By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
The Right Path to Regime Change in Iran
There are many paths
to regime change in Iran. In all cases of regime change, the
indispensable preconditions for success are that the government becomes weaker
and the populace becomes bolder.
In the past week,
Israel has done a significant amount to establish the first condition. It has
not just disabled key Iranian nuclear facilities but also essentially
decapitated Iran’s military leadership. As of this writing, Israel has attacked
20 out of 31 provinces and killed scores of generals and scientists. It has
largely spared Iran’s economic assets, although it has targeted domestic oil
and gas production and distribution facilities. Critics have said that the
intent of this Israeli operation is regime change, but it would be more correct
to say that regime change might emerge as a collateral benefit of Israel’s
offensive.
Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei has been comprehensively humbled. He once stalked the Middle East as
the leader who helped defeat the United States in Iraq and surrounded Israel
with lethal proxies. He had defied the international community and expanded
Iran’s nuclear program, bringing the theocracy within reach of the bomb. His
success abroad reinforced his authority at home. But the collapse of Iran’s
“axis of resistance” in the Levant and Gaza and Israel’s current pummeling of
the Islamic Republic inevitably raises the question of whether such a reversal
can uproot the dictatorship. It could, but Israel will have to do a lot more to
shatter the coercive powers of theocracy’s police state - and do so without
military actions that kill large numbers of civilians, especially women and
children.
The Regime On Its Knees
In its more than four
decades in power, the Islamic Republic has faced its share of popular
insurrections. Every decade, another social class defected from the
revolutionary coalition. Students and liberals were the first to go shortly
after the revolution in 1979. This was followed by elements of the middle class
during the Green Movement of 2009, and finally, in the late 2010s, the working
poor, in whose name the movement was waged. The regime always beat back these
uprisings. They never gained critical mass, as most people believed that the
regime’s Revolutionary Guards, the Basij militia, the street thugs who abetted
the authorities, and the omnipresent intelligence ministry were too cruel and
implacable to defeat. Once the security forces started killing and torturing
enough protestors, the demonstrations, which did spiral into insurrections in
2017 and 2019, petered out. For Iranians themselves, it’s been a deeply
frustrating recurring cycle, most recently experienced in the protests in 2022
that followed the death of Mahsa Amini, a
young woman who had been detained by the religious morality police.
Now, after days of
Israeli bombings, both the regime and the Iranian public appear traumatized.
When things calm down, scores surely will be settled, perhaps even within the
ruling elite as power brokers in the security, clerical, and political
establishments get their knives out. Members of the Revolutionary Guards, for
instance, may blame the civilian leadership for the country's failure to
develop the atomic weapon that would have deterred an Israeli attack. The
86-year-old supreme leader may have a very rough go of it with younger members
of the Guards, who appeared to want a more aggressive nuclear policy. They will
be distressed that the vaunted atomic program that cost billions of dollars is
now in ruins. (Its actual financial cost probably runs into hundreds of
billions, given the commercial opportunities Iran has lost as a result of
sanctions placed on it by the West.)
Although Israel has
killed a lot of very important people in the country, all the pathologies of
the Islamic Republic are still intact. It remains a theocracy drowning in
corruption. Core institutions, such as government ministries, are in an
advanced state of decay, and social inequality, especially in the wake of
soaring inflation, has deepened. Some observers imagine that Israel’s attack
will stimulate a nationalist fervor that would help insulate the regime. But
the bonds between state and society are too severed for such an outcome. In
past demonstrations, the Iranian people have blamed their regime and not
outsiders for their predicament. Another major protest movement
will undoubtedly arise. The question is what Israel and the United States will
do to tilt the scales in the movement’s favor.
At an anti-Israeli rally in Tehran, June 2025
A Visit to the Goon Squad
It will be tempting
to offer the regime a lifeline should it agree to abandon its nuclear quest.
“Realists” on the American left and right are acutely uncomfortable with the
promotion of human rights and democracy overseas. They don’t see it as an
effective American weapon.
The regime has always
preferred to have the West focus on its nuclear ambitions, not on its internal
troubles. Many Americans and Israelis have also not been hugely interested in
supporting human rights for Muslims. But the Israelis now appear far more attuned
to how this advocacy, even if applied only to Iranians, reinforces the chances
that the Islamic Republic might crack. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, who has described the regime as “weak” and urged Iranians to rise
against it, and Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, both appear willing to
think more seriously about supporting Iranians from the ground up.
Trump has now called
for the Islamic Republic’s “total surrender,” by which he means the regime
abandoning its enrichment activities and nuclear weapons program. It is hard to
see Iranian leaders acquiescing so easily; they might instead agree to a diplomatic
process and make enough concessions, such as Iran accepting that it cannot
enrich uranium beyond a certain level, to secure a much-needed respite. A
better policy, however, would need to dispense with arms control as its sole
aspiration.
Although there is not
a great track record of success when it comes to implementing regime change
from the air, Israel can do a lot more to get the sparks flying. The military
campaign that has focused on disarming Iran needs to focus on the regime’s enforcers.
The Revolutionary Guards’ leadership has been decimated, but its many military
bases remain intact and should be targeted. The regime’s first line of defense
in times of internal crisis is its goon squad, the Basij, which is under the
control of the Guards. The Basij has committed enormous crimes against the
Iranian people. Its installations, including police facilities and military
bases, should be on target lists. So, too, the intelligence ministry, with its
many offices throughout the country. Such bombings won’t permanently destroy
these forces; it will, however, inject a measure of doubt in the regime’s upper
echelons about the availability and reliability of its foot soldiers and
inquisitors.
Israel would also
need to expand its campaign to cripple Iran’s economy. The Israeli Air Force
would need to disable additional oil and gas infrastructure. The regime
sustains its power partly through its patronage networks. Unable to meet its
financial obligations to its core supporters, defections from its ranks would
likely increase, perhaps markedly. It is important, however, that such strikes
be surgical and limit civilian casualties as much as possible.
The most significant
challenge of any regime change policy is to remain focused on the task after
the fireworks are over. Once Iran is disarmed, Israel and the United States
might be tempted to walk away and look elsewhere. It is precisely at that
moment that they should instead increase pressure on the regime. The United
States must maintain sanctions and check Iran’s pathways into global commerce.
Mossad, which has demonstrated tremendous capacity to work inside Iran, should
ramp up its covert operations, since the CIA historically has shown almost no
appetite for this, at least since the 1970s.
End of the Road
Given how weak the
Iranian government may be after the current Israeli assault concludes, it might
not take much to keep the Islamic Republic politically unstable. And an intense
American propaganda campaign through social media and other channels should
continuously highlight the calamitous and corrupt rule of the mullahs. The
Iranian elite stashes a lot of money abroad. At a minimum, the U.S. Treasury should
track and expose those funds. And whatever and wherever opposition forces
emerge inside Iran, the United States should aid them with financial backing
and technological assistance to the extent possible, so long as these forces
aren’t politically extreme.
Iran belongs to the
Iranians. They are the only ones who can, in the end, determine the direction
of their country. They have taken to the streets in 1906, 1922, and 1979, and
they can be counted on to do so again. All the United States and Israel can do
is weaken the regime and accentuate its vulnerabilities. The Islamic Republic
has never faced a crisis like the one unleashed by this month’s attacks. It’s a
great irony that Israel - disparaged relentlessly by the Iranian leadership as
a savage, illegitimate colonial settler state aiming to humble Muslims
everywhere - may, just possibly, have opened the door for a new future for the
long-suffering Iranian people.
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