On the eve of the war with Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was presented with an assessment suggesting that the Iranian regime could be toppled, as reported on the Keshet 12 program "Uvda" on Thursday evening.
According to the report, in closed discussions prior to the start of the offensive, Mossad chief David Barnea presented to the political leadership an assessment that achieving operational objectives could lead to a regime change in Iran.
Sources stated that Barnea assessed that achieving the operational goals - primarily targeting the regime's leadership, government institutions, and repressive mechanisms - could destabilize the regime and create the possibility for regime change.
Barnea argued in the discussions that once the regime faces military instability, Israeli and US intelligence agencies would be able to "deliver the result." This refers to mobilizing millions of Iranians to the streets and supporting a governing alternative to fill the vacuum.
In a public statement on Thursday evening, Netanyahu outlined the main objectives of the war against Iran: “Our goals are three. One, removing the nuclear threat. Second, removing the ballistic missile threat and removing both of these threats before they're buried deep underground and become immune from aerial attack. And third, this means creating the conditions for the Iranian people to grasp their freedom, to control their destiny."
Netanyahu also painted a picture of the progress made so far: "Iran today has no capability to enrich uranium, and it has no ability to produce ballistic missiles. We continue to dismantle these capabilities. We will crush them completely, to dust."
At the same time, he emphasized that it is too early to determine how the situation will evolve within Iran: "It is too early to say whether the Iranian people will seize the conditions we are creating for them to take to the streets... It will depend entirely on them."