By launching an air war of regime change against the Islamic Republic of Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump is attempting to defy history.
No country’s government has ever been deposed and replaced with a friendlier one by air power alone. Yet Mr. Trump has made clear since announcing the launching of military operations against Iran early on Saturday that regime change is indeed his goal.
The conventional requisite accompaniment to airstrikes is ground forces, as were used, at great cost, to overthrow the government of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in a war the likes of which Mr. Trump has vowed not to emulate.
Why We Wrote This
The U.S.-Israel air war that has targeted Iran’s leadership has not been a regime change operation a la Iraq. Rather, President Donald Trump is calling on the Iranian people to rise up and finish the job. It is not at all clear they have the tools to do so.
In this campaign, President Trump has signaled that he expects the Iranian people to rise up and play that on-the-ground role.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed during the initial rounds of strikes against Tehran. But even with his removal, as well as the killing of other key military leaders, the operation has not yet been of the scale and scope required for actual regime change, many regional and national security analysts say.
Nor, some of them add, is the operation so far likely enough to convince Iranians to heed Mr. Trump’s call to arms and seize what the president warned could be their “last chance” to take their country back from a murderous and despised regime.
“This is not yet the ‘Go Big’ beyond a decapitation of Iran’s senior leadership and a defanging of its offensive military capabilities that would be necessary for real regime change,” says Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.
“So far, they are going after the things the regime holds dear, in particular the ballistic missiles,” Mr. Taleblu adds, as well as senior leadership. The United States and Israel claimed by early Sunday to have eliminated about 40 of the regime’s senior leaders, including the defense minister and the chief of staff of the armed forces.
“But the million-dollar question now is whether they will keep going and drill down in the security forces to the mid-level officers and leadership who would not resist the incentive to either run or defect.”
Iran’s leadership structure
As attention-grabbing as the death of Mr. Khamenei might be, the Iranian regime long ago decentralized its leadership beyond one man, Mr. Taleblu says.
He compares Iran’s leadership structure with a series of “pillars” rather than a “pyramid,” with the supreme leader reigning from the apex. Additionally, he says, all the pillars – down to local security forces – will need to be seriously fractured, if not toppled, to persuade Iranians to once again take to the streets.
Social media posts showed large crowds in Tehran celebrating and dancing in response to Mr. Khamenei’s death, while pro-government demonstrations and throngs of mourners were also reported.
Senior U.S. and Israeli officials have indicated that the air campaign in Iran will last for at least a week. That would be shorter than the 12-day operation that Israel, joined by the United States, carried out last June against Iran’s nuclear program infrastructure and air defenses. Noting that the stated objectives this time are much more ambitious, most analysts say it appears unlikely the end goal – whether indeed full regime change or a lesser weakening – could be achieved in less than multiple weeks or even months.
“This is going to go on for weeks at least if this is regime change, which is what President Trump seems to be seeking,” says Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute (MEI) in Washington. The question now, he says, is, “Will President Trump have the willingness to invest in this for a long time?”
Staff Sgt. Michael Ito/U.S. Army/AP
Mr. Vatanka says the answer to that question remains “a big if” for the Iranian people, who he says so far “largely see this as a fight between the U.S. and Israel and the Iranian regime.” And if the war appears to remain primarily between governments, and not reaching down to the people, he adds, “That’s not going to cut it with the Iranian people. They want much more.”
In a statement on Saturday, Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, said CENTCOM’s mission is to “dismantle” the Iranian security apparatus of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Under the Islamic Republic’s system, the IRGC is responsible for both internal and external security apparatuses and operations.
“How far down?”
To be successful, the military operation will have to go beyond just the IRGC leadership. A critical question will be, “How far down is the taking out [of personnel]?” says Kevin Donegan, a retired vice admiral who served as commander of the 32-nation Combined Maritime Forces in the Middle East and is now a distinguished military fellow at MEI. “That’s going to take time.”
But the longer the operation drags on, the more perilous it becomes for Mr. Trump, some analysts say. Congressional opponents are gearing up for steps this week challenging what they spent the weekend decrying as the president’s dangerous and unnecessary “war of choice.”
The first manifestation of what could be intensifying international opposition to the war came at the U.N. Security Council on Saturday. The session was called shortly after Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the “military escalation in the Middle East” and said the use of force against Iran and its retaliation across the region “undermine peace and security.”
Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters
China and Russia condemned the attacks as aggression against a sovereign state and a violation of international law.
And then there will be the oil factor. Knowing the international economy’s and indeed Mr. Trump’s sensitivity to the issue, Iran wasted no time in declaring that the strategic Strait of Hormuz off its coast was closed to international shipping. With some 20 percent of global oil supplies passing through the strait, the impact on oil prices and international stock markets is likely to be seen as soon as Monday, analysts predict.
Looking beyond Iran, some international analysts say the world will have to come to terms with an American president who, despite entering his second term as a self-proclaimed peacemaker, shows little restraint toward the use of force, especially when he deems the adversary to be weak and vulnerable and offering the opportunity for a quick win.
In a second term that is just over a year old, Mr. Trump has already resorted to military force eight times in seven countries: Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Iran, now twice.
Contrast with Iraq
Mr. Trump’s statement on Saturday announcing the start of the conflict had echoes of President George W. Bush on the eve of the 2003 Iraq war to depose Saddam.
The twist this time is that Mr. Trump is calling on the Iranian people to take advantage of the U.S. airstrikes to rise up and usher in a different government themselves.
“Now, you have a president who is giving you what you want, so let’s see how you respond,” Mr. Trump said in his recorded video.
Many analysts say that the challenge fails to capture the dangerous moment the Iranian people now confront and suggests, likely errantly, that they have the tools to determine their fate on their own.
President Bush told the Iraqi people the United States was coming to deliver them from their despot and to pave the way to democracy. He did not say: We will take out your leadership – and the rest will be up to you.
In a commentary on Saturday for Britain’s Daily Telegraph, John Bolton, a national security adviser to Mr. Trump during his first term and a longtime proponent of regime change in Iran, called the president’s comments “troubling” and lacking the “close coordination necessary to oust the regime.”
