Regime Change in Iran
Trump and Netanyahu do not see eye to eye on the matter.
AP (“Trump vetoed Israeli plan to kill Iran’s supreme leader, US official tells AP“):
President Donald Trump rejected a plan presented by Israel to the U.S. to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
The Israelis informed the Trump administration in recent days that they had developed a credible plan to kill Khamenei.
After being briefed on the plan, the White House made clear to Israeli officials that Trump was opposed to the Israelis making the move, according to the official, who was not authorized to comment on the sensitive matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The Trump administration is desperate to keep Israel’s military operation aimed at decapitating Iran’s nuclear program from exploding into an even more expansive conflict and saw the plan to kill Khamenei as a move that would enflame the conflict and potentially destabilize the region.
Asked about the plan during an interview on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not directly address whether the White House rejected the plan.
“But I can tell you, I think that we do what we need to do, we’ll do what we need to do,” Netanyahu said. “And I think the United States knows what is good for the United States.”
Netanyahu spokesperson Omer Dostri later called reports about the Israeli plan to kill Khamenei “fake.”
Netanyahu in the Fox interview also said regime change “could certainly be the result” of the conflict “because the Iranian regime is very weak.”
Trump’s rejection of the proposal was first reported by Reuters.
Meanwhile, Trump on Sunday issued a stark warning to Iran not to retaliate against U.S. targets in the Middle East.
Trump in an early morning social media posting said the United States “had nothing to do with the attack on Iran” as Israel and Iran traded missile attacks for the third straight day. Iran, however, has said it would hold the U.S. — which has provided Israel with much of its deep arsenal of weaponry — responsible for its backing of Israel.
“If we are attacked in any way, shape or form by Iran, the full strength and might of the U.S. Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before,” Trump said.
Reuters is paywalled these days, so I haven’t read their original report. The AP version is thinly and vaguely sourced. But, certainly, in a normal US administration of either party we would see an attack aimed at killing Khameini as as wildly dangerous. That the Trump administration is outwardly signaling the same is reassuring.
Netanyahu’s language is cagey but not unreasonable. The longer the back-and-forth strikes between the two countries continues, the more likely it is that Khameini is either killed in one of the attacks or taken out by a military desperate to preserve the country.
Regime change has been our soft-spoken goal in Iran since the 1979 Revolution. On a bipartisan basis, there has been a remarkable faith that “Iranian moderates” would somehow do the job for us and replace a totalitarian Islamist regime with something more amenable to our interests.
The recent examples of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya should provide caution that regime change doesn’t always have the imagined happy ending. But, from an Israeli standpoint, it might well be worth the risk of ending a fanatical regime that has spent more than four decades killing Israelis through regional proxies.
Trump has no fixed position. He’s the classic ‘success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan,’ type. Trump is such a naïf he no doubt thinks Khamenei will think Trump saved his life and be grateful. But if Israel knocked off Khamenei and it seemed to go well, it would be Trump’s idea all along.
We should give the Israelis the MOP, the big ground penetrator. They don’t have a bomber that can handle it, but it’s my understanding that it can be shoved out the back of a C-130. The worst outcome is the one that leaves Iran with a functioning nuclear program. Trump tore off the fig leaf Rubio tried to give the US, so I don’t see much additional risk to the US in providing the bunker busters.
Outwardly being the key word. This is probably just the old Tudor Two-Step: in public — opposition, ambivalence, and “I know nothing about it.”
In private, support.
Trump has to try to placate MAGA’s own anti-Israel isolationists with plausible deniability.
Given the chaos and duplicitous nature of Trump and his minions, I would question whether Trump actually vetoed the regime change, or actually knew Israel was going to attack, or any other idea. Either way, Trump and his minions will spin it that chaos is a strategy and a stroke of strategic genius.
James: “But, from an Israeli standpoint, it might well be worth the risk of ending a fanatical regime that has spent more than four decades killing Israelis through regional proxies.”
Remember that Israel is not our ally and Netanyahu is not our friend.
He would probably benefit from a larger Middle Eastern war.
If America and Israel were serious about destroying Iran, they’d install El Taco as Supreme Leader somehow.
