Both the New York Times and Reuters published stories, on March 23, on promises that Israel made to U.S. President Donald Trump that finally convinced him to launch the war on Iran, a war that had long been planned but was waiting for the right moment. There’s little overlap between the two reports, but they converge on the same assertion, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised Trump that, once the initial decapitation strikes were made, the Iranian population would rise up and overthrow the government. That hasn’t happened, and there’s no sign that it will.
The Reuters report centers on a previouly unreported phone call Netanyahu made to Trump less than 48 hours before the bombing began on Feb. 28, in which he argued that, based on new intelligence about Ali Khamenei’s meeting scehdule, there “might never be a better chance to kill Khamenei and to avenge previous Iranian efforts to assassinate Trump.” According to Reuters, “Trump could make history by helping eliminate an Iranian leadership long reviled by the West and by many Iranians, Netanyahu argued. Iranians might even take to the streets, he said, overthrowing a theocratic system that had governed the country since 1979 and been a leading source of global terrorism and instability ever since.”
Netanyahu’s prediction turned out not to be accurate. “The possibility of regime change was one of Netanyahu’s arguments in the call shortly before Trump gave final orders to attack Iran, said the people briefed on it. That view was not held by the Central Intelligence Agency, which had assessed in the weeks prior that Khamenei would likely be replaced by an internal hardliner if he was killed….”
[According to the New York Times]([https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/us/politics/iran-israel-trump-netanyahu-mossad.html), Mossad chief David Barnea told Netanyahu, in the run-up to the war, that the Mossad would likely be able to galvanize the Iranian opposition—igniting riots and other acts of rebellion that could even lead to the collapse of Iran’s government. Barnea also presented the proposal to senior Trump administration officials during a visit to Washington in mid-January.
Netanyahu, the Times says, adopted Barnea’s plan. Despite doubts about its viability among senior American officials and some officials in other Israeli intelligence agencies, both he and President Trump seemed to embrace an optimistic outlook. Killing Iran’s leaders at the outset of the conflict, followed by a series of intelligence operations intended to encourage regime change, they thought, could lead to a mass uprising that might bring about a swift end to the war.
“Take over your government: It will be yours to take,” Trump told Iranians in his initial address at the war’s start, after saying they should first seek shelter from the bombing.
“The belief that Israel and the United States could help instigate widespread revolt was a foundational flaw in the preparations for a war that has spread across the Middle East,” the Times says. “Instead of imploding from within, Iran’s government has dug in and escalated the conflict, striking blows and counterblows against military bases, cities and ships around the Persian Gulf, and against vulnerable oil and gas installations.”
