In the years since America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of “regime change,” or military action to topple hostile foreign governments, has become politically radioactive in Washington.
Few political leaders have criticized the concept as much as President Trump, who has spent years attacking both Democrats and Republicans for supporting foreign interventions. In a typical campaign trail riff last summer, he told supporters that President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had “sent our blood and treasure to back regime change in Iraq, regime change in Libya, regime change in Syria and every other globalist disaster for half a century.”
But as Israel pounds Iran with airstrikes that it says are aimed at the country’s nuclear and missile programs, analysts say the assault increasingly threatens the survival of Iran’s government and may in effect be turning into a regime change operation.
That could leave Mr. Trump trying to avoid entanglement in the sort of conflict he has spent years portraying as the definition of insanity.
Israeli officials say their attacks are an urgent response to Iran’s advances in its nuclear program. But there are growing signs that their aims are expanding.
During an interview on Fox News on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was asked whether regime change was an explicit goal.
“It could certainly be the result, because Iran is very weak,” he said. He added that “the decision to act, to rise up, at this time, is the decision of the Iranian people.”
But Mr. Netanyahu has also appealed to Iran’s population — which has risen in protest many times in recent years, only to be brutally repressed — to do just that. “The time has come for you to unite around your flag and your historic legacy by standing up for your freedom from an evil and oppressive regime,” he said last week.
In a Monday interview with ABC News, Mr. Netanyahu also said that Israel might choose to “end the conflict” by killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“This is the name of the game,” said Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
“It’s not how successful Israel is in taking out Fordo,” the Iranian nuclear facility buried deep in a mountain. “It is now measured by how successful they can be in taking out the Iranian state.”
Mr. Nasr noted that Israel has been striking targets with no direct connection to Iran’s nuclear program, including a Monday attack on the headquarters of Iran’s state broadcasting network. “They are trying to take away the coherence of the state — not only to conduct the war, but to function,” he said.
While Mr. Trump may be limiting America’s role, for now, to the defense of Israel, a collapse of the Iranian state would create new risks — including the need to secure Iran’s nuclear material — that would greatly increase the prospects of American involvement in the conflict.
Israel’s primary goal may be the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program, said Michael Makovsky, president and chief executive of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, which has backed military action against Iran.
Mr. Makovsky added, however, based on his conversations with senior political and military officials there, that Israel has always known that such a campaign could also have broader political consequences.
“They’ve hoped that, because the regime was so weak, military action could lead to the people bringing down the regime,” he said.
Iran’s leadership may share that assessment. In April, The New York Times reported that Mr. Khamenei agreed to nuclear talks with President Trump earlier this year only after top Iranian officials warned him that failure to negotiate could lead to attacks by Israel or the United States. That, they said, could threaten the survival of their government.
Even some supporters of using force to seek a change in Iran’s government are careful to avoid the catchphrase that was used often during the Iraq War and subsequent Western interventions in the Middle East. They include the 2011 NATO air campaign in Libya that overthrew the dictator Muammar Gaddafi but triggered years of chaos and civil war.
Mr. Trump himself has tried to engineer the fall of at least one foreign government, the leftist dictatorship of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, which he choked with economic sanctions in his first term. But he never described his policy as regime change.
“I use the term ‘regime collapse,’ versus ‘change,’” Mr. Makovsky said, “because the term ‘regime change’ is toxic in Washington. Everyone thinks about 2003.”
In March of that year, President George W. Bush invaded Iraq and deposed its strongman, Saddam Hussein. The ensuing effort to install a friendly democratic government in Baghdad cost thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, and to many, discredited U.S. interventionism.
The key distinction, Mr. Makovsky said, is that a regime collapse strategy does not presume to remake Iran’s government. “My view is that we shouldn’t do that. But our objective should be to pressure the regime every way possible so that the Iranian people bring it down.”
For now, Mr. Trump has kept some distance from Israel’s war. But his supporters are divided on his approach, with some accusing Mr. Trump of betraying his principles.
On Monday, two of Mr. Trump’s most prominent supporters, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the former Trump White House aide Steve Bannon vented their frustration on a radio show hosted by Mr. Bannon.
“The point of this is regime change,” Mr. Carlson insisted, arguing that Mr. Trump was being led by Israel into what could become a “world war.” “I don’t want the United States involved in another Middle East war,” he added.
Mr. Bannon agreed, citing Mr. Netanyahu’s comments on Fox and saying, “This is a total regime change.”
“This thing has not been thought through,” he added. “It does not have the support of the American people.”
Analysts said it would be especially difficult for Mr. Trump to avoid being drawn into the aftermath of a government collapse. “The U.S. just can’t not be involved,” said Mr. Nasr, noting that, among other things, it would be essential to secure Iran’s stockpile of uranium amid any political chaos.
Some analysts fear that Iran could descend into chaos and even civil war, radiating instability throughout the Middle East. Although one U.S. official said that Mr. Khamenei had put in place a succession plan, and that in the event of his killing or overthrow Iran’s religious-military establishment would be likely to retain control — possibly with an even more extreme figure.
Even so, few in Washington would mourn the fall of a theocracy that sponsors terrorism and has spent 40 years calling for the destruction of America and Israel. And some prominent Republicans are calling for that outcome.
“I think it is very much in the interest of America to see regime change,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said on Fox News on Sunday. “I don’t think there’s any redeeming the ayatollah.”
Another Republican senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, told CBS News on Sunday he would “love for the regime to fall,” but added that “is not the purpose of this attack — yet.”
Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser under President Obama who was deeply involved in Iran policy, said that even some Democrats are wondering whether to root for Iran’s government to collapse.
Mr. Rhodes fears that initial success of Israel’s military campaign has created the illusion of a simple solution, something that reminds him of the early stages of another Middle East conflict more than 20 years ago.
“It looked great when the statue of Saddam Hussein fell” in the spring of 2003, Mr. Rhodes said.
Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state.
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