The spectre of ‘regime change’ in Tehran seems to be haunting the Israel-Iran war. Even more so after US president Donald Trump followed up America’s bombing raid on three Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday with the following social-media post: ‘It’s not politically correct to use the term, “regime change”, but if the current Iranian regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a regime change?’
Trump’s post itself is ambiguous – it’s not clear who or what exactly might change the regime or when it might happen. Today, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to clear up any misunderstanding, claiming Trump was simply asking, ‘why shouldn’t the Iranian people rise up against this brutal terrorist regime?’. Moreover, Trump’s cabinet, including some of its more hawkish members, has been keen to emphasise that regime change in Iran is not the US’s objective. Defence secretary Pete Hegseth said Sunday’s ‘precision operation’ specifically targeted Iran’s nuclear programme and ‘was not and has not been about regime change’. Vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio have also been at pains to insist that the US is not looking to enter a full-scale war with Iran.
But if we’re to take Trump’s vague post to mean what his constantly hyperventilating critics say it does – that the US is contemplating carrying out regime change itself – then that would indeed be a dangerous, reckless move. The US’s raid was, itself, not without huge risk. For all the talk of ‘precision’ strikes, they could well embroil America in this war. While Israel is right to fight back against Iran’s very real aggression, sucking in the global hegemon risks broadening the conflict. Even so, the US pursuing regime change would be a truly spectacular folly. Which we can only hope isn’t being countenanced.
After all, as anyone vaguely aware of post-Cold War history will know, US-led, regime-changing interventions – particularly in the Middle East and its near abroad – do not have a great track record. In Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011), the US and its Western allies effectively and forcibly removed brutal and despotic regimes. And in doing so, they collapsed admittedly repressive states and created power vacuums, which provided the ideal conditions for militia-led civil wars and Islamist insurgencies. What were meant to be short, limited missions in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan turned into devastating, years-long, US-led occupations, as Western militaries tried – and failed – to contain the destructive forces their own actions had unleashed.
We at spiked have always opposed these narcissistic regime-changing interventions, staged as they were for moral grandstanding purposes at home, rather than strategic reasons abroad. Not because we were fans of Saddam Hussein’s tin-pot dictatorship or the Taliban’s medieval tyrants. But because the successful overthrow of an oppressive regime and its replacement with one that enjoys popular support can only be undertaken by the people themselves. Because it is only through a people’s struggle to free themselves – a struggle for and against something specific – that they develop a clear sense of what they want any new ‘regime’ to look like. Not to mention how and who they want to govern it.
This is hardly revelatory. We in the West live in societies that were forged, often centuries ago, through their own acts of internal ‘regime change’. Through popular struggles against absolutist monarchies, in pursuit of more democratic arrangements. Our own histories show that regime change is not something that can be imposed from without.
And this goes for Iran. A liberation imposed on Iranians would take the future of this complex nation out of the hands of those who live and struggle there, and place it in the hands of politicians and armies who don’t. It would destroy an autocratic, repressive power centre. But, with Iranians turned into mere spectators, there would be nothing to replace it with. As we’ve seen in Iraq and beyond, the result would likely be civil conflict, fragmentation and, no doubt, an Islamist fightback.
So Iran needs regime change. But it must come from within. There have certainly been signs over the past 15 or so years that such a change is coming. From the 2009 Green Movement to the 2019 fuel protests through to the ‘Women, life, freedom’ demonstrations in 2022, each successive wave of anti-regime agitation has grown in depth and ambition. It’s now no longer just a relatively middle-class strata of Tehran society airing grievances against the authoritarian theocrats, which was the case in 2009. Anger at the regime now also comes from working-class districts and towns. An ever-growing number of Iranians resent the regime’s economic ruination of their country, its costly pursuit of a shadow war against Israel and its violent, repressive social policies, particularly against women. And now they live in a nation that the regime has plunged into a full-on war with Israel.
Iran’s ultra-reactionary clerics’ grip on power may well be slipping, as their decades-long proxy war against Israel has inevitably returned to their turf. But it is up to the Iranian people themselves to free Iran from the dead hand of the ayatollah.
Tim Black is associate editor of spiked.
Who funds spiked? You do
We are funded by you. And in this era of cancel culture and advertiser boycotts, we rely on your donations more than ever. Seventy per cent of our revenue comes from our readers’ donations – the vast majority giving just £5 per month. If you make a regular donation – of £5 a month or £50 a year – you can become a and enjoy:
–Ad-free reading
–Exclusive events
–Access to our comments section
It’s the best way to keep spiked going – and growing. Thank you!
