In Iran, Trump toys with regime-change fantasies
Seven months after Israel’s surprise strikes on Iran’s military and nuclear sites, the country has returned to the world’s attention. This time, the rupture is from within. Anger over rampant inflation, punishing food prices, and a rapidly plummeting rial has spilled onto the streets of Tehran and cities across the length and breadth of the Islamic Republic, morphing into a wider revolt against a clerical order that has held Iran in its grip for nearly five decades.
But Iran has been here before—or somewhere close to it. Since toppling Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in January 1979, the Islamic Republic has endured war, sanctions, and repeated waves of chaos, emerging bruised but intact. Yet under the weight of intensifying US-led sanctions and with protests rolling from Tehran to Isfahan and beyond, the sense is of a system under siege—squeezed between a collapsing economy, a population increasingly unwilling to bear the cost, and external adversaries, mainly Israel and the United States, poised to exploit the situation.
Authorities in Tehran, in their typical fashion, initially dismissed the unrest as routine ‘riots.’ But what began as localized protests over economic hardship soon spread, transforming into a national movement. Chants against rising prices and a collapsing economy gave way to cries of “death to the dictatorship,” targeting a regime that has ruled with an iron fist.
The anger is rooted in more than daily hardship. Iran’s economy has repeatedly failed its citizens, and the regime’s interventions abroad, backing militias to challenge Israeli interests have compounded the sense of domestic injustice. When protests erupted over a tanking economy and a crumbling rial — the currency lost 10.5% of its value against the dollar, and 44.7% over the past year — the regime faced a serious dilemma. With few options left, its leaders authorized a forceful crackdown. But the attempt to suppress dissent backfired, intensifying unrest rather than quelling it. Observers reported that the movement was quelled only after thousands were killed and an internet blackout imposed, marking the largest upheaval in decades.
For the clerical regime, the troubles were far from over. As Iran convulsed internally, US President Donald Trump, emboldened by his administration’s recent actions against Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, openly threatened military action against Tehran, leaving little doubt that regime change was on the table. Aboard Air Force One, he told reporters that the US military was considering “very strong options.” He also claimed Iranian officials had reached out to negotiate, but cautioned that Washington might have to act before any meeting could take place.
This is far from the first time Americans have flirted with the idea of reshaping Iran’s leadership. Washington’s appetite for installing or toppling governments is a thread running through modern history. In 1953, the US and Britain orchestrated the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, after he sought to nationalize the country’s oil industry, restoring the Shah to power and sowing the seeds of the revolution that followed. From the coup in Chile in 1973, which replaced Salvador Allende with Augusto Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship, to countless other interventions across the globe, the US has repeatedly shown a preference for pliant rulers over popular ones, a history of hubris and meddling that continues to haunt the world in many ways.
Today, even as protests have rattled Tehran, experts warn that any attempt to replace the regime through external force would be a dangerous folly that Washington should be wary of repeating. The folly of such ambitions is clear to Richard Haas, who recently argued in the Financial Times that attempts to force regime change almost never go as planned.
Haas, a former diplomat, explains that regime change generally follows one of two paths. It either comes through outright defeat and occupation, as happened in Japan and Germany after World War II, in Afghanistan after 2001, and Iraq in 2003, when a victorious power imposes a new political system. Or it comes through internal collapse, often driven by economic decline, repression, and political stagnation, as in Iran in 1979 or the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
According to Haas, what is happening in Iran fits neither scenario. While the country has suffered serious setbacks, including pressure from the US and Israel, it has neither been defeated nor is it close to occupation.
Despite high inflation, a struggling economy, water shortages, and growing disconnect between the ruling establishment and society, Haas argues that the regime retains critical levers of power – oil exports continue, security forces remain capable and loyal, and the opposition remains fragmented. He notes that the Iranian government may be closer to collapse than at any point since the clerics took over, yet it is still far from falling. The brutal suppression of the protests that began in late December is thus consistent with a regime intent on survival, rather than a signal that its demise is imminent.
