Collapse of Iranian regime could have unintended consequences for U.S. and Israel

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For Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s attacks on Iran hold the tantalizing possibility of not merely wrecking a foe’s military arsenal, but also deposing a leader who is a sworn enemy.

The Israeli Prime Minister has openly advocated for the people of Iran to seize this moment and rise up against what he calls an oppressive theocratic regime, as he dispatches waves of warplanes to bomb a list of targets that has expanded into civilian areas.

U.S. President Donald Trump is weighing whether to enter the conflict, leaving open the possibility that Iran’s ruling regime could fall. “Anything could happen,” he said Wednesday.

But as Mr. Netanyahu urged Iranians to stand up against their leadership − “Your light will defeat the darkness. I am with you. The people of Israel are with you,” he said last week − his words echoed earlier promises that weapons of war would bring new hope to the Middle East.

“I’m old enough to remember the lead-up to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the lies that were told. And I see the exact same thing happening here,” said Samira Mohyeddin, a journalist from Iran who is a fellow at the University of Toronto’s Women and Gender Studies Institute.

“I thought we were done with this.”

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It was in the final hours before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq that then-president George W. Bush promised that country’s people, “the tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.”

Now, with more than two decades of hindsight, “does anyone think that what was done in 2003 in Iraq was a good idea?” French President Emmanuel Macron asked this week. “Does anyone think that what was done in Libya last decade was a good idea? No.”

So, too, with Iran, he warned.

“The biggest mistake today is to try to change the regime in Iran through military means, because that will lead to chaos,” he said.

There is, instead, reason to think that the U.S. had a greater chance of success in Iraq than any foreign power could expect in Iran today.

“The notion of a regime change in Iran is delusional,” said Fawaz Gerges, a scholar of Middle East relations at the London School of Economics.

“There is neither a domestic alternative to the regime nor an external alternative,” he said. Unlike in Iraq or Libya, “there are no local proxies or credible exiles to take over.”

Indeed, the most likely successor to the slain leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps lies in other leadership from within the IRGC.

“The IRGC is so deeply rooted in society that it would be the one that would take power,” said Patrick Clawson, a research counsellor at The Washington Institute who specializes in Iran and nuclear proliferation.

That risks reversing the changes that brought Masoud Pezeshkian to Iran’s presidency, a moderate reformist who has promised that the regime’s morality police will no longer “bother” women about their dress. Change is visible on the streets of Tehran today, where few women continue to wear the hijab.

Even before the start of Israel’s sweeping attacks last week, Iran was already poised for new leadership. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is 86. He has made no obvious gestures to designate a successor, and his death had already been expected to reinvigorate internal disputes over whether to pursue a more − or less − aggressive nuclear program.

If Ayatollah Khamenei is gone, “the alternatives stink,” Mr. Clawson said. What’s not clear is whether they would be better or worse than current leadership, he said.

The role of Mr. Netanyahu in fomenting upheaval in his country’s bitter rival adds another considerable complication. The Israeli Prime Minister has invoked the “Woman, Life, Freedom” slogan that has for years propelled demonstrators to the streets.

But in doing so, he dealt a blow to those who had already sought change from within, Ms. Mohyeddin said.

“To have Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the biggest killers of women, life and freedom uttering those three words — that was it,” she said. “That was the nail in the coffin.”

It’s not clear how Mr. Netanyahu or Mr. Trump envision a future Iran if its current leadership is removed.

Israel has fostered relations with Reza Pahlavi, the exiled Iranian crown prince whose father was the last Shah of Iran. Mr. Pahlavi is the descendant of a family responsible for leading Iran through some of its best decades in modern history, said Alidad Mafinezam, a policy adviser at the American Iranian Council.

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But he struggles to imagine how someone with open ties to Israel could govern Iran. “Reza could be a part of the solution, in my opinion. But he can’t be that as a stooge.”

Worse, he said, Israel appears to be attacking basic elements of Iranian domestic security, with a reported strike Wednesday near the Tehran police headquarters.

“What they want is to collapse the whole state so they can begin with a clean slate for whatever is supposed to emerge,” Mr. Mafinezam said.

He recalled the Colin Powell mantra from another age, the “Pottery Barn rule” that if you break it, you fix it.

But recent history in Iraq and elsewhere has already shown that “putting it back together is going to be impossible − or very difficult,” he said, particularly if military pressure on Iran results in its fragmentation as a country.

It also risks achieving the opposite of what was intended.

Israel’s attacks have, for example, already killed some of the Iranian leaders that families hold responsible for another atrocity, the shooting down of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 in 2020.

But the deaths of those figures in Iran have brought mixed feelings, said Hamed Esmaeilion, who has led an association of victims’ families.

“I’m not upset that they are dead,” Mr. Esmaeilion said. “But I need to know the truth, and they have probably gone to the grave without telling the secrets that we wanted to know.”

So, too, the prospect of Israel or the U.S. bombing Ayatollah Khamenei from power.

“I always believed in the power of the powerless, the power of ordinary people. But when war happens, that kind of power diminishes,” said Mr. Esmaeilion. “And then power goes exactly into the hands of the warmongers − and the IRGC commanders.”