U.S. President Donald Trump during a visit to the Fort Bragg U.S. Army base in North Carolina on Feb. 13. Trump’s repeated assertion that the war in Iran will only last a few weeks gives the regime reason to hunker down and wait it out, writes Tony Keller.Nathan Howard/Getty Images
What is the Trump administration trying to achieve in Iran?
When U.S. President Donald Trump released a video in the early hours of Saturday morning, not long after the start of the joint American-Israeli attack that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, regime change was central to his message.
Mr. Trump called on Iranians to “take over your government.” He said that “for many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it.” Now, “America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force.”
On Monday, when Mr. Trump made his first public appearance since the start of the war, he laid out the goals of Operation Epic Fury.
Regime change went unmentioned.
Speaking earlier, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said that the war aims are “destroy the missile threat, destroy the navy, no nukes.” Full stop.
Mr. Hegseth insisted that “this is not a so-called regime-change war.” There would be “no stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise, no politically correct wars.”
So how does the war end?
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Give Mr. Trump this much: He has an instinct for weakness. He has attacked not because Iran is a major threat, but the opposite. The Islamic Republic is weaker than it has been in decades.
Its protective ring of armed proxies is mostly gone – Hamas was decimated by Israel, while Hezbollah was so diminished by Israeli attacks that the Lebanese government dares to call for its disarmament. The former puppet regime in Syria is history.
Israel’s ability to bomb Iran at will last year, in a campaign that Mr. Trump rushed to join so that he could claim credit, revealed a regime far less militarily capable than previously supposed.
And the massive demonstrations that rocked Iran in January revealed an unprecedented level of domestic opposition. Many Iranians, likely a significant majority, have had it with nearly half a century of corrupt, theocratic government.
On the other side of the Persian Gulf, Iran’s formerly poor and marginal neighbours have transformed into modern, high-income countries. Iranians, meanwhile, are prisoners of an Islamist North Korea.
Repressive regimes that lose their nerve and decline to massacre their citizens can collapse, as happened to the former Soviet bloc – and in the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
However, the Islamic Republic’s leaders, and its followers, have shown no reservations about killing to remain in power. They did so on a massive scale two months ago, when they gunned down thousands of protesters. Iranians want regime change; the people with guns do not.
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Unless there is an opposition within Iran that is far more organized than we have yet seen, military defeat from the air is not likely to lead to the regime’s removal.
And Mr. Trump’s repeated assertion that the war will only last a few weeks gives the regime reason to hunker down and wait it out. The war could end as did last year’s bombing campaign: with Mr. Trump declaring victory, but the ayatollahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also claiming victory, and still in control of Iran.
For Iranians hoping for something better, Mr. Trump may deliver disappointment. That was the result of his recent incursion into Venezuela, a country militarily far weaker than Iran, and with a legitimate, elected government waiting in the wings.
Mr. Trump had opportunity and motive to enable regime change. Venezuela is a repressive basket case that has led millions to flee the once-wealthy country. Many are refugees in the U.S. – and MAGA wants to deport most of them. But if conditions in Venezuela improved, many would gladly go home.
Yet after Mr. Trump decapitated the leader of the regime, capturing President Nicolás Maduro and transporting him to a court date in New York, he imposed a bizarre deal on the remainder of Mr. Maduro’s government. They remain in power and lording it over their people in return for, as Mr. Trump boasted in his recent State of the Union address, “80 million barrels of oil.”
The U.S., the world’s largest oil producer, benefits little from stealing a small amount of Venezuelan oil. In contrast, the creation of a better-governed Venezuela, one that does not abuse and impoverish its people, would be a big strategic achievement.
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Mr. Trump chose the oil. And instead of removing a dictatorship, he installed his own protection racket.
How does the Iran war end? The Trump administration may have decided that its preferred course is not regime change but, to borrow an Israeli analogy, “mowing the grass.”
That means making war without aiming for a strategic transformation, but simply as a tactical measure to degrade the opponent.
Like grass, the opponent’s military power may grow back. Like grass, you may have to mow it again in a few months or years. Mr. Trump insisted that he’d “obliterated” the Iranian nuclear program in 2025; now he is obliterating it again in 2026.
The fact that Iran is launching missiles and drones at the Gulf states – despite their desire to remain neutral – only makes things worse for Tehran. It has lengthened its long list of enemies, while further shortening its tiny list of friends.
For all that, regime change in Iran still looks unlikely. Not impossible, but far from inevitable.