Netanyahu Calls Toppling Iran’s Regime Israel’s ‘Central Mission’

Benjamin Netanyahu used Israel’s traditional Rosh Hashanah military toast Thursday to say plainly what he’s implied for months: toppling Iran’s government isn’t a side benefit of the war Israel has waged since February — it’s the actual objective, and he now believes it’s achievable.

“This regime is currently faltering. It is weaker than ever. It is fighting for its survival,” Netanyahu told the IDF General Staff Forum at the Kirya defense compound in Tel Aviv, alongside Defense Minister Israel Katz and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir. “I am confident in our ability to remove this threat once and for all — in other words, to topple this regime. That is the central mission that still lies ahead of us, but it is close. It is not impossible. It is within reach.” He credited what he called Israel’s “historic achievements” since October 7, 2023 with weakening Tehran to this point, and pointedly noted Iran “attacks everyone except us” — framing Israeli restraint from direct retaliation as evidence of Iranian fear rather than de-escalation.

The toast wasn’t an isolated statement — it landed the same day Defense Minister Katz issued a considerably sharper warning of his own: if Iran attacks Israel, the military will strike all of the regime’s infrastructure, “including energy infrastructure.” Katz’s comment came in direct response to Reuters reporting that Iran had warned Washington it would respond forcefully to any Israeli offensive on Ali Taher Ridge in southern Lebanon, under which sits a Hezbollah underground facility the IDF said Thursday it had already cleared ahead of planned demolition. That sequencing — Iran’s warning, Katz’s escalatory reply, then Netanyahu’s regime-change framing hours later — suggests Thursday’s rhetoric was coordinated messaging around a specific, live flashpoint rather than general year-end reflection.

Netanyahu’s “within reach” framing follows a consistent throughline dating back at least to March 2025, when he first called on Iranian citizens to seize the “opportunity” for regime change during Israeli strikes on Iranian military targets — an appeal partly aimed at Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities, who make up roughly half the country’s population and have historically faced state repression. What’s changed since then isn’t the goal but Netanyahu’s confidence in stating it as achievable rather than aspirational, a shift that tracks the broader deterioration of Iran’s position through six months of war, sanctions, and now a contested internal succession following Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death.

Channel 12 separately reported Israeli officials believe Iran’s Quds Force and Hamas have intensified efforts to plan attacks against Israeli or Jewish targets — intelligence that, if accurate, complicates Netanyahu’s claim that Iran’s restraint toward Israel specifically reflects fear rather than strategic patience. Regime-toppling ambitions stated this explicitly, from a sitting prime minister rather than an anonymous official, also raise the stakes for how Tehran’s leadership under the new Supreme Leader is likely to interpret any further Israeli military action — not as pressure tactics, but as an openly declared campaign for its removal.

Whether “within reach” proves accurate will likely be determined less by Netanyahu’s confidence than by whether the Hezbollah tunnel demolition and any Iranian retaliation over Lebanon escalate into the kind of direct Iran-Israel exchange that’s been notably absent throughout a war Iran has otherwise fought against US, Jordanian and Iraqi Kurdish targets — but conspicuously not Israeli ones.