No Endgame: The Myth of Regime Change by Airstrike
Do the US and Israel really expect 88 million people — the majority of them Shia, many of them now grieving, many watching their country bombed by the same powers that overthrew Mossadegh in 1953 — to fall in line? The analysts say no. The historical record says no. The architects of the war have no answer.
← Read Part I: The Sectarian MachineDecapitation = Liberation
The operating premise of Operation Epic Fury / Roaring Lion is that the Iranian regime is so brittle, and the Iranian people so hostile to it, that killing Khamenei and degrading the IRGC will trigger an internal uprising that does the hard work of regime change without American boots on the ground. In a phone interview with CBS News, Trump claimed he “knows exactly” who is calling the shots in Tehran and that there are “good candidates” to replace the supreme leader. He did not elaborate.
Netanyahu addressed the Iranian people directly in Farsi, calling on them to “come to the streets, come out in your millions, to finish the job.” Trump told Iranians the country “will be yours to take.” The stated US objectives: eliminate Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, destroy its navy, and change its leadership. Trump said the strikes, aimed at regime change, would continue throughout the week.
Senator Tim Kaine called for a check on Trump’s power to engage in war without congressional approval, joined by Republican Senator Rand Paul, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Senator Andy Kim — invoking Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which grants Congress alone the power to declare war.
Why the Theory Fails
1. You Cannot Facilitate Regime Change Through Airstrikes Alone
This is not a fringe assessment — it comes from inside the defense establishment itself. Michael Mulroy, a former US deputy assistant secretary of defense, stated bluntly that without ground troops or a fully armed organic uprising, the state’s deep security apparatus can survive simply by maintaining cohesion. The Atlantic Council’s assessment frames it as the central unresolved question: can external military pressure realistically rely on an Iranian public that lacks cohesive leadership, particularly when facing a regime that has operated for 47 years under the disciplined control of the IRGC?
There are zero ground troops committed. There is no armed opposition force. There is no government-in-waiting with actual power. The entire strategy depends on the Iranian people doing exactly what Washington hopes, on Washington’s timeline, under Washington’s bombs.
2. The IRGC Is the Real Power — and It Survives
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps already controls major sectors of Iran’s economy, its missile forces, intelligence networks, and regional proxy militias. With the clerical hierarchy fractured and no dynastic successor available, the most likely beneficiary of sustained instability is the IRGC itself. The Guards may conclude that preserving the revolution requires sidelining the clerics entirely. What began as a theocracy could harden into an overt military dictatorship — with the same missiles, the same resentments, and potentially more reason to pursue nuclear weapons.
Authoritarian systems regenerate from their mid-levels. If that command layer survives intact — and airstrikes are notoriously bad at destroying distributed command structures — the regime reconstitutes. The head is gone; the body keeps moving.
3. Bombing People Is a Terrible Recruitment Tool for Loyalty
Iran’s surviving leadership has already pivoted from religious legitimacy to survivalist nationalism. Ali Larijani, a conservative heavyweight and key transition figure, warned that Israel’s ultimate goal is the “partition” of Iran — raising the specter of the country being broken into ethnic statelets. This framing is designed to rally secular Iranians and even the opposition against a common external enemy. It complicates the US hope for a popular uprising because it reframes the war from “us vs. our oppressors” to “us vs. foreign invaders.”
The regime declared 40 days of mourning — described by one analyst as a “funeral trap” for the opposition. For 40 days, any visible dissent can be framed as disrespect for the dead. Even Iranians who despise the regime may rally around it when foreign bombs are falling on girls’ schools.
4. The Shia World Is Activated — Not Pacified
Iran’s president explicitly framed Khamenei’s killing as “a declaration of open war on Muslims, especially Shiites, in all corners of the world.” This is not just rhetoric — it is a mobilization call to Shia populations in Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and beyond. In Karachi, at least nine protesters were killed storming the US Consulate. In parts of Iran, celebrations were heard after Khamenei’s death — but in other parts, millions mourn. The country is not monolithic, but grief and rage are not the conditions under which populations submit to foreign-designed political orders.
Even with its proxy network degraded after the fall of Assad and the weakening of Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran retains the institutional knowledge and networks — built over four decades — to foment insurgency across the region for years or decades. The IRGC’s Quds Force organized militias that bled American troops in Iraq for nearly a decade. Those networks are not gone; they are dormant.
5. There Is No Plan for “What Comes Next”
No one in the administration has publicly articulated what a post-regime Iran looks like. When asked about an acceptable “endgame,” Trump replied: “to win.” Some analysts point to Reza Pahlavi, the Shah’s son, who has done transition planning — but planning is not power. There is no certainty about who governs Tehran the day the clerical regime collapses. Iran is a mosaic of Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Baluch, and others. Five Kurdish factions formed a united front against the regime just last week. That’s not a unified democratic opposition — that’s a landscape primed for fragmentation.
The unanswered questions from the Atlantic Council’s expert panel:
Will Iran successfully inflict costs on the United States? If there are significant US casualties or impacts on global energy prices, will Trump stay committed? Absent ground troops or an armed opposition, regime change requires significant defections within Iran’s security apparatus — is there a plan for how that will come together?
What Actually Happens: Four Scenarios
The realistic range runs from bad to catastrophic. None of them involve 88 million people peacefully accepting an order designed in Washington and Jerusalem.
