By Farah N. Jan
Shortly after the opening salvo of U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, 2026 – with missiles targeting cities across the country, some of which killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – President Donald Trump declared the objective was to destroy Iran’s military capabilities and give rise to a change in government.
Framing the operation as a war of liberation, Trump called on Iranians to “take over your government.”
In the first days alone, Israel dropped over 2,000 bombs on Iranian targets, equal to half the tonnage of the 12-day Israel-Iran conflict in June 2025. Heavy U.S. bombing, meanwhile, has targeted Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as well as ballistic missile and aerial defense sites.
The destruction is real. But, as an international relations scholar, I know that destruction is not the same as political success. And the historical record of U.S. bombing campaigns aimed at regime change shows that the gap between the two – the point at which Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya campaigns all stalled – is where wars go to die.
Destruction is not strategy
Decades of scholarship dating back to World War I on using air power to force political change has established a consistent finding: Bombing can degrade military capacity and destroy infrastructure, but it does not produce governments more cooperative with the attacker.
Political outcomes require political processes – negotiation, institution-building, legitimate transitions of power.
Bombs cannot create any of these. Instead, what they reliably create is destruction, and destruction generates its own dynamics: rallying among the population, power vacuums, radicalization and cycles of retaliation.
The American record confirms this. In 2003, the George W. Bush administration launched “Shock and Awe” in Iraq with the explicit aim of regime change. The military objective was achieved in weeks. The political objective was never achieved at all.
The U.S. decision to disband the Iraqi army created a vacuum filled not by democratic reformers but by sectarian militias and eventually ISIS. The regime that eventually emerged was not friendly to American interests. It was deeply influenced by Iran.
In 2011, the Obama administration led a NATO air campaign in Libya that quickly expanded from civilian protection into regime change. Dictator Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown and killed.
But there was no plan for political transition. Chaos and political instability have endured since. Asked what his “worst mistake” was as president, Barack Obama said, “Probably failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya.” Libya remains a failed state today.
The intervention also sent a powerful signal to countries pursuing nuclear weapons: Gaddhafi had dismantled his nuclear program in 2003. Eight years later, NATO destroyed his regime.
Even Kosovo, often cited as the success story of coercive air power, undermines the case. Seventy-eight days of NATO bombing did not, by themselves, compel Slobodan Milosevic, president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to withdraw.
What changed was the credible threat of a ground invasion combined with Russia’s withdrawal of diplomatic support. The political outcome – contested statehood, ongoing ethnic tensions – is hardly the stable governance that air power advocates promise.
The pattern is consistent: The United States repeatedly confuses its unmatched capacity to destroy from the air with the ability to dictate political outcomes.
Why this war?
The recent U.S. attacks on Iran raise a fundamental question: Why is the United States fighting this war at all?
The administration has declared regime change as its objective, justifying the campaign on the grounds of Iran’s nuclear program and missile capabilities.
But that nuclear program was being actively negotiated in Geneva days before the strikes. And Iran’s foreign minister told NBC the two sides were close to a deal. Then the bombs fell.
Iran did not attack America. And it currently does not have the capability to threaten the American homeland. What Iran challenges is Israel’s regional military dominance, and I believe it is Israel’s objective of neutralizing a rival that is driving this operation.
Israel targeted 30 senior Iranian leaders in the opening strikes. Israeli officials described it as a preemptive attack to “remove threats to the State of Israel.” I see the strategic logic for these killings as Israel’s, and Americans are absorbing the costs.
U.S. military bases in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have taken Iranian missile fire. American service members are in harm’s way – three have already been killed – not because Iran attacked them, but I believe because their president committed them to someone else’s war without a clear endgame.
AFP via Getty Images
Each coercive step in this conflict – from the 2018 withdrawal from the nuclear deal, to the 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful military commander, to the June 2025 strikes – was framed as restoring leverage.
Each produced the opposite, eliminating diplomatic off-ramps, accelerating the very threats it aimed to contain.
The regime is not one man
Decapitation strikes assume that removing a leader removes the obstacle to political change. But Iran’s political system is institutional — the Guardian Council, the Assembly of Experts and the Revolutionary Guard have survived for four decades.
The system has succession mechanisms, but they were designed for orderly transitions, not for active bombardment. The group most likely to fill the vacuum is the Revolutionary Guard, whose institutional interest lies in escalation, not accommodation.
