Dov Lieber

Netanyahu connected the war to today's Passover holiday.

In scripture, he said, the Egyptian pharaoh continued to harm the people of Israel despite the plagues.

One was to reduce Iran's ballistic missile capability.

The second was to reduce Iran's nuclear capability.

And the third was to facilitate the conditions for regime change in Iran.

That means to facilitate the ability of Iranians themselves to topple their government.

Two of those goals were more achievable, namely reducing Iran's ballistic missile capability and its nuclear capability.

But the last goal, regime change.

This was by far the hardest goal.

In some ways, a type of moonshot for the Israelis.

At the beginning of this war, Israel looked like it may be on pace to achieve some of its aims.

There was a lot of skepticism from the experts abroad, but in Israel, there was optimism.

for all the efforts the Israelis have put in going in with the United States together with the world superpower, they may have hoped for a decisive victory.

But at this point in time, they're definitely not there.

So that was the opening strike, and that was a strike that was meant to destabilize the regime.

They call it decapitation strike.

It's something we've seen the Israelis do a number of times in recent years, where they find a chance to take out a number of leaders at the same exact time.

What this does, it could make command and control very difficult.

It can be difficult to decide who's giving orders, and it could also hurt the morale of your enemy.

So once the air defenses are taken out, then the Israeli and American planes could fly over Iran itself.