Open sources show that after the June 2025 U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure, Israel did not pivot to a quiet, status‐quo de‑escalation with the Iranian regime, but instead maintained and even emphasized activities and messaging aimed at weakening it.

1. Stated goal of weakening or toppling the regime. Reporting during and after the war makes clear that Israeli leadership framed the June campaign not just as non‑proliferation, but as an effort to strike at the foundations of Ayatollah Khamenei’s rule and even pursue regime change. Reuters described Israel’s air campaign as aiming to “severely weaken or even collapse” Khamenei’s government, going beyond narrow nuclear objectives.【7news13】 A separate analysis reported Netanyahu explicitly urging Iranians to “rise” against an “evil and oppressive regime” and presenting the strikes in the context of supporting a different future for Iran, i.e., overt regime‑destabilization rhetoric rather than narrow deterrence.【7news14】 Post‑war diplomacy coverage likewise notes Netanyahu pushing for dismantling Iran’s regime and resisting U.S. moves toward renewed talks, indicating an ongoing strategic objective rather than a one‑off strike campaign.【6news14】

2. Information and psychological operations directed at Iranians. During and after the June war, Israel markedly escalated Persian‑language outreach and influence operations targeting the Iranian public. An analysis of Israel’s “digital campaign” documents how official IDF and Foreign Ministry Persian‑language accounts used monarchist symbols (the lion and sun) and messaging tailored to anti‑regime audiences, explicitly appealing to segments of the Iranian population opposed to the Islamic Republic.【7search0】 Another report describes Israel hacking Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB during the conflict to air a message urging Iranians to rise up against the regime, a direct attempt to incite internal opposition rather than simply degrade military capabilities.【7search4】 The IDF also used its Persian account to highlight Mossad’s secure contact portal and effectively invited Iranians to provide information or collaborate, an unusually overt attempt to recruit assets inside Iran.【7search2】 These are precisely the kinds of ongoing Mossad/IDF efforts to destabilize the regime that Friedberg was speculating about.

3. Continued posture and new influence initiatives after the ceasefire. The formal ceasefire of June 24, 2025 ended large‑scale open hostilities, and has broadly held in terms of direct kinetic strikes between Israel and Iran.【5search18】 But Israeli officials openly signaled that the conflict with the regime was not over. In September, Mossad chief David Barnea publicly boasted that Mossad retains “operational capabilities” even “in the heart of Tehran” and emphasized that the agency would continue to act against Iran, underscoring an ongoing covert campaign rather than a pause or reset.【2news14】 In November 2025, the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs launched a new Persian‑language influence campaign explicitly aimed at exposing “disinformation mechanisms of the Ayatollah regime” and fostering dialogue about freedom, human rights, and corruption among Iranians—an Israeli civil‑society effort clearly aligned with eroding the regime’s legitimacy rather than accepting a stable status quo.【7search3】

4. Outcome in Iran: crisis, not a peaceful transition. Domestically, Iran has moved into what analysts describe as a 2025 “internal crisis,” characterized by mass arrests, accelerated executions, and heightened regime paranoia after the war.【6search17】 That trajectory—escalating repression, continued Israeli anti‑regime rhetoric and influence operations, and no normalization between Jerusalem and Tehran—matches Friedberg’s core claim that this would not be a “quiet, peaceful transition” for the Islamic Republic after the June strikes, but an environment in which Israel kept trying to weaken whatever regime remained.

We do not have open-source confirmation of new, post‑ceasefire kinetic Mossad/IDF attacks inside Iran itself; such covert actions may or may not have occurred and would often be deniable. However, the observable record—Israeli leadership’s articulated regime‑change aims, continued psychological and influence operations in Persian, and public assurances by Mossad’s chief that operations inside Iran will continue—shows that Israel did indeed persist in efforts directed at undermining the current Iranian regime, rather than settling into a quiet de‑escalation. On that basis, Friedberg’s prediction is best judged as directionally right, even if the exact form of the “next shots” has so far been more informational and political than additional large‑scale bombing inside Iran.