There is a deeper irony. The largest protests since 1979 swept Iran just weeks ago. A genuine domestic opposition was growing. The strikes have almost certainly destroyed that movement’s prospects.
Decades of research on rally-around-the-flag effects – the tendency of populations to unite behind their government when attacked by a foreign power – confirms that external attacks fuse regime and nation, even when citizens despise their leaders.
Iranians who were chanting “death to the dictator” are now watching foreign bombs fall on their cities during Ramadan, hearing reports of over 100 children killed in a strike on a girls school in Minab.
Trump’s call for Iranians to “seize control of your destiny” echoes a familiar pattern. In 1953, the CIA overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister in the name of freedom.
That produced the Shah, the Shah’s brutal reign led to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and the revolution produced the Islamic Republic now being bombed.
What comes next? And what guarantee is there that whatever emerges will be any friendlier to Israel or the United States?
What does success look like?
This is the question no one in Washington has answered. If the objective is regime change, who governs 92 million people after?
If the objective is stability, why are American bases across the Middle East absorbing missile fire?
There is no American theory of political endgame in Iran — only a theory of destruction. That theory has been tested in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – and Iran itself over the preceding eight months. It has failed every time, not because of poor execution, but because the premise is flawed.
Air power can raze a government’s infrastructure. It cannot build the political order that must replace it. Iran, with its sophisticated military, near-nuclear capability, proxy networks spanning the region and a regime now martyred by foreign attack, will likely not be the exception.
U.S. law prohibits the assassination of foreign leaders, and instead Israel killed Iran’s supreme leader while American warplanes filled the skies overhead. Washington has called the result freedom at hand, but it has not answered the only question that matters: What comes next?
Farah N. Jan is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania.
Pogo says
Which is which
… who is who?
https://www.google.com/search?q=iran+allies
Choose.
R.S. says
The ending of Full Metal Jacket comes to mind: The US soldiers marching through a burning Vietnam while singing the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club, Vietnam being another place where the military followed the call into the valley of death and destruction with no goal in mind whatsoever after a mendacious government had exploited the country’s infantile patriotism.
Deirdre says
Let’s ask Israel how to handle this. We’re busy looking forward to Armageddon.
JimboXYZ says
There are 5 viewpoints to look at the arguments presented in this article ?
A couple from the pro/anti-Trump-Pence/Trump-Vance Admins that the article lays out for a position. First, that anything Trump was done in good faith to dismantle a known regime that was operating in collaboration with Terrorism. Another, the second, is that somehow Trump nefariously was really systematically edging the USA towards war with Iran, either outright declaration or the Bush-Cheney way of managing conflicts like what resulted in the global region for a War on Terrorism ?
And then there’s what isn’t laid out as the pro/anti-Obama-Biden/Biden-Harris Admins. First, that anything Obama & Biden was done in good faith to repair any relationship that evolved from pre/during/post Carter era timeline of events. That the billions was 40+ years of returning funds to Iran. I mean let’s face it, Iran took USA hostages in the late 1970’s. As early as 1972 ? the Summer Olympics marked the terrorism in Germany of Israel athletes by the Palestinians ? A second position, anything Obama & Biden was a collaboration with a known Terrorist state.
And then there’s a 5th position that there is a lot of truth to the 4 other viewpoints that along the timeline the same cast of USA leadership contributed to the mess it became last weekend. And the incentive exists for at least the potential of some type of money laundering. Let’s face it, Biden boasted about it for at least the Ukraine, so why not Iran. Bush-Cheney ? Cheney had incentive for what he was going to be paid out for in the military operation & Defense contractor compensation Cheney was owed by & from Haliburton. What better way for Cheney to get paid his millions in whatever billions that Haliburton owed him, than to be in a war that paid the Haliburton enough to make their Cheney payments ? And now we’re bringing in the Bush clan that also goes back to the timeline of the 1970’s-end of HW Bush & includes W Bush ?
Are any of these positions hoax/conspiracy theories ?People made mad money as a motive for anything legitimate or criminal over at least +/-50+ years ?
Deirdre says
I think the best way to encourage regime change, because we care so much about human rights, is for the US and Israel to commit an act of terrorism, target an elementary school, and murder 165 little girls. It was a good warm-up.
