Netanyahu Wants to Topple the Islamic Republic. But With What Political Force?

On October 21, Benjamin Netanyahu said he had instructed the Israeli military and Mossad to topple the Islamic Republic. With Israeli elections only days away, the announcement may have an electoral dimension. But it cannot be dismissed as a campaign move: the Israeli-American offensive of February 28, 2026, which began with the killing of Ali Khamenei and numerous military and political officials, had already sought to create the conditions for the regime’s downfall.

Eight months later, the Islamic Republic is still in power. How does Netanyahu intend to achieve what the first offensive did not? The question is less about Israel’s military strength than about whether an Iranian political force exists that could turn the regime’s defeat into a change of system.

What February’s failure reveals

An investigation by Louis Imbert, published in “Le Monde” on August 27, showed that the Mossad’s plan did not rely on airstrikes alone. It envisaged an intervention by Kurdish armed groups from Iraq, popular mobilization and defections among Iran’s leaders. Former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had even been approached as a possible figure around whom an internal realignment might take shape.

The coalition of five Iranian Kurdish organizations formed on February 22 emerged in a context that favored this strategy. A sixth organization joined it in March. Reuters documented Israeli and US contacts with these groups, but did not establish that the Mossad had created their coalition.

The plan failed. Some operations were not carried out, no decisive defections took place, and no uprising brought down the government. Danny Citrinowicz, a former head of the Iran portfolio in Israeli military intelligence, told “Le Monde” that it was one of his country’s most serious strategic failures. Two Mossad officials associated with the project were later replaced.

The failure, however, cannot be explained by a single cause. The regime retained the essential cohesion of its coercive apparatus. As for the Kurdish groups, their regional foothold and specific aims did not enable them, on their own, to provide national political leadership.

The fundamental problem was the absence of a sufficiently representative political force capable of turning the regime’s military crisis into a transfer of power.

An opposition divided, but not only by the regime

This difficulty points to a longstanding feature of Iran’s crisis: widespread social opposition has yet to find political expression in a leadership capable of durably bringing its main components together.

The opposition includes monarchists, republicans, left-wing currents, Kurdish organizations and other movements whose visions of Iran’s future are sometimes incompatible. Their disagreements concern, among other things, the nature of a future state, the rights of the country’s different national communities, the place of religion and the terms of a transition. These divisions have their own historical and political roots.

But the Islamic Republic also seeks to exploit them.

Its repression of opponents extends beyond arrests, threats and operations targeting the diaspora. Graphika investigations have documented influence campaigns associated with networks close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, using tactics that include false identities and the impersonation of opposition figures.

In an analysis published in February 2026, researcher Hossein Kermani argues that the regime’s ability to fragment its opponents is one of the factors behind its political longevity, alongside repression.

This does not mean that every dispute among opposition groups can be attributed to Iranian intelligence. But the regime has a clear strategic interest in preventing those disagreements from being overcome.

The distinction matters: disagreements can be legitimate in a pluralist society; exploiting them to prevent political cooperation directly serves the preservation of power.

What foreign powers can—and cannot—do

US involvement would be decisive in any new offensive. Yet, according to the “Financial Times,” Trump opposed the resumption of strikes Netanyahu was considering in early October. Washington is also prioritizing economic pressure to secure concessions, without having made clear that regime change is its ultimate objective.

Even full US military involvement would not resolve the political problem.

A new campaign could produce divisions at the top of the Islamic Republic, perhaps even a confrontation between officials willing to negotiate and leaders opposed to any concessions. An imposed capitulation could therefore trigger a crisis of the regime rather than ensure its survival.

But who would turn such a rupture into a new political order?

A leadership capable of doing so cannot be measured only by the popularity of an individual or the strength of an organization. It requires genuine ties to social movements, the ability to cooperate across political currents, agreement on the rules of transition and the means to ensure continuity of the state.

Such a coalition could emerge or consolidate during a crisis. The history of 1979 shows that revolutionary leadership can take shape around a mobilization already under way. It also shows that a coalition capable of overthrowing a government does not, by itself, guarantee a democratic future.

Foreign intervention could help shift the balance of power, but it could also undermine the coalition’s autonomy and national legitimacy.

The United States, Israel and European powers can therefore play a useful role by protecting dissidents from transnational repression, safeguarding communications and supporting freedom of organization. But they cannot choose the leaders of an independent opposition or claim to control its decisions.

Several regional powers, for their part, prefer to seek an accommodation with the Islamic Republic rather than confront the uncertain consequences of its collapse.

A new Iranian political system could nevertheless transform regional relations, including by making it possible to normalize relations with every state, Israel included. But that course would have to follow from sovereign Iranian decisions, not from a demand imposed from abroad.

The limits of Netanyahu’s plan

In a study published in June by the “Brookings Institution,” Philip Gordon notes that interventions intended to change regimes have often produced unforeseen political consequences. Iraq after 2003 illustrates, in particular, the difference between bringing down a government and building a viable political order.

The risk is all the greater in Iran, where a new offensive could destroy infrastructure on which the very society expected to take its future into its own hands depends.

The Islamic Republic may even benefit from an opposition reduced to waiting for liberation through a foreign war. As long as the regime prevents an autonomous alternative from organizing, the failure of an intervention risks prolonging the sense of political powerlessness.

Netanyahu may help trigger a major crisis, or even the fall of the government. But the information available does not show that he currently has a plan capable of turning such a rupture into a political transition.

That is the main weakness of his strategy: the means used to destroy a regime are not the means needed to replace it with a legitimate authority. Without an independent Iranian political force capable of bringing broad sections of society together, a new offensive could open a crisis of enormous scale without delivering the change it promises.