By Manish Rai

The question of regime change in Iran has recently resurfaced after the killing of Iran’s top military commanders following the Israeli airstrikes. However, Israel’s short-term goal was to damage Iran’s nuclear facilities to severely diminish its weapons program. But the Israeli Prime Minister mentioned during his speeches that the war with Iran “could certainly” lead to regime change in the Islamic Republic.

It is not the first time that foreign (Western) powers have imagined Iran as a crumbling house, one that only needs a gentle push, or a series of airstrikes, before it falls into new hands. This was the fantasy in 1953, when the CIA and the British intelligence overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s democratically elected prime minister and pushed Iran into Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s autocratic rule. And this was also the dream in the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran with military and economic support from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Israel, who believed the newly established Islamic Republic would collapse in months.

Founded in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran has democratic, theocratic, and authoritarian elements in its governance system, which makes it a hybrid. The founding figure of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, envisioned a democratic state with an oversight of a Supreme Islamic Jurist to ensure all policies adhered to Islamic law.

Before the revolution, Iran was a constitutional monarchy. Afterward, theocratic elements were effectively grafted onto the existing republican structures, such as the parliament, executive, and judiciary. Iran has a unicameral legislature (a single-house parliament) called the Majles, as well as a president. Regular elections are held for both. However, while democratic elements exist within the system, in practice it operates as a “closed loop” that preserves the power of the ruling elite........

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