It’s now clear that the conflict in Iran is a war of regime change. The scale and diversity of the United States buildup in the Middle East created multiple strategic options, from limited coercive strikes to weaken Iran’s negotiating position to full-scale efforts aimed at regime change. President Trump’s own statements on US objectives have been inconsistent and contradictory. US air strikes have, for the most part, targeted Iranian military assets, which is compatible with various objectives. However, Israeli strikes have given more consistent attention to key personnel and leadership structures, suggesting a settled aim of regime change, which the mercurial Trump seems to have accepted, at least for now. 

In recent decades, Israeli security doctrine has been shaped by the concept of “mowing the grass”, periodically degrading the military capabilities of adversaries (primarily, though not exclusively, non-state actors) to render them less threatening and deter aggression. While this avoids the risks and costs of protracted operations, as critics note, it merely manages conflicts rather than resolving them. However, the 7 October attacks of 2023 showed how high were the risks of such a strategy if one wrongly judged an enemy to be deterred. Through its proximity to nuclear weapons and sponsorship of aggressive proxies such as Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and the now-departed Assad regime in Syria, Iran has been both the gravest threat to Israel and the most disruptive regional actor in the Middle East. Since last summer, with Iran’s regional proxies weakened or destroyed, its nuclear program at least set back (though hardly “obliterated”, as Trump boasted), and its air defences neutralized, it must have seemed like a propitious moment to remove the source of so many threats. Particularly for an Israeli Prime Minister who has long wished for regime change in Tehran as part of his legacy. 

Moreover, Iran was taking some steps towards rebuilding itself militarily, so action beforehand made a certain sense. And indeed, the apparently seamless integration of US and Israeli operations, and the successful removal of so many key Iranian personnel, including the Ayatollah Khamenei, is a remarkable tactical success. Tactical success, however, does not guarantee achievement of strategic objectives. The current approach appears to rest on three seductive assumptions: that regime change can be achieved through airpower alone, through leadership decapitation, or through a combination of the two promising rapid and inexpensive results.. 

But airpower alone has never produced regime change, and more often the damage it inflicts proves counterproductive, actually strengthening public support for the regime. The removal of Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbian forces from the breakaway republic of Kosovo is sometimes cited as a counterexample. In reality, however, it was NATO’s escalating bombing campaign, its growing coordination with Kosovo Liberation Army ground operations, and the looming prospect of a NATO ground invasion that compelled Milosevic to capitulate. In the case of the other principal counter-example, that of NATO’s 2011 intervention in Libya, the air campaign helped the ground forces of the regime’s opponents in the struggle for territorial control, but by itself didn’t produce victory. 

The promise of decapitation is equally enduring but equally problematic. Even the most personalized modern autocracy must rely upon an elaborate and pervasive apparatus of control and oppression. In Iran, this consists primarily of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), arguably the central nervous system of the state, which is embedded in every part of Iranian society and economy and cannot be cleanly and surgically excised. . Assassinating senior IRGC leaders or other top officials would likely trigger power struggles among those who remain. ]

Even when a regime is deeply unpopular, as may be the case here, regime change is unlikely without a unified and organized opposition, such as Solidarity in the former Soviet bloc or the “People Power” movement in the Philippines. As far as we know, neither the United States nor Israel has acted to cultivate one. Indeed, Trump’s termination of programs to promote democracy and support dissident movements, as well as his recent failure to follow through on promises to Iranian protesters that the US would help, make it less likely that a coherent opposition would emerge or trust the US enough to cast its lot with him. 

Iran is divided along political, and ethnic lines, with separatist sentiment strong among Kurdish, Azerbaijani, and Baloch populations.The regime retained the loyalty of at least a significant minority, and the opposition divided between monarchists and secular liberals, but no organized alternative regime. And, having apparently ruled out any commitment of ground forces, either the US or Israel would find itself with limited ability to shape events on the ground.

There are, of course, multiple possible results of the ongoing conflict. The regime may well continue and indeed broaden hostilities, including further actions against regional neighbours and terrorism further afield, hoping it is more willing to bear the costs than the US under Trump. Should the regime be unable to retain control, any factional struggle would tend to favour the most organized force, the IRGC, whose collective inclinations would herald continued authoritarianism, though possibly a less belligerent face to the outside world, at least initially. Some of Trump’s own recent comments suggest this is his preferred outcome.  

Finally, a revolution or coup could topple the current regime, though autocratic regimes rarely collapse without large-scale defections among the military and security forces.  This would require such wrenching changes to Iran’s power structures that resolution would come only after a period of severe instability which would require US involvement in the region of a sort to which Trump is averse, as well as a significant drain on resources and capabilities which, even in the case of the US military, are not unlimited. To be sure, there is a compelling case for regime change in Iran. But to attempt it while assuming relatively quick and painless success through airpower and decapitation by themselves is to will the end but not the means, rarely a recipe for success. 

© OpenCanada