How to Raise the Odds of Regime Change in Iran

The decision U.S. President Donald Trump made to attack Iran was a high-stakes gamble. The gamble is not really in the military campaign itself, which is unfolding in jaw-droppingly competent fashion. The two most capable, battle-tested air forces in the world, those of Israel and the United States, are working seamlessly together to hammer a variety of targets in Iran with remarkably few unintended civilian casualties or other gaffes. When the campaign ends, whether in a week or in a month, it seems highly likely that Iran will have been stripped of much of what was left of its nuclear program, most of its ballistic missile capabilities, its ability to project power by air or sea, and key elements of its infrastructure of repression. It’s an outcome that will be a considerable benefit to the United States, the Middle East, and most of the world.

The gamble, instead, is whether a massive air campaign can trigger a popular rebellion that takes down the regime in Tehran. This could pay off brilliantly, but it could also fail miserably. The accomplishments of the military campaign do not necessarily translate to regime change. Even if the Iranian people seize this opportunity to revolt, there is no guarantee they can overturn the government. And if the United States fails, it will leave an angrier and more aggressive version of the theocratic regime in place, one likely seeking revenge and nuclear weapons.

There are, however, steps the United States can take to make it more likely that this time, revolt turns to revolution. It can offer direct air support for Iranians who take to the streets, striking regime forces that try to stop them. And it can degrade the regime’s morale and its foot soldiers’ willingness to fight and die by helping the Lebanese government eliminate Hezbollah, the Islamic Republic’s most important ally. Regime change will always be a risky bet. But if Washington plays its cards right, it can increase the odds of winning it all.

REGIME CHANGE BY AIR

Countries have been trying to overthrow foreign governments largely or entirely using airpower since World War II, with little to show for the effort. It has so far proved impossible to take out a regime without deploying some kind of ground force.

That said, advances in technology have diminished the strength of the ground component needed and raised the probability that an air campaign alone could work. Earlier regime changes, such as the dismantling of Germany’s Nazi regime and Japan’s monarchy by the end of World War II or the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003, required massive armies, typically backed by airpower (and navies). But even in 2001, the United States overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan with a punishing air assault and a ground component composed of only a few hundred American Special Forces personnel and CIA paramilitary officers leading a few thousand Afghan militiamen. Likewise, in Libya in 2011, NATO air forces enabled thousands of unorganized protesters (albeit including large numbers of former Libyan military personnel) to overthrow Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime.

It is a long shot that the Iranian regime will become the first to fall to an air campaign without any ground element at all. What makes this outcome conceivable, however, is that the regime is a hollow kleptocracy ruling over a mostly unhappy populace that has been trying to get rid of it for more than three decades, with each new bid at revolution drawing increased participation. It has lost its supreme leader, much of its network of allied and proxy militias, and whatever revolutionary legitimacy it once held with its people. If the Iranian people can take advantage of the regime’s pummeling, another uprising could be the one that finally takes it down.

Yet success is far from guaranteed. Reports from Iran indicate that the regime’s security forces are already deployed across the country, zealously watching for any sign of dissent, and show no sign of faltering. These forces have consistently crushed regular popular revolts. In the latest round this past December and January, the regime killed at least thousands and possibly tens of thousands of peaceful protesters in gruesome, brutal fashion. The crackdown revealed that the regime still has the will and the capacity to use massive violence to suppress dissent.

Brilliant as the U.S. and Israeli air campaign has been and promises to be, it is unlikely to strip the regime of these qualities. Israel, in particular, has been systematically striking at the command and control, garrisons, vehicle parks, and arms depots of Iran’s various armed forces and internal security services. This assault has doubtless hurt their ability to defend the regime, but it is unclear if it has eliminated the personnel—or broken the morale—of those who would be called upon to crush the uprising that the United States and Israel hope will follow the end of the air campaign. It is possible that the bombardment is undermining their enthusiasm to protect the regime. But for all anyone knows, the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij volunteer militia, and the members of other regime-protection forces are safe with their small arms, nursing their grudges against the United States, Israel, and any Iranians who would help the foreigners by turning on their own government.