Obviously the Palestinians were super grateful when they noticed the bombs that were used to destroy them said made in USA. It’s great that we’re still making stuff at home, shows we’re really not dependent on other countries anymore. Those tariffs really work! I can’t wait to get my check.
Since Trump and Hegseth have a different story of every day about why we’re starting WWIII, especially since Iran started it anyway according to the president of war or whatever you call that drunk idiot, I’d suggest we cut through the middleman and ask Netanyahu directly.
He has magically known that Iran will have nuclear weapons within a week for decades, and he’s an expert on how to handle those pesky neighboring countries around them. Look at what a great job he’s done in Gaza.
He’s done a pretty good job in Lebanon and Syria too, although he’s not quite finished with the remodel, I’m sure they appreciate our love for human rights. Bless those Zionists for caring.
Also, seems they need more land, because God promised 3000 years ago, and everyone in the neighborhood is glad to give it to them since they’re so deserving.
History tells us that the US replacing a democratic government with a puppet like the Shah, who was so brutal that it lead the population to extremism, has worked out well in other countries.
Let’s ask the president of Venezuela what’s going to happen next, as he crams their oil money into his own personal bank account and has started sending some to Israel, because we haven’t done enough for them. 94% of our government agrees so it must be true.
We can’t do enough, or we will be antisemitic, wouldn’t want that! We can never do enough until they take over the entire Middle East and then the world. Plus, that AIPAC money really comes in handy.
It’s a little disappointing the people who have lived there for thousands of years have to die and have everything they’ve created destroyed, with the miracle of modern US weaponry. It’s no problem since we both have nuclear weapons if we run a little short.
We’ll need some of those extra bombs to blow Cuba off the face of the Earth too though, their starvation is going a little slow. Then we can move onto the other countries Trump has said really belong to us, Israel has been a real inspiration.
I almost forgot, how are those Epstein file redactions coming along? I hope they don’t run out of black ink since it’s made in China and they’re getting a little annoyed with us, and I suspect they’re not the only ones.
I’m looking forward to the time that the US gets the things it deserves from other countries like Iran, since we’re so super helpful and everybody there loves us. We’ve always been great at spreading the love throughout the Middle East, hand in hand with our special friends like Netanyahu.
Hope he can visit again soon so we can give him more standing ovations, but he’ll need to leave that bunker in Germany first to enjoy another luxury vacation here.
.PaulT says
US military mis-targeting isn’t new, Deirdre. though it’s rarely admitted.
A small example:
During their 1983 invasion of the little Caribbean island of Grenada the US military bombed the Richmond Hill Mental Hospital and killed a number of patients and injured some staff members. The military command refused to admit tbis, claiming it was a ‘Cuban Army’ strongpoint. They stuck to this fiction for a week before making an official statement admitting the truth..,
Deirdre says
Oops, they goofed up in Gaza too! What about the
strikes targeting Iranian homes, hospitals, and a stadium? How about the high school they bombed the same day?
Do you really think in this day and age they don’t know what they’re hitting when they’re able to zero in on any member of the government?
If they don’t know what they’re hitting, maybe they shouldn’t be sending missiles at all. I agree they make mistakes!
.PaulT says
An interesting reminder that US presidents continue to make the same mistake of.thinking that threats then military action solves problems.
After the Israel-US air campaign in June 2025 both countries declared that Iran’s nuclear program was ‘obliterated’ and it’s offensive threat to the region curtailed.
Was that optimism or a lousy assessment? If you remember, after the strikes a US military intelligence report contradicted the US-Israeli claim of ‘complete success’. Trump and Hegseth screamed ‘foul’ and the Pentagon’s intelligence capabilities were subsequently dismantled?
Trump has no post-war plan. Defense Secretary Hegseth has characterized this as ‘Holy War of ‘Western Christianity against the godless’, He truly is a latter-day Crusader., Is Hegseth’s war, characterization by him as “decisive(ly), devastating(ly) and with no mercy” actually the 10th Crusade?
Arguably if his aim is to protect the Christian ‘Holy Sites’ he may be slightly off when Ultra Orthodox Israelis and their illegal settlers may pose more of a threat than Iran.
Meanwhile Palestinians are still restricted in their access to one of Islam’s most sacred sites, the Haram al-Sharif, which lies in the heart of Jerusalem.
