While U.S. President Donald Trump has not explicitly named regime change as an objective of his military operation in Iran, it’s difficult to see how he’ll persuade the American people that he won the war if a hard-line Islamic republic remains in place in Tehran.
Trump has so far been non-committal about who he wants to see in power in Iran after the war ends, but it’s been clear since the early hours of the joint U.S.-Israel military operation that toppling the regime is his preferred outcome.
“When we are finished, take over your government,” Trump said to the Iranian people in the video message he posted shortly after air strikes began. “It will be yours to take.”
By putting the responsibility for regime change onto the Iranians, Trump appears to be trying to create an environment where he can declare victory even if the ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guard remain in control once the bombing stops.
Yet Trump is also signalling that he intends to have his say on who takes control in Iran after the war is over.
“We want to be involved in the process of choosing the person who is going to lead Iran into the future,” Trump told Reuters on Thursday.
WATCH | ‘America is winning, decisively, devastatingly,’ says Pete Hegseth:
U.S. ‘winning’ Iran war ‘without mercy,’ White House claims
Striking a confident tone on the Iran war, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said ‘America is winning decisively, devastatingly and without mercy.’ Hegeth touted the sinking of an Iranian warship, and brushed off concerns that American forces were burning through munitions.
Trump and his Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have been eager to boast of how quickly the U.S. is moving toward achieving its stated military aims, which include destroying Iran’s missile capabilities and “annihilating” its navy.
Since announcing the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Saturday’s initial strikes, they’ve been far less quick to describe progress toward the goal of ending Iran’s support of what Trump called “terrorist armies” in other countries, something that likely can only happen with the Islamic regime ousted.
Is war worth ‘political price’ for Trump?
Richard Haass, a former senior official in the U.S. State Department now president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, says there are key political questions for the Trump administration that go beyond the battlefield benchmarks.
“The real question is whether the United States is prepared to pay the price of much higher oil and gas prices, casualties in the American armed forces, the political price here at home,” Haass told CBC News Network on Thursday.
“Is it worth it? That’s a big decision this administration is going to need to make very quickly,” Haass said.
Several polls published since the attacks began suggest Trump has yet to persuade a majority of Americans that the war is indeed worth it.
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Images provided by The Canadian Press, Reuters and Getty Images
One new poll of 1,215 U.S. adults conducted by the Angus Reid Institute found just 32 per cent of respondents saying they support the air strikes and 26 per cent saying they believe the military action will make the U.S. safer.
Such figures could pose a domestic political worry for Trump as he is trying to sell Americans on the war as a means of eliminating a terrorist threat.
“The United States will ensure that whoever leads the country next, Iran will not threaten America or its neighbours, Israel, anybody,” Trump said Thursday at the White House.
Nothing more difficult than regime change
Haass, the former State Department official, says it would be “a big reach” for the administration to trigger events that would “bring someone more reasonable, less ideological” to power in Iran.
“There’s nothing more ambitious or difficult in foreign policy than regime change,” he said.
Multiple reports indicate that Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu are willing to give regime change a nudge that goes beyond the bombing campaign.
WATCH | Trump’s mixed messages on why he launched war against Iran:
The unanswered question in the U.S.-Israel war on Iran: Why? | About That
Questions are being raised about why the U.S. and Israel chose this particular moment to launch an attack on Iran. Andrew Chang lays out the mixed messaging from U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration to break down possible motivations behind the move and the criticism it faces — even among MAGA Republicans.
(Images provided by The Canadian Press, Reuters and Getty Images)
The U.S. and Israel are giving financial and military support to Iranian Kurdish militants to launch an incursion from northern Iraq, The Atlantic’s Arash Azizi reported on Wednesday.
The Trump administration has talked with Iranian opposition groups and Kurdish leaders in Iraq about providing military support, while the CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran, CNN reported on Tuesday.
Alan Eyre, a former U.S. diplomat who helped negotiate the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, now with the Middle East Institute, believes that regime change is a goal for the Trump administration despite its often confusing explanations of why it launched the war and what it wants to achieve.
“I think the cleanest and most precise reason is that Israel convinced the United States to, in effect, try to collapse the Iranian regime,” Eyre told CBC’s Ian Hanomansing.
For Trump, who swept back into the White House promising not to start a war, the domestic political response to the military operation could become a key factor as midterm elections that will determine control of Congress approach in November.
Andrew Miller, a former State Department official with expertise in the Middle East, now a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for American Progress, says some Republican lawmakers are concerned that the war could escalate into putting U.S. troops on the ground in Iran.
WATCH | Why aerial bombing alone is no recipe for regime change:
Why bombing Iran is unlikely to bring about regime change
Daniel Block, senior editor at Foreign Affairs magazine, notes than an aerial bombing campaign has never brought about a successful uprising against a government, and such a result is particularly unlikely in Iran because of the fractured nature of the opposition there.
“As long as it remains an air war, the Republicans are probably going to tolerate it,” Miller told CBC News Network.
“But if there’s any introduction of U.S. [ground] forces, which increases the risks of entanglement and casualties, I think that could be a turning point.”
Many analysts say it would be impossible to oust the Iranian regime through an air war alone. Trump and Hegseth have repeatedly refused to rule out future deployments of ground troops.
Another key domestic political calculus for Trump in how long he wants to wait until declaring victory will be the effect of the war on the cost of living, steadily polling as the top concern among U.S. voters.
The average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. has shot up 27 cents in the past week to $3.25 US, the highest it’s been in nearly a year, according to AAA, the automotive and travel services firm.
Will Trump actually do “whatever it takes” to achieve his objectives, as he pledged this week, even if gas prices keep rising, ground troops become necessary and U.S. military casualties start mounting? Or will he prematurely declare the mission accomplished with the regime still in place?
Nader Hashemi, an associate professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown University in Washington, says merely installing a new supreme leader in Iran will not fundamentally change the foreign or domestic policies of the Islamic republic.
“My big fear is that when this is all over, you’re going to see a regime that’s still in power, deeply entrenched, much more brutal, and at the end of the day, the Iranian people are going to be the big losers,” Hashemi said.