On the other hand, analysts argue that Israel has been quietly maneuvering to steer the US and Iran toward a military confrontation—one it could not have undertaken alone during the 12-day June 2025 conflict. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, has long sought to amplify the dangers posed by Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons.
University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer explains why Israel’s leadership might favor such a confrontation. “Israel is pushing the US toward war with Iran to divert global attention, allowing them to continue the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” Mearsheimer cautions, referencing Israel’s actions in 1948 and the Six-Day War of 1967. “The idea is that during a general conflagration, the US and the world will be focused on Iran, while Israel can continue its operations (in Gaza) with less scrutiny.”
This observation also lends some credibility to claims made by the regime in Tehran. Iranian clerics, military leaders, and security officials have blamed Mossad for instigating—or what they describe as triggering—the recent bloodshed during protests that rocked the Islamic Republic. According to Tehran, Israeli operatives orchestrated influence campaigns across social media, prompting the regime to cut off the internet and clamp down more harshly on demonstrators.
Douglas Abbott Macgregor, a retired colonel in the US Army and former government official, was blunt about external involvement in what unfolded on the streets of Iran. “CIA, Mossad, and MI6 were all involved in what we saw in Iran,” he told Judge Napolitano, a retired jurist and host of the JudgingFreedom podcast.
“Unfortunately, much of the Western media presents a combination of wishful thinking and deliberate fabrication, claiming that the Iranian public is ready to replace the regime with one that reflects our way of thinking and would create peace in the Middle East. It is nonsense and does not withstand serious scrutiny. The vast majority of Iran is united behind the government, even if not in agreement with all its policies. I am afraid the National Endowment for Democracy, Washington’s NGO arm for regime change, has been working hard toward this goal, though Chinese and Russian support has helped Iran resist these efforts,” Macgregor pointed out.
Every effort, it seemed, was being made from Washington to nurture the possibility of regime change in Tehran. Elon Musk—who has never offered Starlink to the people of Gaza, or to nations across the global south where protests erupted—was quick to make it available to Iranian protestors as the government cut off all internet access.
Mearsheimer lays bare what is really happening. This is not some spontaneous grassroots uprising. “What we are seeing in Iran is the US and Israel deliberately stirring chaos to engineer regime change,” he explains. Western audiences, the University of Chicago international relations theorist notes, were fed a familiar story – the Iranian regime mismanages the country, the people rise up, and the government is on the verge of collapse. That story, Mearsheimer says, is pure fiction.
The reality, he argues, follows a cold, calculated playbook. First, crippling sanctions are imposed to wreck the economy, inflicting real suffering on ordinary people. That economic pain is then turned into political unrest—protests are fomented, supported from the outside, amplified by intelligence services, and tools like Starlink are deployed when the regime shuts down the internet. Step three is an orchestrated media campaign: portray the unrest as organic, democratic, unstoppable, while sending internal signals to the population that the regime is finished. “Only then, if the first three steps bring the regime to the brink, comes step four—direct military force to deliver the coup de grâce,” Mearsheimer adds.
The University of Chicago academic warns that this episode is about far more than simply replacing Iran’s leaders. The objective, he says, is to weaken the country itself, fragment it, and neutralize it as a strategic threat—a strategy reminiscent of Syria, and echoed in other USIsraeli interventions. So far, the plan has failed. Protests have fizzled, the regime has crushed the unrest, and even Israeli commentators concede that Tehran survived.
But the danger now is acute. Policymakers in Washington—having assumed the regime would crumble—may be tempted to escalate anyway, turning to military force to “rescue” a failing operation. Iran has made it clear that any such move would trigger direct retaliation against US and Israeli targets, at a moment when American influence in the region is weaker than ever. As Mearsheimer concludes, this is the US-Israeli regime-change playbook in action designed not to spread democracy, but to consolidate power. “And right now, it is failing spectacularly.”
