The day after Benjamin Netanyahu's classified Situation Room presentation, U.S. intelligence officials delivered a starkly different assessment to Donald Trump's inner circle. They had worked overnight to evaluate the Israeli prime minister's pitch, and their conclusions cast serious doubt on the most ambitious elements of the plan, "Hvylya" reports, citing a New York Times investigation.
The intelligence officials broke Netanyahu's presentation into four parts: killing the ayatollah, crippling Iran's capacity to project power, sparking a popular uprising, and installing a secular leader. The U.S. assessment found the first two objectives achievable with American military power. The third and fourth - including a scenario involving Kurdish fighters crossing into Iran from Iraq - were assessed as detached from reality.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe used one word to describe Netanyahu's regime change scenarios: "farcical." Secretary of State Marco Rubio cut in with a blunter translation: "In other words, it's bullshit." Ratcliffe added that while regime change could happen in the chaos of war, it should not be considered an achievable objective.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine reinforced the skepticism. "This is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis," he told the president. "They oversell, and their plans are not always well-developed. They know they need us, and that's why they're hard-selling."
Trump absorbed the assessment quickly. Regime change, he said, would be "their problem" - though it remained unclear whether he meant the Israelis or the Iranian people. The bottom line was that his decision on war would not depend on whether the regime change scenarios were realistic. What mattered to Trump were parts one and two: killing the ayatollah and Iran's top leaders and dismantling the Iranian military.
Vice President JD Vance, who had just returned from Azerbaijan, also expressed strong skepticism about regime change during the Feb. 12 meeting. But the president appeared to remain focused on what U.S. forces could accomplish, not on what might follow.
"Hvylya" has also reported on how Iran's own nuclear transparency gave its adversaries the confidence to strike.