It’s not about regime change.
That was Pete Hegseth’s message to Iran on Sunday morning, when US defense officials convened a press conference to discuss Donald Trump’s “big league” gamble.
Hours earlier, half a dozen B-2 bombers blew up a mountain in Qom with — checks math — 360,000 pounds of explosives. The strikes “involved the highest of operational security,” Hegseth said. (I suppose that means journalists weren’t invited to any Signal chats or administration live blogs of the mission. “Currently clean on OPSEC! Can I get a fire emoji?!”)
The details of the mission, as well as Hegseth’s postgame commentary, suggest the US was intent on demoralizing Tehran just as much as destroying the regime’s nuclear sites. “Planes flew from the middle of America in Missouri, completely undetected over three of [Iran’s] most highly sensitive sites,” a sober Hegseth said. “That’ll have a clear psychological impact on how they view the future.”
I’m not sure the “undetected” bit is as important as the scope of the flex. The US dropped 12 of the bunker busters on Fordo from six B-2 bombers, and two of the 30,000 pounders on Natanz for good measure. A total of 30 cruise missiles were fired from Navy submarines. Joint Chiefs chair Dan Caine said “initial damage assessments” were indicative of “extremely severe destruction” at all three sites.
Regardless of whether Iran’s nuclear program was “totally obliterated” as Trump claimed, this was a rather emphatic strike, particularly as warnings go. Trump suggested this can be the end or the beginning of US involvement in the war, and that it’s up to Iran to decide which.
Hegseth’s claim that the US doesn’t seek regime change surely rings hollow in Tehran. After all, it was just three days ago when Israeli defense chief Israel Katz said Khamenei “cannot continue to exist.” On June 17, Trump himself suggested the US could assassinate (“kill!”, to quote directly from TruthSocial) the Ayatollah should that be deemed necessary in Washington.
Let’s face it: Regime change as a goal and a strategy isn’t taboo, only the term is. The American public associates regime change with the boondoggle that was post-Saddam Iraq (it turned into an Iranian client state and its second-largest city was controlled by a literal army of darkness for the better part of three years), the abject failure of the democracy-building project in Afghanistan (where the Taliban returned to power two decades on from 9/11, nearly to the month) and Libya (which devolved into a failed state shortly after Gaddafi was deposed, captured and murdered by delirious locals in Sirte).
Voters in America aren’t wise to much, but they’re wise to that. The public knows regime change is folly. Pentagon officials and most US politicians claim to know that too, but really they just know bad politics when they see it. Regime change is bad politics, so they don’t use the term, but make no mistake: The US military and congressional foreign policy hawks are afflicted with hubris. In the realm of modern geopolitics, the most common manifestation of hubris is US-led regime change.
Trump isn’t interested in boots on the ground in Iran. There’s no appetite for that among the voting public. In fact, I doubt even one in 10 registered US voters would express any sort of support for invading Iran under any circumstances short of an attack on the US homeland. But that doesn’t mean Trump’s not seeking regime change in Tehran. He is. He harbors an instinctual aversion to that government and he wants it gone, for bragging rights if nothing else.
For Benjamin Netanyahu, regime change in Tehran is a lifelong goal. Importantly, the elimination of the Iranian nuclear threat is perhaps the only way back for Netanyahu who, prior to October 7, 2023, was destined for ignominy. In the destruction of Hezbollah and the prospective fall of the regime in Tehran, Netanyahu has a chance not just for redemption, but for immortality. That’s the crucial context for the events of the past eight days. Netanyahu roped Trump into bombing Fordo and in doing so, took a major step towards rescuing his own legacy.
No other US president would’ve been so easily manipulated. That’s not to say Trump’s decision was a bad one. Remember: Everyone — present company included — thought assassinating Qassem Soleimani was a foolish gamble on Trump’s part. In hindsight, it was a stroke of strategic genius. All I’m saying is that Trump was played by Netanyahu the same way he was played by Recep Tayyip Erdogan in October of 2019, when Trump briefly cut America’s Kurdish allies loose in northern Syria, leaving them at Erdogan’s mercy.
