Iranians walk past a billboard showing Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran, Jan. 27.ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images
For the first time in many years, the United States has conducted a military action with the almost exclusive goal of regime change – something long desired by many in Iran and by the governments of neighbouring countries.
But deep and unresolved disagreements among those parties on the purpose, means and ideal outcome of that change are likely to dash any hope that aerial bombardment or the assassination of Iran’s senior leaders will serve as a magic bullet to bring about meaningful positive change.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both opened their official statements on the morning of Feb. 28 with their desire for Iranians to use the attacks to rise against the Islamic regime. Secondary goals such as a reduction of potential nuclear capability were described as conditional on this ill-defined revolutionary outcome.
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The attacks do follow months of Iranian anti-regime protests and acts of public resistance. Jubilant dissidents in Tehran told me on Saturday that they were defying the danger of missile attacks to head into their cities to celebrate the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an event they have desired all their lives. There is no shortage of appetite for change, of some form or another, and we shouldn’t downplay the extent to which many Iranians are willing to endure deadly attacks from Washington and Tel Aviv if it deposes such hated leaders.
On top of this, the pattern of missile craters that pocked the Persian Gulf and Mideast on Saturday painted a map of the theocratic regime’s variety of enmities and rivalries across the region. The United States and Israel are joined by many regional governments, including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and possibly Saudi Arabia, in desiring a swift end to the rule of the Ayatollahs, replaced by some form of Iranian regime they view as less of a threat, less of a competitor, or simply less powerful and influential in the region.
But that complex range of motives points to the strategic difficulty in an Iranian regime-change war: Iran, almost uniquely, has neither a single unified governing regime nor a single set of motives and aspirations among those seeking its ouster.
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Different parties to this war want different outcomes from Iran. Some want it weaker, some want it to have exactly the same regime but with more pliable leaders and others want it variously to be a democracy, a monarchy, a non-military dictatorship, a different kind of religious state, a technocratic military power or a fragmented failed state perpetually at war with itself rather than its neighbours.
Anyone seeking to bring about a change in Iran through external action has to wrestle with a threefold problem of fragmentation: Neither the Iranian state, nor its people, nor the Iranian neighbourhood is a single entity with consistent leadership, contact points or aspirations. All are multifaceted and divided against themselves. If the most reviled leaders of Iran’s governing and military institutions are gone, the question as to what will replace them will have a hundred answers, with no consensus as to who might provide them.
“The Iranian regime” is not unified and co-ordinated in the way other countries are. It’s not like Venezuela or Iraq, where by ousting the man whose photos adorn the walls, foreign powers might at least hope to cause the entire government to change its nature and allegiances.
People walk past an anti-US billboard installed on a building along in a street in Tehran, Feb. 26.-/AFP/Getty Images
Rather than a hierarchy answerable to the Supreme Leader, the Iranian state today is a number of power centres vying and sometimes competing for control of the state. Toppling Ayatollah Khamenei would still keep the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which for years has been more powerful than the Ayatollahs, in control of the country’s greatest wealth sources, its foreign interests and much of its military power. Even if the IRGC decided to side with the people or with some new head of state such as the late Shah’s son Reza Pahlavi, it’s not at all clear that the military or the judiciary – themselves almost separate governments and possessing vast resources – would follow.
Likewise, the Supreme National Security Council – which controls Iran’s nuclear programs, much of its military and intelligence agencies, and is thought to have more pro-Western leadership – might conceivably side with a new leadership or with a mass popular uprising, but would not necessarily have the IRGC or the full hierarchy of the army join it. The country’s powerful judiciary and its elected parliamentary government similarly have their own leadership and loyalties almost totally separate from those other branches.
In the event of a truly revolutionary moment of change, several of those branches could side with the people, but it would only take one of them going its own way or remaining loyal to the clerics in order to turn a transformation into a terrible and long-lasting civil war.
Iranians, who Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu said they’re counting on to do the hard work of actually changing the regime, are just as divided. In December and January, what had been two years of largely unified mass protests became angrily divided between monarchists backing Mr. Pahlavi and republicans who remembered the brutality of his father’s regime and sought a democratic transition. And the Pahlavi backers are divided between those who see him as a transitory constitutional monarch and those who genuinely want a king.
The Islamic regime’s enemies and rivals in the region each have their own desired outcomes, and degrees of motivation to influence those outcomes.
Israel, Jordan, Bahrain and some other Mideast capitals mainly want the IRGC’s influence to end, especially its support for Hezbollah, Hamas and other disruptive theocratic movements in the region. Saudi Arabia is concerned about Iran’s long-range missile capabilities and its support for the Houthi militia in Yemen. It is likely seeking a weakened but stable and prosperous Iran rather than a chaotic collapse that might empower non-state actors or cause a refugee flood.
The United Arab Emirates and Qatar want an Iran that can serve as a strong economic partner that doesn’t spread extremism and refugees across the region or deter tourists. They probably also prefer a monarchy or some other friendly dictatorship.
It is quite possible that some of those actors, or Mr. Trump, might happily back a resurrected version of the former Islamic Regime if it were led by a more pliable and pro-Western figure such as Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council. But many Iranian activists would view that as a betrayal, leading to a much larger uprising.
So, even if this has been a successful “decapitation” war in which top leaders are killed and the people persuaded to rise up, that outcome does not have any clear path to a regime change that will fulfill the aspirations of most Iranians, of most countries seeking change or win the support of all branches of the regime. Because Iran is such a complex target, there are no magic bullets.