AFTER THE WAR

At present, the U.S.-Israeli war plan is to destroy as many of the assets that Iran employs to attack, undermine, and intimidate American allies across the Middle East, along with great chunks of the regime’s infrastructure of domestic oppression. The idea, at least so far, has been that after U.S. and Israeli forces stand down, the Iranian people will rise up and, hopefully, overthrow their government. The word “hopefully” is the problem. The United States and Israel are not planning to provide air support to any brave Iranians who take to the streets once again. Instead, they are banking on Iranians being able to take down the regime without it, simply by capitalizing on the destruction, dislocation, and demoralization of regime forces they expect will follow the current air campaign. That might well work, but the odds are low.

The U.S.-Israeli strategy is likely to produce one of four possible end states for Iran. The most likely among them is that the regime survives. It crushes any revolt that follows the end of the air campaign. It appoints a new leadership and begins rebuilding everything that it lost. It will be an Iran without former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who, for all his monstrous behavior toward his own people and the rest of the world, took care to avoid actions that would provoke a major U.S. response. The next version of the regime, with his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, at the helm, is likely to be more reckless, aggressive, anti-American, and anti-Israeli than its predecessor. It is likely to be far more committed to developing nuclear weapons—to deter another U.S. or Israeli attack, at least, and possibly to enable Iran to attack other countries. This version of Iran could well be worse for the United States and Israel than the prior one.

If the regime were to fall, then Iran would most likely descend into civil war and chaos. This is what happened when the United States and its allies overthrew Saddam in 2003 and Qaddafi in 2011 and failed to properly secure either Iraq or Libya afterward. These and scores of other examples over the past century have shown that when a government collapses, it leaves a security vacuum. If there is no large ground force that can immediately step in to provide law and order, horrific civil strife quickly follows.

Regime change will always be a risky bet.

Because the United States is not interested in securing Iran—an operation that would require well over half a million troops, at least initially—and there does not appear to be an external or internal force that could, chaos would be hard to stave off. And civil war in Iran could be disastrous for the United States and its allies. As the world has seen with conflicts in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, civil wars do not stay contained within their borders. They spill refugees, terrorists, radicalization, economic hardship, and violence onto their neighbors, which can cause regional wars or push other countries into civil war themselves.

The next most likely scenario if the regime were to collapse is that a military dictatorship would take its place—a dictatorship not from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which would effectively be a continuation of the current regime, but one that emerges from Iran’s regular armed forces or newly powerful warlord armies or ethnic militias after a period of civil war. It is what happened in Iran after World War I, when the country slid into civil war until a man on horseback, the general commanding the Russian-backed Cossack Brigade of the old Iranian army, Reza Shah Pahlavi, crushed all of his rivals, forced various ethnic groups to bend the knee, and proclaimed himself shah.

Were another such military dictator to come to power today, he would not want to suffer the same fate as the Islamic Republic. He might therefore be brutal and unpleasant, but he probably would not be openly hostile to the United States. This might not be the ideal outcome for the Iranian people or the United States, but it would be much better than a hardened version of the current regime or all-out civil war. It is also the outcome many Arab states would probably prefer.

The least likely but not impossible scenario is that the regime falls and is quickly and peacefully replaced by a stable democracy. This is effectively what happened in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and some other former communist countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union. After popular uprisings brought down dictators in 2011, democracy also briefly prevailed in Tunisia and Egypt—before both countries succumbed to new autocracies. In none of these cases, of course, did a regime fall to an outside air campaign. And in Iran today there is no opposition organization guiding the Iranian people toward democracy, nor would the United States, with its involvement limited to an air campaign that ends before protests begin, have much influence over the final form of a new government.

