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As its joint attack with the United States on Iran continues, Israel sees its task as the culmination of a longstanding policy on: ushering in regime change from within.

Taking to the airwaves in the wake of the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Iranian people directly, calling on them in Farsi to “come to the streets, come out in your millions, to finish the job, to overthrow the regime of fear that has made your lives bitter”.

“Your suffering and sacrifices will not be in vain. The help you wished for – that help has now arrived,” he said of the US-Israeli air strikes, which have already killed more than 555 people in Iran, including 180 at a girls’ school in the country’s south.

“The Israeli authorities don’t spell it out, but it is clear that what they want to see is a regime change in Iran,” said Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow at the Department for War Studies at King’s College London, who had returned to Israel to research a book before the latest round of strikes took place.

“I’m stuck in Tel Aviv and spend many hours with Israelis in a local shelter. I’m taken aback by the strong support among these – mainly liberal – Israelis of the war,” he said. “They, like their leaders, believe that if you only topple the Iranian regime, the Middle East will totally transform for the better, which is, of course, nonsense.”

But there is a question of how invested Netanyahu and his allies are in ensuring that regime change in Iran is smooth.

Israeli officials know that Iran, including its opposition, has a diverse array of views and backgrounds.

Many Iranians who have taken to the streets, including in the large protests that took place in January, are united only in their hostility to the government, with various factions calling for everything from the restoration of the monarchy to a full democracy. Others, however, are rallying on the government’s side after the attacks on their country and Khamenei’s killing.

Questions remain

“I think there’s a public opacity to Israel’s war aims,” former Israeli government adviser Daniel Levy told Al Jazeera. “My sense is that Israel has no real interest in smooth regime change. I think most [Israeli leaders] regard that as a kind of fairytale, though that’s not something Netanyahu and allies might be ready to admit publicly.”

“Israel’s more interested in regime and state collapse,” Levy noted. “They want Iran to implode, and if the spillover from that takes in Iraq, the Gulf and much of the region, so much the better.”

“They’ll have removed a significant regional counter to their freedom to act, leaving Israel and its allies free to remake the regions and, critically, to continue both killing Palestinians, and possibly even move against Turkiye, which is the next logical step,” he said, reflecting a recent rise in anti-Turkiye rhetoric in Israel, with politicians even characterising the country as the “new Iran”.

However, while public appetite for the war may be high, there is an understanding that the duration of that war might not be of Israel’s choosing.

The bulk of Israel’s military spending is underwritten by the US, where the attack on Iran is proving less than popular. Equally, in a world where many states had belatedly grown critical of Israel’s genocidal actions towards Palestinians – in particular in Gaza – US diplomatic heft has been vital in protecting its ally from criticism, and even wider sanctions.

How long the US’s allies in the Gulf are ready to withstand Iranian assaults on their territory in response to a war they had repeatedly cautioned against is far from clear. Equally, how long it might be before regional diplomatic pressure on US President Donald Trump begins to have an impact is also hard to predict, Levy warned.

“It’s fitting that this is the holiday of Purim, which also marks the survival of the Jewish people over a threat from Persia 2,500 years ago, and we still celebrate it today. People understand that,” Barak said.

“Israel going to war in tandem with our greatest ally and the world’s greatest power is unprecedented,” Barak continued. “It’s hard to make any predictions, but Trump has his own priorities and his own endgame, which might not be the same as ours. It could be that Trump pulls out and leaves Israel holding the bag. What happens then, I don’t know.”

Public backing

Iranian missiles may be hitting Israel, but analysts there say the general sentiment among the public is supportive of active hostilities against Iran, with the backing of the US.

It stems from years – if not decades – of messaging that Iran and its allies are the main threats to Israel.

From Netanyahu’s repeated warnings that Iran is on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons, to the predictions from politicians of all stripes that Israel’s destruction at the hands of Iran is imminent, the outbreak of a conflict that many Israelis see as the final showdown with their enemy has almost been welcomed.

Politicians from the right to the centre-left have backed the US and Israeli decision to attack Iran.

Yair Golan, the leader of the centre-left Democrats, who, in May last year, outraged many Israelis by saying that the endless killing of Palestinians risked reducing Israel to a “pariah state”, welcomed the war, saying the Israeli military had his “full backing” in “removing the Iranian threat”.

Other opposition politicians, such as the centrist Yair Lapid and the right-wing Naftali Bennett, have all fallen into line behind Netanyahu in his confrontation with Iran.