IRGC Military Dictatorship
The clerical hierarchy fractures but the IRGC consolidates control. The revolutionary system survives under military rather than clerical leadership. Same missiles, same proxy networks, same nuclear ambitions — but with a martyred Khamenei to rally around and no religious moderates to restrain the security apparatus. The world gets a more aggressive, more paranoid Iran with a legitimacy narrative built on resistance to foreign aggression. This is the scenario most analysts consider most likely.
Ethnic Fragmentation
The state fractures along ethnic lines. Kurdish, Azeri, Baluch, and Arab regions pursue autonomy or independence. Iran’s territorial integrity dissolves. Multiple armed factions compete for control of different regions — some with access to ballistic missiles and nuclear infrastructure. Refugee flows dwarf anything the region has seen. Neighboring states (Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, Azerbaijan) are drawn in to protect ethnic kin or prevent spillover. A multi-front civil war in a country of 88 million.
Protracted Insurgency
The regime falls or weakens but no stable replacement emerges. IRGC remnants, Shia militias, and loyalist forces wage guerrilla war against whatever successor government or occupation force exists. The Quds Force — which spent decades building militia networks in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen — turns those skills inward or activates them against US assets across the region. American forces in the Gulf become permanent targets. This bleeds for years, as Iraq did.
State Collapse by Design
This may be the actual goal. A collapsed state — fragmented, unable to project power, consumed by internal conflict — serves Israeli and US strategic interests even if it produces humanitarian catastrophe. Iran ceases to be a regional power. The “axis of resistance” dissolves. Israel’s primary threat is neutralized. The human cost is borne by Iranians and absorbed by neighboring states. This is the scenario Daniel Levy suggests Israel is actually pursuing — not smooth regime change, but permanent destabilization.
Every Time This Has Been Tried, It Has Failed
Iraq, 2003
The US overthrew Saddam Hussein on the assumption that Iraqis would welcome liberation and build a democracy. De-Baathification stripped hundreds of thousands of their livelihoods and drove many into the insurgency. The result: a sectarian civil war, the rise of ISIS, approximately 300,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, 4,500 American dead, a $2 trillion cost, and an Iraq that is now closer to Iran’s orbit than to Washington’s.
Multiple analysts are explicitly warning against repeating this. But Iran has three times the population of Iraq, more difficult terrain, a more sophisticated military, and a more deeply institutionalized security apparatus.
Libya, 2011
NATO airstrikes helped topple Gaddafi. No ground troops. No plan for what followed. Libya collapsed into a failed state with rival governments, militia rule, open-air slave markets, and a refugee crisis that destabilized North Africa and Europe. Fifteen years later, there is still no unified Libyan government.
Afghanistan, 2001–2021
Twenty years of occupation, $2.3 trillion spent, thousands of American and hundreds of thousands of Afghan lives lost. The Taliban returned to power within weeks of the US withdrawal. The assumption that military force could reshape a society’s political culture proved catastrophically wrong — even with ground troops, which the current Iran operation does not have.
Iran, 1953
The CIA overthrew Mossadegh’s democratic government and installed the Shah. The blowback took 26 years but produced the Islamic Republic — the exact regime now being bombed. The 1953 coup is the foundational grievance of modern Iranian politics. Iranians across the political spectrum understand this history intimately. They know what American “liberation” looks like because they have lived through it before.
Who Benefits from Chaos
The think tanks advocating hardest for this operation — the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Hudson Institute — are essentially arguing that the risk of chaos is preferable to the certainty of a hostile Iran. Their framing: “the survival of this regime is far more dangerous than the risks that come with its collapse. The alternative to uncertainty is continued tyranny.”
That calculus may be defensible from a narrow security perspective in Washington or Tel Aviv. It is catastrophically false for the people who live there. The humanitarian dimensions of state collapse in a country of 88 million — displacement, refugee flows, economic devastation, potential radiological hazards from degraded nuclear infrastructure — are not “risks” to be weighed in a think-tank cost-benefit analysis. They are certainties that will be absorbed by the most vulnerable: civilians, children, the displaced.
For the United States, regime change would make it the sole significant player in the region, minimizing the influence of the Russian-Chinese axis on oil and Middle East politics. For Israel, it neutralizes the threat Netanyahu has warned about for over a decade and clears the path for normalization with the remaining Sunni states. For the Gulf monarchies, it removes their primary regional competitor.
The people who bear the cost of achieving these objectives have no seat at the table where they are decided.
Sources & Further Reading
- Al Jazeera — Will Iran’s establishment collapse? aljazeera.com — Analysis: Will Iran’s establishment collapse after the killing of Khamenei?
- Al Jazeera — Israel’s war aims aljazeera.com — As bombing continues, Israel’s war aim becomes clear: regime change
- Atlantic Council — Expert Roundtable atlanticcouncil.org — Experts react: What’s next?
- Foreign Affairs — Regime Change Analysis foreignaffairs.com — What It Will Take to Change the Regime in Iran
- Johns Hopkins SAIS — Iran Expert Q&A jhu.edu — The state of the Iranian regime after protests
- Foundation for Defense of Democracies (pro-operation) fdd.org — Regime change in Iran is underway — and it won’t be easy
- Foundation for Defense of Democracies — What Comes Next fdd.org — Iran stands at a crossroads
- Hudson Institute — Regime Crumbling hudson.org — The Ayatollah’s Regime Is Crumbling
- UK House of Commons Library — Iran Briefing commonslibrary.parliament.uk — Iran: What challenges face the country in 2026?
- Wikipedia — 2026 Iran Conflict en.wikipedia.org — 2026 Iran Conflict