Imminent US Attack Aims for Iran Regime Change

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A US attack on Iran is imminent.  But it promises to be on a far larger scale than the first, which was last June.  Then, the US focused on the country’s nuclear program and military assets.  This attack will seek to annihilate the entire clerical regime: assassinate key leadership (including Ayatollah Khamenei), destroy government infrastructure (buildings and personnel), and most importantly eliminate the Revolutionary Guards as a coherent fighting force.  Israel’s Mossad spies inside Iran will undoubtedly play a key role as well.

This campaign would have to be prolonged in order to achieve the wide-scale goal of total destruction, unlike the June assault which lasted twelve days and cost over $600-million. The new operation would last weeks, if not longer.  The cost will be in the billions.

The US seems confident in its ability to destroy Iran’s military assets and diminish its capacity for retaliation against regional targets like Israel.  It is likely relying on the dubious precedent of Iran’s restrained response to the earlier attack.

But a US effort to eliminate the Islamic Republic of Iran will elicit a far larger response. Even if our military has anticipated this and developed plans to counter it–you cannot account for every eventuality.  Even a single unforeseen vulnerability could be exploited to inflict major damage.

The post-attack plan, touted especially by Israel, appears to be installing Reza Pahlevi, the son of the previous Shah overthrown in 1979, as the new ruler.  His chief sponsors would be western powers.  Iran would cease being an independent nation and become a satellite dominated by western influence.

Despite claims that protesters in the past month have shouted pro-monarchist slogans, Pahlevi has little support among the Iranian people.  Any regime he heads would have to be imposed on the country and maintained by force.  His platform advocating western-style secular democracy is sham, which he will have to jettison almost as soon as he assumes power.

The hollow claims by Trump and virtually the entire US political class that Iranians deserve freedom, democracy, etc. this war will bring nothing but misery. The Congressional war party is happy to fight to the last Iranian. The latter already suffer under a horrific burden of inflation, drought and critical shortages, they will suffer weeks of bombardment. Even after this stage ends, there is no guarantee that the next will relieve any of the suffering.

Democrats in Congress have joined the chorus denouncing the Ayatollahs as the font of pure evil. The former have been willingly co-opted by their own rhetoric. A Party that criticized regime change in Venezuela now endorses it in Iran. The American people will not forget this, when Iran dissolves into internecine conflict and drags the rest of the Middle East with it.

In 2003, George Bush promised democracy in a post-Sadaam Iraq. He delivered chaos and civil war.  Trump doesn’t bother with such promises. He will deliver dictators and deals. And they (the people) will like it.

Even strongman leadership with a figure such as Pahlevi, will not create a coherent, fully functional state apparatus.  Elements of the old regime will maintain networks of support and mount fierce internal resistance.  Restive ethnic groups like the Kurds, Baloch, Azeri minorities, will demand wider rights and political autonomy.

The new central government will likely resist such efforts, which would weaken the coherence of the nation.  That could lead to multiple insurgencies throughout these regions, which would throw Iran into chaos, even civil war. In a country of 70-million, millions could die as a result.

Trump appears not to have learned the lesson of post-Sadaam Iraq, during which the US de-Baathified the country, eliminating its military and governing capabilities. The result was a years-long sectarian civil war in which 500,000 died. That eventually led to the rise of ISIS, which conquered wide swaths of the country. The US led campaign to eliminate  ISIS cost tens of thousands more lives.

The resulting strife from regime change likely would not be confined the Iran itself.  The rivalrous groups would each have foreign sponsors promoting their interests. This might include not only individual countries like Turkey, Syria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan–but forces within them allied to Iranian groups. That in turn could lead to destabilization of the entire region.

Though this may not be the desired outcome of the Trump administration, the same cannot be said about Israel.  In fact, it would welcome Iranian civil war, which would eliminate its chief regional rival.  As I’ve written here, Israel’s goal is to impose itself and its interests throughout the region.  Besides outright military conflicts, one of its main tools is sabotage of internal social structures and promotion of sectarian conflict.  It has done this in virtually all front-line states except those with authoritarian leaders (Egypt, Jordan) who collaborate with it.

Its did so against the Assad regime by arming the al-Qaeda affiliate there and bombing military facilities.  It continues to do so against the new regime ruled by Ahmed al-Sharaa, through its Druze allies.  As part of this policy, it invaded southern Syria and occupies all the territory from the Golan to the outskirts of Damascus.  It followed the same approach in Lebanon going as far back as the civil war beginning in 1975.  It continued throughout the past 50 years, culminating in its decimation of Hezbollah and seemingly permanent occupation of southern Lebanon.

Israel wants chaos. It wants bloodletting. It wants its rivals engaged in domestic conflict, even civil war.  A weak enemy is one less to worry about.  No doubt, Trump will care little what happens to Iran after the clerics are removed from power.  If Israel tramples the sovereignty of Middle East nations and enforces a Pax Israelica (also known as Pax Hebraica), the world will not have the will to oppose it.  Such a new regional era in which one nation imposes its will on all the others will be a recipe for long-term instability. It will retard the development of the entire region.

The world has seen hegemons come and go: Rome, Constantinople, Babylonia, Assyria, Sparta, Parthia, the US, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia.  They may last decades or even centuries.  But when they fall (and they always do) they invariably wreak enormous suffering on themselves and their subjects.

Israel may dominate the region for a generation or perhaps a century. But history is long and the life of a hegemon is short by comparison.  When Israel’s time comes, there will be no one to mourn its passing except its subjects, and no one to object to it.  This cannot be an outcome that benefits anyone, certainly not Israel.  Though unfortunately, that country is enthralled by its own power and has an advanced case of Judeo-triumphalism, with few contrarians offering a skeptical viewpoint. Hubris precedes a fall.