Eight days into the US-Israeli campaign, roughly half of the 50 targeted senior Iranian officials have been eliminated — yet there is no popular uprising in sight, and officials on both sides estimate another four to six weeks of fighting lie ahead.
American and Israeli defence establishments say the joint military campaign against Iran has exceeded initial expectations in its first eight days — but the political objective of triggering a popular uprising against the clerical regime remains as elusive as ever. Writing in Haaretz, defence correspondent Amos Harel reported that the volume of Iranian missile and drone launches has plummeted by approximately 80 per cent compared with the conflict's opening days, the result of sustained strikes on launchers, launch cells, and storage facilities across the country.
Despite this military success, no meaningful cracks have appeared in the stability of the Iranian state. According to senior Israel Defense Forces officers cited by Haaretz, Iran's system is "no longer being run in an orderly fashion" but continues to function, at least partially. While the Iranian army has ceased to operate effectively in some areas, the broader apparatus of the state remains intact. Intelligence analysts note that predicting a mass uprising is inherently difficult, but the threshold that would bring large crowds into the streets — or push tens of thousands of demonstrators to surround Revolutionary Guards and Basij bases — has not yet been reached. There have been no significant desertions from the security forces, nor any reports of armed individuals joining anti-government protests.
On the assassination campaign, Haaretz reported that roughly half of the 50 senior regime figures designated for elimination have been killed — chief among them Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Yet assessments on both the Israeli and American sides indicate that many additional days of strikes will be required before more decisive results can be achieved. US President Donald Trump stated over the weekend that he expects another four to six weeks to be necessary; Israeli defence officials offered comparable timelines.
Washington is reportedly exploring whether Kurdish militias could serve as a lever to accelerate regime destabilisation, though Israeli analysts quoted by Haaretz are sceptical, noting that the Iranian public historically regards ethnic minorities deployed by Western powers as instruments of foreign interference rather than legitimate agents of domestic change.
On Israel's northern front, Hezbollah has already entered the conflict, launching missiles at Israeli communities and conducting antitank and mortar attacks on IDF positions established north of the Lebanese border. The IDF doubled the number of its outposts in that area in the middle of last week and deployed additional infantry and armoured units as a buffer against Hezbollah incursions. The Israeli military is not currently conducting deeper ground manoeuvres inside Lebanon — its main operational focus remains Iran — but military sources indicated that sustained Hezbollah pressure along the border could force a reassessment.
The Houthis in Yemen have not yet joined the fighting, though Haaretz cited Israeli military sources as viewing their eventual entry into the conflict as likely, at Tehran's behest. Their current restraint, analysts believe, is a deliberate signal of operational independence rather than a sign of disengagement.
The overall picture, as Haaretz framed it, is one of striking military success paired with deep strategic uncertainty: hundreds of ballistic missile launchers destroyed, Iran's navy largely neutralised, and key figures in the Islamic Republic's leadership eliminated — yet a regime still standing, a population that has not risen up, and a war whose political endpoint remains undefined.