I am increasingly concerned that Israel, and the Netanyahu government specifically, are acting recklessly with this attack. While they may, in fact, be creating short-to-medium term degradation of Iran’s nuclear capacity, could they be sending a stronger signal to the Iranians that they need a nuclear weapon?
Moreover, taking at Khameini may change who is in charge, and even spark substantial internal fighting, but the notion that this will lead to a more Israel-friendly outcome is far from clear.
And in the short term, this is going to stoke Iranian nationalism, which will actually be to the regime’s benefit.
Side note: Iron Dome ends up not being a perfect forcefield.
Taking this at face value requires putting more faith in the word of an unnamed “U. S. official” than seems warranted. This sounds like Trump, as usual, wanting to have it both ways.
@Steven L. Taylor:
The limits of Iron Dome support the logic of this war. Israel can’t take a chance on a nuke or dirty bomb getting through.
Iran claims they were enriching uranium as a bluff, as a trading card, which may be true, but if so it was a dangerous bluff. Don’t threaten to make a nuke while proclaiming your openly genocidal intentions. Someone might take you seriously and blow you up.
Now Iran says it’s willing to talk to us. This is a pitiful ploy which Trump might well be dumb enough to fall for. There’s nothing to talk about. Iran must end its nuclear program completely and verifiably. Israel won’t accept anything less, nor should we or the wider world.
What sort of government in Iran do we, i.e. the US, want? The Pahlavi monarchy was allied with the US because its popular support was thin, and the Shah needed the external propping up. A Islamic Shia government is what we have now. A secular Iran might still see the US as tightly tied to Saudi Arabia and Israel and seek ties with Russia and China as a counterweight. Iran is unlikely to turn into the UK, and we should try to cultivate good relations. Our overt hostility over the last fifty years has not helped us.
I’m not automatically opposed to regime change. I’d support it in Israel.
Will Israel, led by Netanyahu be able and willing to negotiate a real nuclear agreement? The JCPOA had the most extensive monitoring provisions of any nuclear agreement ever made. However, Israel, and hence the American right, rejected it because they wanted the right to go anywhere at anytime without any notification, meaning Iran would have no meaningful sovereignty. Seems unlikely Iran or any country would agree to that except in extremis and it would provide one hell of a motivation for revenge.
As an aside, many people believe that Iran cheated on the JCPOA despite giving up 25,000 pounds of enriched uranium and giving up lots of other stuff. They believe this based upon rumors and claims by the Israelis and (mostly) right wing hacks. It should be noted that is largely the same coalition that was convinced that Iraq was hiding tons of nuclear weapons and other WMDs. We should note that they were wrong and the teams inspecting Iraq were correct.
Steve
1953 says “hi”. There’s been a consistent belief since long before then that the government of Iran (and a variety of other countries) should serve at the pleasure of the US.
Given the number of places that we have invaded or funded opposition armies in, it really is weird that we haven’t done anything more forceful with Iran since the Islamic Revolution. We’ve invaded two countries that share a border.
I assume that there is an ongoing grift of some kind.
Perhaps I’m being a bit technical, but to me, “regime change” is more than killing goverment leaders – it’s replacing the regime with a different system of government.
For example, the Wikipedia for “Regime” says: “In politics, a regime (also spelled régime) is a system of government that determines access to public office, and the extent of power held by officials.”
We did regime change in Germany, Japan, Iraq, and we tried and failed to do it in Afghanistan.
Israel has never thought that way. Their assumption is that they cannot change a regime; all they can do in a conflict is wreck it and reduce its capabilities. Despite the destruction wrought on Hamas and Hezbollah, those “regimes” haven’t changed. Hamas hasn’t changed into a secular liberal democratic organization. Neither has Hezbollah. Iran probably won’t either and Israel isn’t attempting to do that. The ability of Israel to actually make that happen doesn’t really exist, although Israel is foolishly trying with Hamas.
The best Israel can hope for is weakening the government enough to allow the conditions for the Iranian people to change the government. But as the pace and targeting of strikes pretty clearly show IMO, Israel is primarily going after Iranian capabilities. Most of the air defense is destroyed. Most of the air force is destroyed. Israel is hunting and destroying missile launchers, and the pace and number of Iranian BM attacks have been reduced as a result. Israel is destroying the command-and-control, which inevitably includes leadership figures. Authoritarian systems are typically overly hierarchical, so eliminating the upper echelons has significant effects on a force’s ability to fight.