On Sunday in the US, JD Vance appeared to concede, in an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, that Trump might’ve exaggerated when he claimed that Iran’s nuclear program no longer exists. “I’m not going to get into sensitive intelligence [but] I feel very confident that we’ve substantially delayed their development of a nuclear weapon,” he said. “Substantially delayed” isn’t the same as “obliterated.”
In the same interview, Vance said the US is “not at war with Iran. We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program.” “What happens next,” he went on, “is up to the Iranians.”
Nice clear article. Thanks.
Agreed.
Would you say this attack on the nuclear facilities is a bigger event than Trump killing Qasem Soleimani in 2020? Obviously there are large differences but killing Soleimani seems more important than this.
They shot missiles at a couple bases back then and that was the end of it. I could see something like that happening again. Also, where is the Ayatollah?
Killing Soleimani was a bigger deal in my view. Iran wasn’t going to nuke anybody. Look at Kim in Pyongyang: He’s a murderous psychopath who lives in a literal fantasy world, he has 50 nukes and how many of them has he ever used? By comparison to the Kim regime, Khamenei’s eminently rational. I mean, look, nobody wants to be menaced by the prospect of their arch rival newly-armed with nuclear weapons. No one’s saying Israel’s concerns were unintelligible. We all get it: It’s very annoying to wake up every, single day to Sayyids with furrowed brows talking about killing you and everybody who looks like you. And personally, I think it had gone on for too long with Nasrallah and Khamenei and I think they got not necessarily what they “deserved,” per se, but certainly what they’ve been asking for. They wanted it, and they finally got it.
But here’s the thing: They didn’t actually want it. And I think Israel knows that. When you’re a military superpower like Israel, you do have a responsibility to distinguish between blustering bullsh-tters and real threats. You can’t just fly around blowing up everybody who says they want to destroy you if they have no viable means of doing so. You kill the real threats like Soleimani (guys who’re responsible for real-world strategy and who’re actually involved in activities which, even if they don’t pose an existential threat, are nevertheless a clear and present danger) and let all that apocalyptic, nuclear carnival barking go. Because everyone knows the latter’s just bullsh-t propaganda.
As Sun Tzu says: In chaos there is also opportunity. China would definitely benefit from getting USA entangled in a quagmire in Mid-East. Russia would benefit because it would be discourage US involvement in Eastern Europe. I suspect China and Russia are encouraging IRGC in every way to retaliate on American assets instead of Israel, to provoke US so Trump would have to escalate. China and N. Korea will happily send missiles etc to help Iran provoke US so that US is less able to check and contest them in the South China Sea and Pacific Rim. Also, as central authority in Iran is weakened, is control of Iran’s oil export terminal/Kharg up for grabs ?? That export terminal is the real prize since it’s critical to maintain the cashflow from oil exports. Would it be prudent for US to also take over Kharg Island and have a US oil company manage its operation for next several years, as part of the US mission to protect Strait of Hormuz, and to keep crude oil prices from rising ?? I realize the pipelines supplying the oil into Kharg would remain under Iranian control. I think escalation and further US involvement in Iran appears inevitable.
If you’re the US, don’t you want regime change at this point? What’s the point of allowing Khameini to hang around after all of this? Is there going to be an Iranian government that officially despises the United States substantially MORE than the Islamic Republic does? There is at least a history of pro-western governments in Iran during the Pahlavi dynasty.
Does Iran fall into failed state status if the Islamic Republic comes to an end? I would guess yes, but on the risk-reward continuum, based on where we stand today, it seems worth the risk.
I don’t a good gosh darn about who runs Iran or what they do to themselves but as to regime change, I would change everyone but Powell. He’s the only thinking adult in our government and if there was a real God and he had a plan for us it would not be anything like the one before us at the present time and our regime would have been completely disappeared in its entirety four months ago. That’s my idea of a regime change. All of these turkeys gone.
From Israel’s point of view, there have always been very good reasons to make sure Iran never has nuclear weapons. Maybe Khamenei is too rational to launch nuclear-tipped ICBMs at Israel, but will his successors always be? What about not using missiles, but smuggling nuclear devices into Israeli cities, to obliterate the country with not even missile flight time warning? Or simply causing the Israeli people to live in perpetual dread and fear of its nuclear-armed self-declared mortal enemy?