“People here know Iran is a threat. They know it because Iran keeps telling us,” said Mitchell Barak, a political pollster who was an aide to Netanyahu in the early 1990s. “They [Iran] have the weapons, the will, and we know they’re ready to attack. Everyone is happy that the war is under way, and this time, it will be finished.

For decades, Ali Larijani was the calm, pragmatic face of the Iranian establishment – a man who wrote books on the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant and negotiated nuclear deals with the West.

But on March 1, the 67-year-old secretary of the Supreme National Security Council’s tone changed irrevocably.

Appearing on state television just 24 hours after US-Israeli air strikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander, Mohammad Pakpour, Larijani delivered a message of fire.

“America and the Zionist regime [Israel] have set the heart of the Iranian nation ablaze,” he wrote on social media. “We will burn their hearts. We will make the Zionist criminals and the shameless Americans regret their actions.”

“The brave soldiers and the great nation of Iran will deliver an unforgettable lesson to the hellish international oppressors,” he added.

Larijani, who accused US President Donald Trump of falling into an “Israeli trap”, is now at the centre of Tehran’s response to its biggest crisis since 1979.

He is expected to have an important role alongside the three-man transitional council running Iran after Khamenei’s death.

So, who is the man tasked with steering Iran’s security strategy as its war with Israel and the US continues?

The ‘Kennedys’ of Iran

Born on June 3, 1958, in Najaf, Iraq, to a wealthy family from Amol, Larijani belongs to a dynasty so influential that Time magazine described them, in 2009, as the “Kennedys of Iran”.

His father, Mirza Hashem Amoli, was a prominent religious scholar. And like Larijani, his brothers have held some of the most powerful positions in Iran, including in the judiciary and the Assembly of Experts, a clerical council empowered with choosing and overseeing the supreme leader.

Larijani’s ties to Iran’s post-1979 revolutionary elite are also personal. At age 20, he married Farideh Motahari, the daughter of Morteza Motahhari, a close confidant of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s founder, Ruhollah Khomeini.

Despite his family’s conservative religious roots, his children have had a diverse trajectory. His daughter, Fatemeh, a medical graduate from the University of Tehran, completed her specialisation at Cleveland State University in Ohio, US.

The mathematician philosopher

Unlike many of his peers who came solely from religious seminaries, Larijani also has a secular academic background.

In 1979, he earned a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the Sharif University of Technology. He later completed master’s and doctorate degrees in Western philosophy from the University of Tehran, writing his thesis on Kant.

But it is his political positions that have been the centrepiece of his career.

After the 1979 revolution, he joined the IRGC in the early 1980s, before transitioning to government, serving as culture minister under President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani between 1994 and 1997, and then as the head of the state broadcaster (IRIB) from 1994 until 2004. During his time at the IRIB, he faced criticism from reformists who accused his restrictive policies of driving Iranian youth towards foreign media.

Between 2008 and 2020, he served as the Parliament (Majlis) speaker for three consecutive terms, playing a major role in shaping domestic and foreign policy.

Return to the security fold

Larijani ran for the presidency in 2005 as a conservative candidate, but did not make it to the second round. In the same year, he was appointed the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, and the country’s chief nuclear negotiator.

He resigned from those posts in 2007, after growing distant from then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s nuclear policies.

Larijani entered parliament in 2008, winning a seat to represent the religious centre of Qom, and became the speaker. This allowed Larijani to grow in influence, and he maintained his connection to the nuclear file, securing parliamentary approval for the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

After leaving his position as parliamentary speaker and member of parliament in 2020, Larijani attempted to run for president for a second time in the 2021 election. But this time, he was disqualified by the Guardian Council, which vets candidates. He was disqualified again when he attempted to run in the 2024 presidential election.

The Guardian Council gave no reason for the disqualifications, but analysts viewed the 2021 move as a way for the establishment to clear the field for hardliner Ebrahim Raisi, who won the election. Larijani criticised the 2024 disqualification as “non-transparent”.

But he did return to an influential position in August 2025, when he was reappointed as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council by President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Since taking the post, his stance has hardened. In October 2025, reports emerged that Larijani had cancelled a cooperation agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), declaring that the agency’s reports were “no longer effective”.

Diplomacy amid war

Despite that tough stance, Larijani is often regarded as pragmatic and someone inside the Iranian system who may be willing to compromise, in part due to his past role in backing the 2015 nuclear deal.

Just weeks before the current escalation, Larijani was reportedly engaged in indirect negotiations with the US.

