Regime Change Won't Free Iran

Editor’s Note: This story was published before the U.S. bombed Iran on Saturday evening.

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As the U.S. finds itself on the precipice of a potential war with Iran , the same cast of characters who cheered on the Iraq War in 2003 are once again talking up “regime change” like it’s not a recipe for chaos, quagmire, and disaster. These include such foreign-policy luminaries as Bill Kristol and John Bolton , along with Republican lawmakers such as Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, the latter of whom doesn’t even know how many people live in Iran but is pretty sure it’s in our interest to collapse their state. While the “America First” faction of MAGA Republicans is furious at the idea, regime change in Iran still has many fans in the GOP, and Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser under former president Barack Obama, warned the New York Times that there are even some Democrats who are drawn to the notion.

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It’s a stunning resurrection of an idea that has been thoroughly and repeatedly discredited over the past quarter-century. No matter how much Americans would like to be able to bend the world to our will, our track record in Iraq , Afghanistan , Libya, and Syria shows that U.S. attempts to topple and replace hostile foreign governments never result in the emergence of peaceful, stable democracies that are grateful to us for freeing them from their autocratic oppressors. How on earth can anyone imagine that regime change will succeed in Iran: a country with more than twice the population of Iraq or Afghanistan, a millennia-old history of unwelcome foreign interventions, and a deeply entrenched and complex political system?

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From the beginning of his political career, President Donald Trump himself campaigned on ending “forever wars” and not getting the U.S. involved in any more intractable foreign conflicts. Now, Trump is more or less solely responsible for deciding whether to involve the U.S. in another war in the Middle East, which many Iran hawks hope will realize their longtime ambition of toppling the hated Iranian regime.

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Trump, who says he will decide whether to bomb Iran within the next two weeks , appears rightly wary of blundering into an open-ended conflict with implications for the entire Middle East. Of course, it’s hard to be sure just what Trump intends when he blusters about “unconditional surrender,” muses about assassinating Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and apparently believes Iran’s regime is weeks away from having a nuclear weapon, which U.S. intelligence agencies continue to assess is not the case. But whether out of fear of upsetting his isolationist base or because he has genuinely absorbed the lessons of past misadventures, Trump is for now not rushing to war.

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Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no such sense of caution. Netanyahu made it clear from the beginning that he hopes to weaken the Iranian regime to the point of collapse and has urged the Iranian people to rise up against it. He has taken his regime-change agenda on a publicity tour of U.S. media, bringing it up on Fox News (which he knows Trump watches) and telling ABC News that he’s not ruling out killing Khamenei. The Israeli PM wants us to believe not only that Israel’s bombing campaign can bring about the end of the Islamic Republic but also that this would be a good thing for the Iranian people and the world.

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But Netanyahu doesn’t really have a strategy for regime change in Iran. He is only concerned with getting rid of the current regime, not so much what comes after it. If he can dismantle Iran’s nuclear program and topple the Islamic Republic, he will count that as a win. Michael Makovsky, president and chief executive of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (which supports war with Iran), called this strategy “regime collapse” rather than “regime change,” which he acknowledged is still a toxic term in Washington. The regime-collapse strategy does not seek to establish a new government in Tehran but merely “to pressure the regime every way possible so that the Iranian people bring it down.”

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This is an insanely reckless strategy. It rests entirely on the premise that Iranians will rise up and successfully overthrow their government while investing nothing in that success. It simply assumes that if the regime is weakened enough, it will collapse and something better will magically grow in its place.

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Some Iranian opposition voices agree with the assessment that the regime is the weakest it has been in decades. In a recent essay at RealClear Defense, Iranian democracy-movement scholar Fariba Parsa argues that the Islamic Republic is facing a collapse of legitimacy, with widespread popular opposition and discontent over economic stagnation, the cost of living, and state corruption. Its network of regional proxies has been decimated, its military capabilities are inadequate, and its nuclear program has become a liability, as literally no other country is in favor of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

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In this context, some Iranian activists welcome anything that helps bring the government down, even Israeli or American bombs. But others deeply mistrust these countries’ intentions; it is doubtful that many Iranians buy Netanyahu’s claims of having their best interests at heart. The more destruction and the more civilian deaths Israel causes in Iran (already in the hundreds and sure to grow), the more hatred and resentment Iranians will feel toward Israel and the harder it will become to leverage the Israeli campaign into a popular uprising, even if elements of the opposition tried to do so.

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Pro-democracy activists in and outside Iran have said the Israeli war does not help them , and many Iranians are leery of any radical change. Furthermore, they do not share the perception of outsiders that the regime is weak enough to overthrow right now. And Israel’s actions hurt the opposition rather than help: As one Iranian journalist told CNN , “Now the regime has free rein to label anyone it wants as an Israeli spy.”

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And even if the regime does fall, what then? There is no guarantee that what comes next will be better for Iranians, friendlier to the U.S. or Israel, or less determined to pursue a nuclear deterrent. As political scientist Brian Klaas pointed out to NBC News, the Iranian opposition has many factions, including some that are hostile to the West and some that believe the regime is not hard-line enough. If the regime collapses, these forces will fight for control of the country, perhaps violently.

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The most likely force to fill that power vacuum is Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the locus of the regime’s hard power and a key political and economic player. The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported that if “Khamenei were toppled or killed, the Revolutionary Guard would most likely step in and dictate a new ruler — and in doing so, assume unprecedented power.” Israel’s offensive has targeted IRGC leaders and assets extensively, but the IRGC remains the most influential force on the ground in Iran.

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An IRGC regime would be as bad as or worse than the current Iranian government, either operating as a typical military dictatorship or simply restoring the current theocratic regime. It would certainly rush to rebuild its nuclear program. U.S. intelligence officials believe Iran will likely try to build a nuclear weapon if Khamenei is killed or if the U.S. bombs the underground uranium-enrichment site at Fordow (Israel lacks the necessary weaponry to destroy this site, hence Netanyahu’s eagerness for the U.S. to join the war).

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To ensure that a collapse of the Islamic regime is not replaced by anarchy or a military dictatorship, the U.S. and/or Israel would need to prop up liberal, secular factions in the ensuing power struggle; to stand a chance against the IRGC, this would require a long and expensive commitment of funds, arms, and perhaps even boots on the ground. Neither Israel nor the U.S. has any plans or appetite for this. A strategy of regime change or regime collapse puts the burden of rebuilding the country entirely on the Iranian people, who would still face tremendous odds in trying to create a democracy.

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To be clear, none of this is to say that Iran’s regime deserves to continue. It is a repressive, corrupt, authoritarian theocracy that exports antisemitism, terrorism, and chaos throughout the Middle East. The Iranian people, like all people, deserve freedom and prosperity rather than misery and oppression. But neither Israel nor America can deliver those benefits, no matter how well intentioned the bombs may be. Toppling the Iranian regime, destabilizing the country, and leaving Iranians to pick up the pieces isn’t liberation; it’s heedless demolition.

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