There have also been very good reasons to not attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. War with Iran’s proxies, with Iran itself, and with many other Arab countries, is a heavy price when Israel lacks the weapons to definitely take out Iran’s deepest facilities and the US won’t help.
Over the past year, the calculus changed, decisively. Maybe the actual threat from Iran’s nuclear program increased and maybe it didn’t – I think it did but don’t know how much – but the reasons to not attack all went away.
Israel neutralized Iran’s proxies in Gaza and Lebanon; the Houthis are still proxying, but too far away to be a big threat. Iran’s ill-advised missile attacks on Israel last year gave Israel an excuse to destroy much of Iran’s air defenses and learn what they’d need to destroy the rest. The more aggressive Arab countries – Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan – are focused inward and have no capacity for warring, at least at the moment. The others – Saudi, Egypt, etc – have no interest in confronting Israel, amply proven by their inaction on Gaza, and would quietly like Iran to go away. Iran’s big military ally, Russia, is struggling with its Ukraine war, and couldn’t even spare a battalion for the ‘Stan conflict. Iran’s big commercial ally, China, is a regional military power but not a global one, and has never demonstrated any interest in forcefully intervening anywhere but Taiwan.
The final piece was Trump. Netanyahu figured out how to manipulate Trump, maneuver him into a corner, play to his ego and political instincts and impatience, and get the final missing piece of the puzzle.
I don’t remember much about when Trump I terminated the Iran nuclear deal, which arguably led to all this. Perhaps Israel had a part it that?
Was it morally “right” for Israel and now the US to attack Iran and its nuclear program? Will it be morally “right” to keep pushing for regime change?
Who and what are clearly morally right or wrong in the Middle East? How can anyone tell? Even the most heinous acts – Hamas slaughtering Israelis, Israel slaughtering Gazans – are just more chapters in the endless exchange of eyes for eyes, death for death, with backstories too deep to ignore and too long to understand.
Many of us are history buffs, I think. When you read history – and especially the history of wars – notice how little attention is paid on who was morally in the right or wrong. After everyone who knew and loved the dead are themselves gone, which only takes a few decades, it’s just geopolitical moves and counters.
Looks to me like the bombing is an exclamation point marking the failure of diplomacy.
In 2018 when Trump 1 abruptly ended the nuclear enrichment treaty the estimates I’m reading were that it would have lasted 10 to 15 years. Sure it wasn’t perfect, but it kept the US engaged with an organized and in control counterparty who had stretched themselves to the limits of their trust; something to be encouraged, fostered and developed, not just for Iran but for other countries who need to see the US as dealing reliably and externally providing support to internal moderating forces. Of course, a bombing campaign as backup was always an option and Netanyahu (who has been arguing publicly that Iran is 2 years or less away from having a bomb since 2012) would only be happy to oblige.
Instead, we are looking at the possibility of manufacture of nuclear weapons in as short as 2 years now (given that the remaining hundreds of scientists and lower tier military are able to keep the location of themselves and the remaining cylinders and centrifuge parts hidden better than they have the leaders). And the hope that somehow the people will rise up against the remainder of the oppressive regime, join with Netanyahu and the US, and follow the Shaw’s son into a western democratic ideology seems naive. More likely it will be fragmented, with the threat more difficult to monitor, the warfare more asymmetric, and more likely to target the US, for what?
Seems like it could also be politically great if you show military might, keep boots off the ground, and the liberal left chooses to condemn the strikes, so you can point at them and say “these guys want the terrorists to have nukes”.
After initial silence, there is already much complaining to be read in the international press at least along the lines of how dare the US bomb this innocent terrorist-funding, Russia-supporting, assassination-planning, oppressive Islamist regime’s nuclear weapons program. That line of argument seems like it should at least have a possibility of backfiring when presented to regular people.
Well, in fairness, it’s important to note that the “terror” funded by Iran is different in character from the terror funded by the Sunni powers. It wasn’t Hezbollah operatives running around Paris killing innocents and it wasn’t Iranians flying planes into skyscrapers one fine morning in September of 2001. The most effective weapon against ISIS and other, similar Sunni extremist groups in the region was Qassem Soleimani.