DEKA says
I am stunned by the author conveniently forgetting that the Iranian people were all ready rising up AGAINST their government. Did you forget about the protests where the government actually killed anywhere between 10-30 THOUSAND Iranians that were protesting? What this conflict is doing is taking out the murderous regime that murdered its own people. Do we know if the Iranians will choose someone that is pro America? NO! What this conflict is achieving is taking out any nuclear bomb threat that Iran was threatening both Israel and our troops. This conflict is taking out the army that was killing innocent Iranian citizens. Also eliminating ballistic weapons that the former army had. It will be in the hands of the Iranian people to decide how they want to live. The USA is NOT deciding that.
The other major accomplishment that President Trump has created is the entire Middle East is actually united against the former terrorist that were running Iran, what a great thing! That was impossible prior to this conflict.
Keenan Hreib says
Heres a little factoid for you.Yes the majority population in Tehran is progressive and wants change. So what do we do? Without declaration of war, no C0ngresssional vetting or vote as well as blatant disregard for Geneva Convention and international law we start carpet bombing a country, that did not attack us that we were literally in negotiations with. Steve Witkoff was coming back with a deal that Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t want. It flew in the face of Israel’s expancianst plans.
Bombing Tehran where the people want a more secular progressive government. Trump cares so much about the progressive protesters in Tehran. We will hit them indiscriminately while leavin swaths of Iran un touched that are digging deep and will do damage. First it’s about NUKES, then it’s our love for Iranian people under an oppressive regime that we want to escape the tyranny of the Ayatollah. It’s always been about regime change, and if you ask 7 different Trump cabinet members what it’s about??? You get 7 different answers. The most corrupt and incompetent Administration in American history bar none.
Keenan Hreib says
We have certainly lied about Iran since 1953. April 4, 1953 the CIA approved a 1 million dollar budget for a covert operation to remove Democratic Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh had the audacity to want control of Iran’s oil. The coup of course reinstated Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as an absolute Monarch. He was aso known as the Shah of Iran.
From this forced regime change, as well as the forced displacement of about 1 million Palestinians off their land 5 years before. We set the groundwork for war after war after war in the Middle East.
WE HAVE LEARNED NOTHING. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has wanted the outcome we are seeing now since 1996. A doctrine he called “CLEAN BREAK”, which was nothing more than a manifesto of a maniac and a bluprint for endless wars.
Donald Trump comes along. A man who is tangled in the web of a sex trafficker. A sex trafficker who’s connections to the Mossad(Israeli CIA) and the ear of Netanyahu make Trump the perfect RUBE for Israel. Make no mistake has always had the U.S. in their back pocket. Jewish lobbies in the States don’t hurt either, but this is different. Now you have two psychopaths in Trump and Netanyahu, but one has a whole lot of dirt on the other.
Negotiations were ongoing and would have been successful, even after a bombing campaign in June that was deemed a success in terms of knocking out Iranian nuclear program. If so why the war?? ISRAEL. Israel wants everything! “Greater Israel” is what they have wanted for more than 50 years.
Without Congressional, a complete disdain for The Geneva Convention and every International law to man. Trump and The United States unleash “OPERATION SHIELD OF ZION” as well as “OPERATION EPSTEIN FURY”.
Now here we are dropping bombs on 153 cities in Iran illegally. No roadmap to what Iran will look like after this. We have done this already in Iraq, Libya, Syria,and Afghanistan. Millions of lives lost including asking our own kids to die for nothing.
The Trump Administration would have you believe that Iran can take their country back in a few short months.
Iran is dug in tight as a tic and is prepared for a long war. We are not. People don’t like being pushed off their land and subjugated. Ask the Palestinians how they feel for the last 78 years as well the Lebanese, Syrian, and Iraqi people. What if it was us? Would it be revolution or terrorism? Nobody condones terrorism, but the biggest terrorists in the world have a BLUE STAR OF DAVID on their flag.
Israel along with the U.S. are the two biggest threats to the worlds stability, all while they create conditions that resistance and terrorist groups can be birthed everywhere.
The path to peace in the Middle East is not complicated. In fact, it’s very simple. You stop giving money to Israel. No more 4 billion dollars a year to Israel just for being Israel. No more 20 billion in military aid to kill civilians (mostly children) indiscriminately.
No more American tax dollars to kill the innocent while simultaneously putting a target on the backs of Americans abroad both military and civilian.
