Comment by NoLinkToMe

Hard to say. Netanyahu has been calling for Iranian regime change since the 90s, and Trump is his most successful lobbying effort yet. US wants regime change, they just never saw a possibility. So the objective isn't new or driven by Epstein, perhaps the timing is though.

Even now most experts agree the chance of success is extremely small, every time this was tried you got shit returns (think Libya, still a failed state after Ghadaffi fell, and Iraq is reasonably stable now but we're 2 decades in and +1m dead Iraqis).

So it's certainly a useful distraction for Trump. It's also certainly true Trump would want to pursue this objective (despite it being a stupid move to reach it) regardless of the Epstein files.