“Regime change by jazz improvisation.” That is how the respected scholar of Iran Karim Sadjadpour described the Trump administration’s strategy in the war it has initiated with Iran. Sadly, it is the most accurate description of the scattered, shifting and uncertain approach that emanates from Washington these days.
The president launched this war exhorting the Iranian people to overthrow their government. Perhaps he had assumed that the regime would collapse instantly. But when it didn’t, in a day or two, he changed course. He began musing about dealing with potential leaders within the regime and praising the U.S. intervention in Venezuela as the model to be followed (“perfect”) precisely because, far from regime change, it only involved the arrest of two people. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth specifically denied that this was a “regime change war,” as did his senior aide, Elbridge Colby. Both said the goal was merely to degrade Iran’s military forces (many of which had been “obliterated” last June in a 12-day bombing attack that included the use of stealth bombers). But then, in a new twist, President Donald Trump reached out to Kurdish leaders in Iran and Iraq, promising them support if they would join in the fight — not to degrade Iran’s military power, but to help topple the government in Tehran and maybe even change Iran’s borders. Trump has now proclaimed there won’t be a deal without “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” from Iran.
So the goal isn’t regime change — except when it is.
The most dangerous element of this war, however, is not that the lead actor is improvising like a saxophone player. It is that the two countries waging the war have separate and perhaps incompatible agendas. For Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the war is clearly about destroying the Islamic Republic. He acknowledged that this war was the culmination of a 40-year-old dream. He is also using the opportunity to take out Hezbollah, root and branch.
Israel’s military strategy has been focused, brilliantly implemented and aligned with its goal. The Israeli strikes are decapitating Iran’s leadership, destroying its military forces, striking its leadership compounds, even hitting police facilities. It is, as the Wall Street Journal reported, methodically destroying Iran’s repressive state — leaving the regime ripe for a collapse. And on the current trajectory, Israel might well succeed in its objective. That will likely result in a power vacuum in the country, which could invite revolt but will almost certainly result in a civil war. Keep in mind that, whoever may seek power, this regime will fight back. The appropriate analogy here is Syria, a country that was mired in civil war for more than a decade, with hundreds of thousands dead and millions of refugees.
Iran is a country that could easily explode, as Tom Friedman has written. It is filled with ethnic groups — Kurds, Armenians, Azerbaijanis — with ties to neighboring countries. They have lived peaceably together, but as history demonstrates — from the Balkans to Iraq — when order collapses and a power vacuum develops, people retreat to their tribal groups and lose trust in others. And that’s how a civil war begins. What would fuel this war is the fact that Iran’s government has a vast cadre of dedicated soldiers, armed to the teeth, who will fight against any new government or group. Its Revolutionary Guard is estimated to be almost 200,000 strong, with an additional paramilitary force, the Basij, of several hundred thousand. And then there are the regular armed forces, which number around 400,000. Just as Saddam Hussein’s army melted away after the American invasion and much of it reappeared as an insurgency, so too one could imagine the Revolutionary Guard fighting in different garb to deny any new government the ability to control the country. In Libya, more than 14 years after Gaddafi fell, there is still no one group that controls the entire country. It is much easier to destroy a state than to rebuild one.
For Israel, this is likely an acceptable outcome. It rids the country of its greatest foe, and if that produces chaos in Iran (and Lebanon), so be it. The Syrian civil war actually improved Israel’s security because it did not face a major Arab state dedicated to fighting it anymore. But an Iranian civil war is not in America’s interest, and it is not in the interests of America’s closest Arab allies, who depend on the region being stable and predictable so that oil, goods, money and people can flow freely and easily through it.
Washington needs to find a way to ensure that it secures the gains it has made in this war — a disarmed and defanged Iran — without pushing the country into civil war.
There are still ways to bolster the achievements and close out this war. As usual, Qatar could play a useful role as an intermediary. But time is running out. At some point, this war will reach a tipping point and no one will be able to control the spillover.
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