ALL THIS BECAUSE WE DECIDED WE WANTED TO BE ZIONISTS INSTEAD OF AMERICANS. INSANE!
Ray W. says
Per reporting by the Daily Mail, Iran’s Assembly of Experts, an 88-member clerical body, has selected the deceased Ayatollah’s younger cleric son, Mujtaba Khamanei, as Supreme Leader.
Mr. Khamanei, while long a religious scholar, has not yet achieved the religious title of Mujhatid, the step in religious scholarship below the religious title of Ayatollah, hence the position of Supreme Leader.
The reporter wrote that the deceased Ayatollah had named three potential successors; his younger son was not one of them.
While pursuing scholarship in the religious center of Qom, Mujtaba Khamanei studied under a now-deceased prominent radical hardline cleric who advocated for Iran’s production of nuclear weapons.
Mujtaba Khamanei rose to prominence, it is reported, by manipulating the vote counts in the 2009 Iranian presidential election and then leading the militia crackdown on citizen protests arising from the vote outcome, now known as the Green Revolution, a mass-citizen movement personified by the chant: “Where’s my vote!” Some 72 protesters were killed during protests that lasted more than six months.
As Supreme Leader, he will hold the political power to appoint the head of the judiciary. And, he will be commander in chief of the military.
Make of this what you will.
Pogo says
Sounds like fertile ground for discussion by, i.e., dilettantes interested in praising each other for their deep understanding of the establishment clause in our own country, which the current, and according to them, eternal new order, has consigned to a place of forgetting.
Florduh’s rulers, and Iran’s, have quite the common ground.
Sherry says
@ Ray W.
Oh! Oh! But wait. . . now trump says he should be involved personally in selecting the next Supreme Leader of Iran.
But, this was not about regime change or lining one’s pockets with oil money. . . right???
Ray W. says
Sacramento’s KCRA 3, an NBC affiliate, reported this morning that President Trump said, “If we didn’t hit in two weeks, they would have had a nuclear weapon.”
Rafael Grossing, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said there is “no evidence of Iran building a nuclear bomb.”
Make of this what you will.
Deirdre says
Things are not going well in the in the Middle East, this is a full-blown war involving multiple countries including Russia and China now.
Please do some research. The price of gas is going to skyrocket very quickly which means the price of everything, including food, is going to skyrocket.
Fill up your tanks, get to the stores and buy canned goods rice beans etc. because they’ll be high prices and empty shelves, think of it is preparing for a hurricane.
Sherry says
@Deirdre . . . a DEADLY hurricane created by a “madman” drunk with power!
Deirdre says
War escalation throughout world:
United States, Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, United Kingdom, France, Greece (involved in defending against attacks around Cyprus). Lebanon and Syria as usual are being attacked by Israel.
Now Trump has started threatening Latin America, saying he’s going after drug cartels, plus Cuba is still being starved under a blockade by Trump and he wants to finish the job.
He said the same thing about Venezuela and then just grabbed the top guy and started sticking their oil money into his pocket. It’s all about power and money with him, but this time he’s gone too far. A lot of people are dying, and we did start this. Iran is not as helpless as we thought!
Russia and China are involved on Iran’s side, North Korea is making threats, and obviously we’re talking about countries with nukes! There’s some psycho leaders out there in addition to Trump, although I think he’s the stupidest by far.
Israel is getting bombed big time and they have nukes too, and have threatened to use them if anyone tries to take them out (Samson option).
The WH has been sent a report that we’re on high alert about terrorism on American soil but they won’t release it.
Looks like the flow of oil is really going to slow down coming out of the Middle East, that’s going to affect gas, but also trucks shipping supplies including grocery stores.
It would make sense to stock up on non-perishable foods now, because of this happens store shelves are going to be empty. Think of preparing for a hurricane or another Covid situation. If you’re not sure what to get Google prepper supplies.
I care about my community, I research what’s going on daily, this is bad. If anyone has money in the stock market they should consider at least moving it to lower risk stocks ASAP.
When Americans figure out what’s going on they’re going to panic and we will have empty shelves, empty gas pumps, and possibly ATM’s running out of money. I hope I’m wrong but I really don’t think so. Trump could back down now and it might smooth things out but he won’t, he keeps escalating. Hegseth is a Christian Nationalist and is looking forward to end of days, that’s not good! Be prepared.