By Dr Lynette Nusbacher

Israel and the United States have gone into the latest campaign against Iran as partners.

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This morning’s attack on Iran has included both explosions and computer network attacks, showing yet again that modern warfare is conducted across multiple domains; there the Americans and Israelis are co-ordinated.

Both countries are claiming that they are seeking regime change, but their aims are different.

Early briefings from Israeli sources suggested that Donald Trump is seeking with his Israeli partners to achieve another Venezuela: removing a senior regime figure and replacing him with a more compliant holder of the levers of power.

This could lead to a better deal with Iran on their nuclear programme.

Binyamin Netanyahu, facing the prospect of a change of power in the US Congress in a few months, is seeking to degrade Iranian capabilities in the short term.

Both Israel and the US would like to see a new regime in Iran, but neither is in a position to achieve that without the Iranian regular armed forces defecting from the regime and supporting a new order.

Their attack this morning, and the attacks we expect to see continuing over the next few days, first targeted Iranian air defences, still in a poor state after last summer’s exchange between Iranian and Israeli-American forces.

Next, almost simultaneously, were attacks on Iranian ballistic missile launchers and Iranian regime targets including ‘a presidential facility’.

Israeli and American briefings described attacks against Iranian intelligence centres and senior officials, which could seek to slow Iranian responses.

Iranian sources reported that computer networks are failing, calling that the result of cyber attack. If this creates a period of Iranian government paralysis, orders to fire ballistic missiles could be delayed until missiles can be destroyed.

The attacking partners say that the Iranian dissidents, if they are better organised than they have been the past months, could take power from the regime.

An early morning briefing from former Israeli military intelligence chief Major-General Amos Yadlin suggested that the American choice of targets was meant to shock Iran into giving up more to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner across the bargaining table in Oman; the Israeli aim, he suggested, is to position the Iranian regime for overthrow. Yadlin acknowledged, however, that air attacks cannot achieve regime change.

The White House issued a far broader statement of aims a few minutes later. In an address posted to Truth Social, President Trump called on the Iranian people to seize the moment and overthrow the theocracy they have known since 1979.

If he doesn’t get a new Iranian revolution, he might get a more compliant regime and the nuclear deal he’s looking for.

Dr Lynette Nusbacher is a strategy consultant and educational broadcaster.

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