It’s important to keep in mind that war is the use of organized violence to achieve political ends. For Israel, the political ends are to end the threat from Iran. And they are doing that, a lot more effectively than I imagined they could. Whether Iran will reconstitute and become a threat again in a decade or two is not a concern now.
Another point is that any threat to the current government or regime in Iran comes as much from its incompetence as it does from Israeli attacks. When you’ve spent decades vaunting military capabilities to your people, and how great they are, and how they will destroy the cancer of Israel, and then Israel has air dominance over your capital in 48 hours, it strikes at the credibility of the government that goes beyond the physical damage Israel can do. If the regime falls, it will not be because Israel has gone in and changed the government, it will be because the legitimacy of the government and the system has been shattered, failing in the most basic role governments have.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Just to be pedantically technical, Iron Dome only works against the short-range rockets fired by Hamas and Hezbollah, although it can be used against larger pieces of (relatively) slow-moving falling debris from ballistic missiles.
Ballistic missile interdictions are from completely different and more advanced systems. Iron Dome has to hit rockets that are moving at Mach 1-2, and the Iron Dome interceptors are moving around Mach 2.5. For ballistic missiles, the warheads and re-entry vehicles are moving at Mach 8 up to about Mach 15, depending on the system. Iron Dome is too slow and too short-range to do anything against them.
As for being a perfect forcefield, there is and has been no defensive technology in the history of warfare that has ever been a perfect forcefield. That includes missile defense. But the record is a pretty positive one in this conflict. Iran has launched the largest ballistic missile attacks in history. Without ballistic missile defense, the damage done by Iran’s missiles would be significantly larger.
It seems apparent that the people of Iran want a more liberated country and less fundamentally Muslim. The question is whether the attacks set the cause forward or backwards. Typically, an attack of this ilk would lead to a rally around the flag effect but the regime is not supported in the urban centers. More to the point, one may not support a government but hardly that support would transfer to a hostile foreign power actions. IOW, even if the government falls, rest assured that new government will remain anti-Israel and may still seek nuclear weapons as a future deterrence.
@Gustopher:
It’s a matter of geography. Iran is a very tough nut to crack, just physically. It’s a large country, substantially bigger than Alaska. It’s a very long walk from the Persian Gulf coast where we’d presumably land, to Teheran, and mountains all the way. Iran is basically invasion-proof.
@Michael Reynolds:
This was one of Iran’s key miscalculations. The most dangerous place to be is being a country with genocidal intentions that signals it wants a bomb, but doesn’t have one yet.
In a similar way, Saddam made the same mistake. As we learned after the 2003 war, Saddam’s strategy was to deny the West any proof of the existence of WMD, but still wink and allude that he had it.
and
It seems to me Iran was playing a similar dangerous dance.
@Andy:
This was actually my somewhat snarky point aimed at MAGA types who think it is more than that as well as certain Presidents who have concocted wild dreams based on a misunderstanding of what the Iron Dome is good for.
I probably should have been clearer.
@Michael Reynolds: This will accelerate Iran perhaps looking to make strategic partnerships with states that might be willing to sell them what want.
@Raoul: How do we know what the people of Iran want? I am not disagreeing but wonder about the evidence. Many reports in various media are not purely objective.
@Andy:
I had not made that connection, but you’re right, it’s the Saddam move.
It goes to a real lack of understanding of the power dynamics. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. . .
And thus Trump acknowledges that yes, he did approve of the Israeli plans.
One of those things that, if true, and even if known “off the recored”, it’s perhaps unwise to affirm in public.
@Slugger:
In a way they are a bit like us. Generally the urbanites want a more liberal state, but the conservative regime draws it’s power from the country folk. They do have elections and this has been cited as why it is difficult (but not impossible) for the more liberal candidates to win the Presidency.
I’m not optimistic about killing the Supreme Leader would result in a more friendly Iran. IMO the Iranians are too proud a people to get behind a foreign power killing one of themselves whoever that might be.
A historical side note:
The UK quite rapidly developed radar-controlled AA gun laying batteries and radar directed fighter interception of V-1 “cruise missiles” in 1944.
