America’s Iran War Strategy Aims to Break from Past Regime Change Campaigns. Can it Succeed?

Boston Iran War/Peace Protests 2020. Courtesy of Kai Medina (Mk170101) of Wikimedia Commons.

Shortly after the United States and Israel launched an aerial assault on Tehran on February 28 — killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and devastating military infrastructure and nuclear sites — President Donald Trump urged Iranians to overthrow their government and initiate regime change.

“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” Trump addressed Iranians in a video posted on Truth Social, which marked the beginning of the joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign Operation Epic Fury. “This will probably be your only chance for generations.”

However, this plan faltered as U.S. intelligence indicated on March 11 that, aside from the assassination of supreme leader Ali Khamenei, Iran’s leadership remained unscathed with no apparent risk of imminent collapse. Just days after Khamenei’s death on March 8, his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was appointed as the new supreme leader.

Political scientists and Iranian experts have cited two main obstacles preventing an effective insurgency from forming: the Iranian government’s repressive power against popular unrest and the futility of bombing campaigns as the sole tactic for regime change.

Although Pentagon officials have reportedly drafted detailed plans for a ground offensive in Iran as of March 20, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Trump is “not planning to send ground troops anywhere at this time.”

If Trump’s plan persists, it would be a notable divergence from previous attempts at regime change, such as the Iraq War in 2003 under President George W. Bush, and the War in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, which spanned four U.S. presidencies.

In both conflicts, the U.S. deployed military personnel after extensive bombing campaigns weakened the adversaries’ defenses. However, Anthony H. Cordesman, former emeritus chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, argued in a 2015 essay that a “boots on the ground” approach can be effective only if prolonged and clearly defined.

“Anyone calling for ‘boots on the ground’ needs to realize that even the best such effort will fail if it simply produces short-term tactical victories and not the ability to secure the population and hold territory, particularly populated areas and key parts of the economy,” Cordesman wrote. “It will equally fail if the civil side cannot build the kind of governance and civil efforts that win broad support and bring lasting stability.”

Such was the case not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in Yemen in 2002, Libya in 2011, and Syria in 2014. Cordesman argued in a 2019 report that these countries became “failed states” because the U.S. focused too narrowly on the “direct enemy rather than the flaws in the host country it is trying to aid.” For the U.S. to promote stability in “key states,” Cordesman wrote, it must look to these operations as case studies.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed during a March 19 Pentagon briefing to depart from the mistakes made during these interventions, which stemmed from the Arab Spring — a series of pro-democracy uprisings that spread across the Middle East and North Africa in the early 2010s — and Al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks.

“[Some people] want you to think, just 19 days into this conflict, that we’re somehow spinning toward an endless abyss, or a ‘forever war,’ or a quagmire. Nothing could be further from the truth,” Hegseth said. “Hear it from me, one of hundreds of thousands who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, who watched previous [administrations] squander American credibility — this is not those wars.”

Trump announced on social media the following day that the U.S. military may begin “winding down” its operations in the region, signaling a potential withdrawal from the administration’s initially ambitious goal of regime change. Hegseth said during the briefing that the U.S. would focus its energy on another one of the war’s key objectives — eliminating Iran’s missile arsenal, navy, and nuclear weapons program.

However, this shift in priorities will challenge the administration’s ability to deviate from the faults of previous U.S. interventions. The U.S.’s failure to help build a new Iraqi regime after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, for example, resulted in a power vacuum that insurgent groups quickly filled, acting as a catalyst for a violent civil conflict in 2006, wrote former deputy national security advisor Megan L. O’Sullivan in a 2013 article for Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Fredrick Kempe, president of D.C.-based think tank the Atlantic Council, wrote on March 18 that if the U.S. does not carry through with its regime change efforts, the Islamic Republic of Iran may remain in, or gain, power. This will likely lead to Iranians suffering, Kempe wrote, as a vast majority oppose the regime, according to a June 2024 survey conducted by The Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran.

“Above all, the United States should not end its military campaign early,” Kempe wrote. “That could inadvertently strengthen the position of a weakened Iranian regime.”

The United States’ retreat from its initial regime change objective and Trump’s promise to end the conflict “very soon” can be explained by the rise in domestic gasoline prices and Republicans’ fear of public backlash following the Pentagon’s request for $200 billion to replace ammunition. However, even if the U.S. were to break off from the conflict to protect its economic interests, it could leave behind a fragmented Iran, enabling the regime to maintain or even bolster its rule — exactly the outcome the administration swore to avoid.