Iran’s state broadcaster, which was bombed mid-broadcast by Israel on Monday, was many things to many people. It was the employer of hundreds of journalists, some of whom were injured in the attack, prompting protests from press freedom organizations. It was also the propaganda arm of a repressive regime, which has broadcast the “confessions” of hundreds of the regime’s opponents over the years, many believed to have been extracted by torture.
What it was not is an integral component of Iran’s nascent nuclear program.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country had “no choice” but to launch airstrikes to stop Iran’s imminent rush to acquire a nuclear bomb. But it has also been apparent that this was the floor, not the ceiling, of Israel’s ambitions.
The Israeli military operation is called “Rising Lion,” evoking the pre-revolutionary flag often flown by opponents of the Iranian government, a theocratic regime that has crushed protests at home and backed armed groups throughout the Middle East. While one Iranian nuclear enrichment site has been heavily damaged, others have been hardly touched. (Some of these may be difficult or even impossible for Israel to destroy without direct US involvement in the war.) At the same time, Israel appears to be systematically wiping out the senior leadership of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and according to some reports, had a plan to kill Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which was vetoed by President Donald Trump. Netanyahu, meanwhile, has called for the Iranian people to overthrow their government, describing the strikes as “your opportunity to stand up.”
“From the beginning, it was apparent, based on the targeting and Israeli public messaging, that this had the potential to be something much more than just a counter-proliferation operation,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Retired Gen. Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s national security council with close ties to the current government, told reporters on Monday that regime change was not the “explicit” goal of the Israeli campaign, which is focused on setting back Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, but added, “I cannot hide that this is the implicit goal or dream of hope of the Israeli government.”
Could Iran’s regime really fall?
The Iranian regime has clearly been weakened by sanctions and the damage dealt to its regional proxy network over the past year. It has few allies, the ones it does have aren’t doing much to help, and recent nationwide protests show that there is widespread and deep opposition. But that doesn’t mean that the regime is about to collapse after four decades in power.
So far, there hasn’t been much concerted anti-regime protest since the strikes began, not surprising given that thousands are fleeing the capital city, Tehran. Abdullah Mohtadi, the exiled leader of a Kurdish Iranian opposition party, told Vox that the airstrikes had caused “mixed feelings” for his movement’s supporters. While few will mourn the death of senior commanders who had been involved in crackdowns against peaceful protesters, regime opponents are also fearful about the destruction and strife the war could unleash, especially if it continues for a long time. “War itself is not a good thing, but sometimes it presents a window of opportunity. I hope this will be the case this time,” Mohtadi said. Other Iranian opposition figures have explicitly rejected Netanyahu’s calls for an uprising, saying the bombing doesn’t help their movement.
It’s difficult to generalize about public opinion in any country of 90 million people, much less one where speaking out against the government can be dangerous, noted Ellie Geranmayeh, senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, but she said there was a risk of Israel’s bombing provoking a “rally around the flag” effect for disaffected Iranians.
“There is very little love from the Iranian population for the ruling elite,” she said. “But the more they are seeing pictures of hospitals under attack, civilian deaths rising, state infrastructure, like oil, gas, electricity being hit, sooner or later, public opinion will shift.”
Does America want another regime change war in the Middle East?
Still, if overthrowing the Islamic Republic, not just halting its nuclear program, is Netanyahu’s dream, that changes the stakes for the Trump administration given that Israel is fairly explicitly hoping to directly draw the US military into the conflict.
Regime change in Iran had been an implicit goal of Trump’s first administration, which pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal, applied “maximum pressure sections,” and authorized the assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the second most powerful figure in the regime.
But until just a few days ago, it appeared that the new Trump administration was different. Hawks like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were gone, replaced by America Firsters who argued the US should either be more restrained in using military force abroad, or that it should shift its focus from high-risk, low-reward engagements in the Middle East to the more important superpower conflict with China. The Republican Party, it appeared, had turned the page from the George W. Bush era.
In a speech in Saudi Arabia in May, Trump condemned the “neo-cons” and “nation builders” who he said had “wrecked far more nations than they built…intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.”
This Trump administration was perfectly willing to go behind Israel’s back to cut deals with Iranian-backed proxies like the Houthis and Hamas as well as negotiate with Iran itself on a new nuclear agreement. Even after Israel’s airstrikes started, and Trump belatedly embraced them, he still expressed hope that the Iranians would return to the negotiating table.
On Tuesday, however, Trump said he was seeking a “real end” to the conflict and might give up on diplomacy entirely, hinting vaguely that something “much bigger” than a ceasefire is in the works. He has called for the Iranian government’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” and suggested that Khamenei could still be targeted.
Now, longtime regime change advocates — like Trump’s first-term national security adviser John Bolton and Sen. Lindsey Graham — are coming out of the woodwork and urging the US to join Israel’s war, with Graham telling Fox News, “Wouldn’t the world be better off if the ayatollahs went away and were replaced by something better? Wouldn’t Iran be better off?”
Trump appears to have turned on antiwar supporters like “kooky Tucker Carlson,” while Vice President JD Vance, who was warned in the past that a war in Iran could spark “World War III,” issued a long statement saying that the focus should remain on Iran’s nuclear program.
What might regime change look like?
In his tweet, Vance noted that Americans “are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy.” The chaos that followed the US-backed toppling of autocratic governments in Afghanistan, Iran, and Libya looms over this conflict, as do Israel’s bloody occupations of southern Lebanon and more recently Gaza. It’s not an inspiring track record.
Eiland, the retired Israeli general, was more optimistic, suggesting that while Iranians were unlikely to rise up while bombs are falling, the operation could make such an uprising more likely down the road. “Seventy to 80 percent of the people are not only against the regime, they have a very, very pro-Western approach,” he said. “So it will be relatively easy for these people to create a real distinguished and successful society again, but only after they manage to get rid of the existing regime.”
The hope for Israel may be that regime change would look less like Iraq after 2003 or Libya after 2011 than Syria after last year’s overthrow of Bashar al-Assad. Though that hasn’t quite ushered in complete peace or democracy, there’s been far less instability and bloodshed than many feared following the fall of one of the world’s most repressive regimes.
On the other hand, that outcome came only after a 13-year war that killed more than half a million people and resulted in one of the world’s largest refugee crises and the rise of ISIS.
Ali Vaez, Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, said a more realistic outcome might look more like either Syria after the initial uprising of 2011, or Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War. “You might have a weakened central government that loses control over some parts of its territory, but the regime itself will be entrenched, and even if it’s decaying,” he said.
None of these outcomes are foreordained. Trump’s stance on the war has shifted on a dime in recent days and could shift again. Trump’s restraint-oriented advisers may have lost some influence, but wealthy governments across the Persian Gulf and major oil companies may also be wary about a long war that could put them in the crosshairs. Trump has traditionally been more comfortable with short, overwhelming military actions — like the Soleimani strike, or the strikes against Syria in 2017 — than long, drawn-out wars, which this very well could become.
“It could be years of instability, and by the time he leaves the White House, that war would not be over,” said Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “All I can tell you is that this regime is hated by its people, but also that the US and Israel don’t have a good track record in nation building.”
For now, Trump appears all-in rhetorically on the war, using the pronoun “we” when referring to Israeli military action, but also hasn’t yet committed US military forces, though he has suggested that would change if US assets were targeted by Iran. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that early tactical success in a war has led the US into a much larger, more ambitious, and bloodier conflict than was initially planned.