Operation DIVER.
(Radar by that point having advanced considerably from that available for CHAIN HOME in the Battle of Britain)
It was far from 100%, but enough to blunt the the V-1 threat to SE England.
There was, of course, no defence against the V-2.
@Steven L. Taylor:
“In the battle between warhead and armor, warhead always wins.” Tom Clancy.
@Andy:
@Michael Reynolds:
As I’ve said before, the default in many ME “radical” regimes and movements for “performative defiance” is a recurring source of calamity for the countries concerned and the region in general.
See also Egypt under Nasser.
One major reason for the political weakness of the JCPOA was that Iran refused to curb its ambitions of political and military active expansion of power in the region.
Either as a leader of “rejectionism” or increasingly as a sponsor of Shia-aligned particualrism, and a Russian alliance.
And was inclined to periodic, and not particularly subtle, threats that if it was confronted on that, then nukes remained an option.
Termination of JCPOA by Trump was an error; but it was a flawed basis for a genuine end to the problem, so long as Iran itself refused to renouce its basic “Death to…” policies and projects.
The end of JCPOA had causes in Tehran, as well as in Washington and Jerusalem
@Kathy:
“Except when it doesn’t”. Me.
@JohnSF:
That’s a succinct description.
@Michael Reynolds: The geography just means that we would want to offload the work to the locals — we’ve found or created western-leaning right-wing paramilitary movements in a lot of countries to try to destabilize their governments. Including right next door when we’re were shoveling money and weapons to the Mujahideen.
I hope some enterprising Iranians are on the US payroll, doing nothing, and filing status reports about “organizing” and “reconnaissance” around the fanciest hotels with the nicest pools, milking the sunk-cost fallacy for all it’s worth by promising results in the near future, for years on end.
@Slugger: First place is elections, the more liberal party has been prevailing a majority of recent elections, mind you, by elections controlled by the regime. Also, culture, the culture in the country as seen in movies, exhibits, etc., is manifestly more diverse and open minded than the regime would prefer. More, the protest marches have had a very significant turnout until they were quashed by the regime. Let me put it this way, how come the IDF (Israel) seems to have no problem finding opponents of the regime in their covert operations. The history of the nation shows a rather modern outlook where for example, women have lead independent lives, a phenomenon one would not find in any Sunni Arab country. Now Iran is a big country with many ethnicities and a real rural/urban divide, not unlike the U.S., but worse, and the distrust to this country, the U.S., is real because of things we have done, but I find improbable that the theocracy represents the will of the people.
@JohnSF: It’s plausible they were only interested in nukes for self-defense. If they had had them Saddam wouldn’t have invaded, for instance. They lost a hell of a lot of people in that war. The claim of genicidal intentions is, AFAIK, based on just a few comments some decades ago, and the translations of those comments are subject to some controversy. Is it perhaps just something that has become a “political truth” by repetition?
I would say events have rendered the question moot though.
@JohnSF:
Like all sayings about “always,” it means “most of the time.”
Outside natural law, of course.
On Truth Social, Trump told Tehran to evacuate.
Putting on my analyst hat again, I’d say the chances of the US entering this conflict in the next 48 hours are high.
@Andy: Great.
@dazedandconfused:
Self-defence can include acting as a shield to protect a policy of general active confrontation and expansion of power by conventional means and support of militant non-state actors and factions, and cultivating embattled despotisms as allies.
Given the degree of both hostility and ambition suggested by these actions, and the tendency to millenarianism among some regime connected theologians and religio-political though among the Pasdarani, there’s also the possibility that nuclear weapons might be seen as for use, not just display, by at least some Iranian government leadership elements.
How much likelihood would there be of a an invasion of Iran by anyone since they fought off Iraq? And especially since Iran now dominates Iraqi politics?
Who exactly?
Israel? The Saudis? Bahrain maybe? Azerbaijan? Afghanistan? Pakistan?
The US? Seriously?
The entire Iranian nuclear programme, and the regional power-projection it’s obviously intended to shield and enable, has made Iran far more vulnerable.
Without those, Iran would be in no serious danger of war at all.
And the pursuit of those policies has been, since 1979, a choice.
A choice made in Iran.