After assassinating Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei in an air strike, and making repeated calls to the Iranian people to use this moment to rise up, Netanyahu has now signalled the war may end with the regime still in place.
In his first press conference since the war began, he told Israelis that the bombing campaign had already changed the balance of power in the Middle East in Israel's favour.
"We can already say with certainty: this is no longer the same Iran, this is no longer the same Middle East, and this is not the same Israel," he said.
Some in Israel will read that as a sign that Israel is being asked to wind up the war, amid signs that spiralling oil prices are putting the US government under pressure to call an end to the conflict.
Strong Israeli support for this war rested partly on the idea that it would end repeated campaigns against Iran and its proxy forces across the region.
After the last war against Iran in June 2025, Israel's prime minister heralded a "historic victory" that would "stand for generations", saying it had "removed two existential threats" in Iran's nuclear weapons - which Tehran has denied seeking to develop - and its ballistic missiles.
Israel had returned to war just eight months later, he said, because Iran was rapidly rebuilding its missile programme, and planning to move it - and its nuclear programme - deep underground.
The question Netanyahu faces now is: without regime change in Tehran, how long before the next time?
Military officials say the damage to Iran's weapons programmes this time is far deeper than before - with its production sites and leadership targeted alongside missile stocks and launchers.
"Some of it is permanent, and some of it is semi-permanent," said Lt Col Nadav Shoshani, spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), describing the military objective as removing threats "for a prolonged period of time".
But there is a political risk for Netanyahu in leaving the regime intact.
Neri Zilber, the analyst, says the danger for Netanyahu is that his grand pronouncements about "total victory" against Iran's network of allies across the region are just empty bombastic statements.