In February, during talks mediated by Oman, he stated that Tehran had not received a specific proposal from Washington, and accused Israel of trying to sabotage the diplomatic track to “ignite a war”.

In an interview with Al Jazeera prior to the US and Israel’s attacks on Iran, Larijani described his country’s position on talks as “positive,” noting that the US had realised that the military option was not viable. “Resorting to negotiation is a rational path,” he said at the time.

However, the air strikes, which began on February 28, have shattered the diplomatic window.

In his latest address, Larijani assured the nation that plans were in place to arrange the leadership succession according to the Constitution. He warned the US that it was delusional to think killing leaders would destabilise Iran.

“We are not intending to attack regional countries”, he clarified, “but we are targeting any bases used by the United States”.

The more pragmatic tone appears to have disappeared – for now. Larijani has rejected media reports that he wanted new talks with the US, saying on Monday that Iran would “not negotiate” with Washington.

The United States and Israel’s war with Iran has spilled over into the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints, prompting a surge in oil prices.

Shipping through the strait, which carries one-fifth of the oil consumed globally as well as large quantities of gas, has ground to a near halt amid Iranian attacks on oil tankers in the region.

A commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on Monday that the strait was “closed” and that any vessel attempting to pass through the waterway would be set “ablaze.”

At least five tankers have been damaged, two personnel killed and about 150 ships stranded around the strait, which separates Iran and Oman.

Oil prices rose above $79.40 per barrel on Monday, after hitting $73 per barrel on Friday amid rising tensions in the lead-up to Saturday’s joint US and Israeli attacks on Iran.

“Traffic is down at least 80 percent,” Michelle Bockmann, a senior maritime intelligence analyst at Windward, told Al Jazeera, adding that the shipping industry had already been grappling with a “huge spike” in freight costs for routes out of the Middle East and the Gulf.

Cormack McGarry, the director of maritime intelligence and security services at Control Risks, said that mariners received a message from Iran via the international distress frequency on Saturday that the strait was closed. 

“Every ship in the area would have heard that… and it was enough for most ships to pause.”

Vessel tracking service Kpler showed that limited traffic continued in the strait – primarily ships flying the flag of Iran and its major trading partner China – on Sunday.

Bockmann said it was possible that some ships had passed through the strait after switching off their Automatic Identification System to avoid detection.

McGarry said that a total shutdown of the strait by Iran would mean it was “tightening the noose around its own neck”.

“If they attack shipping, they are encouraging the Gulf states to join the war, and it’s a big step for Iran to go there,” McGarry said.

“The idea they could affect a long-term sustained closure of the strait is completely unlikely,” he added. “I’m more worried for regional supply chains.”

Still, most commercial operators, major oil companies, and insurers have effectively withdrawn from the corridor, according to Kpler. Insurance premiums had already reached a six-year high ahead of the war.

“There has definitely been an escalation overnight, with pressure on energy infrastructure in the Gulf and Qatar pre-emptively pausing LNG production,” Rachel Ziemba, a senior adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told Al Jazeera.

“With tankers unwilling to come into the Gulf, it sends a message of what is at stake.”

US not immune

Iran had ramped up oil exports to multi-year highs in February in anticipation of the US-Israeli strikes, Kpler said.

The Gulf states, too, had been front-loading their oil supplies, helping offset supply problems in the short term, said Ziemba.

The majority of the crude oil shipped through the Strait of Hormuz goes to Asia, with China, India, Japan, and South Korea accounting for nearly 70 percent of shipments, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Apart from oil, energy products facing supply pressures include jet fuel and liquefied natural gas.

Some 30 percent of Europe’s supply of jet fuel originates from or transits via the strait, while one-fifth of the global supply of LNG passes through the waterway.

Even though the US is no longer dependent on Middle Eastern oil, and it can take weeks for pump prices to be affected, it is not immune to disruptions.

“The situation is very fluid,” David Warrick, an executive vice president at the supply chain platform Overhaul, told Al Jazeera.

As companies reroute their ships, including around the Cape of Good Hope, near the south of Africa, they are facing longer delivery times and additional costs.

“With war risk insurance and additional emergency contingency insurance, it’s adding on thousands of dollars,” Warrick said.

“This is prime time for sourcing for raw materials and planning for holidays… and any disruption at this time is not really good for supply chains,” Warrick said.

There could also be winners from the disruption.

Being a net producer of energy, a rise in prices will benefit US oil producers, Ziemba said.

Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed more than 50 people. It says the strikes are a response to Hezbollah rockets and drones fired into Israel to protest the US-Israeli killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader.