership capable of replacing the Islamic regime.
With all due respect to dreams of a “junior Shah” riding into Tehran on a white horse, the prospect of overnight regime change – akin to the rapid collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria – does not appear realistic in the immediate term. Regime change in Iran is possible, but it is more likely to be the result of a gradual process that may take years to come to fruition.
In recent days, following the initial military successes, there has been a noticeable drift in the public and political discourse from the achievable goal of undermining the regime toward the far more uncertain objective of toppling it. A profound regime change in Iran would indeed be a strategic transformation with the potential to reshape the region. But making regime change the central objective of the campaign is dangerous for two reasons.
First, it removes control over the end of the campaign from the hands of the United States and Israel and places it in the hands of the Iranian public. It relies on the resolve and capacity of Iranian protesters – whose practical ability to defeat the massive governing structures of the Islamic regime, along with its millions of supporters and soldiers, remains uncertain. Like the pursuit of absolute victories elsewhere, it sets a vague and ill-defined condition for ending the war and enhances the risk of stagnation and entanglement.
Second, defining the objective as “toppling the regime” locks the United States and Israel into a zero-sum game with Iran’s emerging leadership. Any prospect of quiet compromise is likely to fail if the new Iranian elite is pushed into an existential “fight or perish” position. Survival instincts may instead encourage escalation.
If one accepts the assumption that at least part of the motivations of Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are political, then what these leaders may need most is a highly visible victory – a decisive and unequivocal triumph that provides electoral momentum.
Thus, in the pursuit of absolute victory, we once again risk repeating the failure experienced over the past two years in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza: to translate temporary military victories into long-term political achievements that would secure the future of Israel’s citizens for years to come.
The writer is CEO of the Mitvim Institute.