Trump's plan for regime change is a joke
Updated 22.29 | Published 22.16
This is not how he would do it, if Trump had the goals he says.
The US's enormous tactical success against Iran cannot hide the fact that the plans for regime change appear to be a joke.
The US and Israel's military superiority is immense, and the result so far is therefore expected.
The US attacked over 1,000 targets during the first day of fighting alone. Israel dropped 1,200 bombs and, according to the IDF, knocked out half of Iran's ballistic missile platforms.
The fact that the first attacks were large-scale and surprising has war economic reasons.
The US has many places in the region to defend, and the stocks of air defense missiles for systems such as THAAD and Patriot are not deep.
A more cautious start that was gradually escalated would have been unsustainable, as the US could not afford to burn out its air defenses trying to absorb large-scale Iranian counterattacks.
Knockout Iran's missiles on the ground, preferably so quickly that they would not have time to be used, was the only feasible way.
Tactically, a success.
Strategically, I am skeptical.
Donald Trump has openly stated that the goal of the operation is to overthrow the Iranian regime.
As usual, you should not necessarily take him at his word.
On the contrary, the means used indicate that regime change is not the highest priority at all.
First, there are no historical examples where air power alone has forced a regime change in a positive direction.
At most, airstrikes are a way to kill and punish. They are threats and whips, which could possibly nudge the survivors of the existing elite in a more pro-US direction.
Venezuela after Maduro is a shining example of the kind of results that one who launches such an effort can reasonably expect.
Second, there is probably truth between the lines.
Once the US has finished bombing, it is all up to the Iranian people, Trump said when he announced his war. The power is yours to capture.
The military and the Revolutionary Guard were instead urged to lay down their arms and surrender.
To whom, one might ask sarcastically? How?
Neither the US nor Israel will deploy ground troops, and there is no alternative source of armed authority in Iran other than the regime.
Preparing alternative ruling coalitions inside Iran in advance, and balancing the opposition with selected parts of the elite, would certainly have been difficult. Perhaps impossible. That does not prevent it from having a greater chance of success.
Unfortunately, the US seems to have vague ideas about the inner life of the regime, and has neither cultivated a clear successor to the slain Khamenei, nor an opposition figure with sufficient support or influence to take over.
If regime change is the goal, the plan to achieve it looks like a joke.
Of course, a regime collapse cannot be categorically ruled out anyway. The regime was already unpopular and under pressure. A leadership vacuum and losses could trigger a type of power struggle dynamic that would otherwise never have happened.
But given how little the US has done to control such a transition, it is impossible to draw any other conclusion than that a regime change, if it occurs, is mostly a happy circumstance – not the main war goal.
Rather, what is happening is the continuation of a development that was already foreseeable during last year’s war, when the US helped Israel bomb large parts of Iran’s nuclear program.
A country that has decided to enrich uranium and build ballistic missiles cannot be permanently stopped with military air power.
The lawn grows back, and for the irritated gardener all that remains is to roll out bombers and robots again and again to mow it.
It is possible to write down, without embellishing allegories, what we have to expect in that case:
War.
Over and over and over again.
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