A military misadventure
After boldly promising on Truth Social that “help was on its way” for the Iranian people in the wake of the regime’s brutal crackdown, US President Donald Trump has, at least for now, dialed back the rhetoric of military intervention. For the past two weeks, the world held its breath, waiting to see whether Trump would strike Iran. Some experts now say that question has been answered — for the moment. Others caution that the threat has not disappeared. From Venezuela to Iran, this administration has a long history of striking abroad when the broader impression was that diplomacy might still succeed.
Dan Sabbagh, defence and security editor at The Guardian, observes that while Trump is unafraid to talk about military force, and the White House insists “all options remain on the table,”the truth is undeniable: the president has few, if any, options that could genuinely aid the protest movement. History, he points, is unforgiving in this regard. American intervention in the Middle East, he cautions, rarely produces the outcomes Washington promises — and the costs are almost always higher than advertised.
Emboldened by past highprofile operations, including the months-long chase for Nicolás Maduro, the US president has publicly flirted with the idea of strikes against Tehran. But in reality, no significant military positioning has taken place. In recent months, US forces have been drawn down. There have been no aircraft carriers in the Middle East since October, following two years of near-constant deployment after the Hamas attack on Israel. Any strike, security analysts note, would require reliance on regional bases — if those nations agree or risky long-range operations, like a B‑2 strike on the Fordow nuclear site, with consequences that could be catastrophic.
In this article, Sabbagh argues that Washington would need permission from Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, the UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, or even the UK’s base in Cyprus — and would then be responsible for protecting those hosts from Iranian retaliation. Tehran, he notes, has already warned that any attack on its soil or assets will be met with swift retribution. Meanwhile, its military, though constrained, is far from broken. Missile arsenals survive, launch sites are deeply buried, and estimates suggest that Tehran still commands roughly 2,000 heavy ballistic missiles capable of overwhelming defenses if fired en masse.
In short, Trump may warn of war on social media and in political rallies, but the reality on the ground is brutally clear: the tools at his disposal and the consequences of using them — paint a picture far removed from the bravado. Any misstep, experts believe, could plunge the region into chaos, with no guarantee of victory, and the specter of failure looms larger than ever.
All that said, Mearsheimer paints a grimmer scenario should an attack come to pass. “If the United States and Israel strike Iran, the Iranians will respond immediately,” he cautions. “First, missiles and drones will target Israel and US bases across the Middle East. Then, the Iranians will close the Strait of Hormuz,” a move the University of Chicago academic says would be catastrophic for the global economy.
The mistake of assuming
For decades, Washington has nursed a quiet obsession with seeing the back of the clerical regime in Tehran. But what real options does the United States have for replacing the current rulers?
One figure has recently emerged in the shadows — the exiled crown prince, son of the Shah. Reports suggest he has been quietly propped up in meetings with US Senator Lindsey Graham, a vocal critic of Tehran. Western media, it seems, is beginning to catch on to the idea that Reza Pahlavi, who has spent most of his life in exile in the United States, is attempting to capitalize on protests unfolding some 7,000 miles away in Iran. Through social media proclamations and carefully curated messages, he reaches out to his former subjects, offering encouragement and signaling his interest in a return to power.
At a recent speech to AIPAC, the premier pro-Israel lobbying organization in Washington, the Shah’s son hinted at a vision for Iran under his leadership, one in which Tehran and Jerusalem might cooperate to solve the region’s many complex issues. But experts caution against assuming such a path is feasible.
“Revolutions are not vibes,” Narges Bajoghli, co-director of the Rethinking Iran Initiative and a professor at Johns Hopkins, told Dropsitenews. Both the Islamic Republic and its external adversaries, she explained, have actively worked to prevent a “real opposition” from taking shape. Speaking further, Bajoghli argued that the regime's enemies and the exiled opposition forces do not want “an Iran that is democratic and actually sovereign.” She described Reza Pahlavi as “a weak political actor” with insufficient “organic support,” elevated instead by media narratives designed to “whitewash the past” and market monarchy nostalgia to a population exhausted by sanctions, repression, and economic collapse.