by Dave De Camp, antiwar.com

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that his directive to the Israeli military is to “overthrow the regime in Iran” as he continues to ramp up his rhetoric in the days before the October 27 Israeli elections.

“My directive to the IDF, the Mossad, and the defense establishment… [is] to overthrow the regime in Iran,” Netanyahu told a group of graduating IDF officers, according to The Jerusalem Post.

The Israeli leader went on to claim that Iran’s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, is pursuing nuclear weapons, a claim he’s been making about the Islamic Republic for decades.

“The Iranian regime still has not learned its lesson. Mojtaba Khamenei decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and has released the safety catch, and Iran is once again trying to develop weapons of death,” he said. “Iran is once again attempting to develop a nuclear bomb.”

While both Netanyahu and President Trump continue to frame the conflict as being about preventing a nuclear-armed Iran, there was no evidence either before the June 2025 war or the current war that Tehran had decided to pursue nuclear weapons, and that was the consensus of the US intelligence agencies.

Claire's Observations: Right now, Netanyahu is trailing Eisenkot in the Israeli polls, and one has to wonder: would Netanyahu bomb Tehran to "look butch" right before the elections?!?  And might he order a nuclear strike?  

These are two  questions to which I do not have the answer.  

But I do know the following;  without the power of that position of  Prime Minister behind him, he most likely will NOT be able to elude those corruption charges dogging him for much longer, and if convicted on those charges, the guy might well spend most of the rest of his life in an Israeli jail.

Netanyahu will do anything.... and I mean, anything ... to prevent this from happening, even getting his Likud party to win next Tuesday's election by bombing the hell out of Iran beforehand.

If and when nuclear fallout hits from a nuclear strike, he'll just shrug it off as"collateral damage" from having bombed Pickaxe Mountain, where Iran's nuclear facilities are suspected to be held.