AIRPOWER TO THE PEOPLE

Although the continuation of the Iranian regime or a descent into civil war remain the most likely scenarios, there are actions the United States can take to improve the odds of getting to a stable democracy, or at least a more accommodating military dictatorship. The first is to provide air support to any popular revolts that emerge. In practice, this would mean calling on the Iranian people to take to the streets against the regime and then, when they do, maintaining a sustained, heavy air campaign at least as extensive as the current one. It would require keeping air assets constantly over all of Iran’s main cities, but especially Tehran, to strike the regime’s military and internal security forces whenever they deploy to confront protesters. These aircraft could certainly include drones, but given that U.S. and Israeli air forces face no meaningful Iranian air defense threats, it could and should also include manned aircraft that can carry far more antitank and antipersonnel munitions to strike regime forces that attack protesters.

Using U.S. and Israeli air forces to directly support Iranians seeking to overthrow the regime would doubtless result in significant loss of life, including among the Iranian protesters. Many of the battles in such circumstances would take place in urban environments with protesters and security forces in close proximity, or intermingled, making it hard to discriminate or to use even small munitions without significant risk of killing those the U.S. and Israeli militaries would be seeking to protect. Indeed, there would be an argument for deploying Special Forces or covert operatives to help direct the airstrikes, but in the maelstrom of a budding revolution, it might be better to make do with reconnaissance drones. Despite these costs, this approach is still the best way to see a popular revolt triumph; without it, the odds of regime change are much longer. Moreover, U.S. support for the protesters would also give Washington greater influence with any government that succeeds the current regime, if it falls.

LIBERATING LEBANON

The second action the United States can take to increase the odds of regime change in Iran is to help eliminate the regime’s most important ally: Hezbollah. Ever since what Michael Doran has dubbed Israel’s “Operation Grim Beeper” in September 2024, in which exploding pagers and walkie-talkies killed dozens of Hezbollah fighters and severely injured hundreds, and its subsequent invasion of Lebanon in October, Hezbollah has been on the ropes. But it was not completely knocked out, and the group had recently started to claw its way back into power in Lebanon.

Now that Hezbollah has begun firing rockets at Israel again in support of Iran’s war effort, however, the Lebanese people and their government finally seem to have had enough. The government took the unprecedented step of banning Hezbollah military operations in the first week of the war. The next step is for the Lebanese military to forcibly disarm Hezbollah, and all they need to do that is some help from the United States. Lebanese leaders have already asked Washington for military and financial support to arm a small force of 15,000 to 25,000 troops and provide some demonstration of American military commitment, possibly even as little as a jet flyby, before they move against Hezbollah. The United States already has the USS Ford and its escorts positioned nearby, able to make quite a show of force by themselves.

That still might not be enough, but the United States could easily do more. Washington could offer the Lebanese military the same support the United States provided the Iraqi military, to great effect, during the war against the so-called Islamic State (also known as ISIS): American advisers, military trainers, intelligence, and artillery and air support for Lebanese military operations against Hezbollah that trigger a violent response. Lebanon is much smaller than Iraq, so U.S. commitments could be smaller, too. Hezbollah will not go down without a fight, but this level of American support should be more than enough to enable the Lebanese military to defeat and disarm them.

Eliminating Hezbollah would be a massive loss for Iran. It would be seen as a sign that the Islamic Republic’s end was nigh, potentially demoralizing its security forces and making it less likely they would be willing to kill or be killed if the Iranian people rise up against the regime. Indeed, the willingness of the Lebanese to bring down Hezbollah might help inspire Iranians to similar feats of bravery.

SHIFTING THE ODDS

There is a famous story that whenever Napoleon was presented with an officer for promotion, after the officer’s qualifications were enumerated, the emperor would ask whether the man was “lucky.” Trump has unquestionably been lucky all his life. Perhaps that luck will deliver the outcome in Iran that the United States needs—the outcome that would avert an even more dangerous Iranian threat in the years ahead.

But when you gamble, the odds are always stacked in favor of the house. In the current war, the Iranian regime is the house, and the United States is playing for regime change. Washington must do what it can to shift the odds in its favor, and that means helping the Lebanese government defang Hezbollah and providing direct air support to an Iranian popular revolt. Both would give the United States a greater chance of collapsing the house around an odious Iranian regime—and a greater say in what follows.

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