By Gregory F. Treverton
When the bombing of Iran began on Feb. 28, 2026, the Trump administration had not informed the American people exactly what it was prepared to achieve.
Was the attack intended to degrade Iran’s nuclear program? Trump had declared that “obliterated” after last June’s bombing.
Was it to slow Iran’s ballistic missile program? U.S. intelligence assesses that Iran is years away from any ballistic missile that could strike the United States.
Was it to show support for Iran’s opposition, as Trump’s earlier “HELP IS ON ITS WAY” posts on Truth Social suggested? A bombing campaign that was bound to kill innocent Iranians, including 175 people at a girls elementary school near a military base, seemed an odd form of support.
I am a scholar and former practitioner of intelligence and national security policy in the White House. I believe there are lessons in effecting political change in Iran that can be taken, ironically, from the very U.S.- and British-led clandestine campaign in the mid-20th century that set Iran on the road to the intense anti-Western and anti-American sentiment that has characterized its government policy for decades.
How does this end?
President Trump has said he wants regime change in Iran but has articulated no strategy for achieving that end.
Strategy is the connection between means and ends. For waging a war, it means asking whether the military means available match the desired military outcome. In trying to effect political change, it means asking whether the instruments employed will produce the desired change.
As journalist Fareed Zakaria put it, “‘Bomb and hope’ is not a strategy.”
Looking at the last U.S. effort at regime change in Iran – the CIA’s 1953 covert program to oust Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and strengthen Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s rule – offers insight into what might have been … and what still might be this time around in Iran.
Mossadegh had moved to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company – effectively, British oil interests. Britain responded with an an oil embargo and a severe economic squeeze on Iran.
Western powers feared that prolonged Iranian instability could open the door to Soviet influence in the oil-rich country – a central Cold War concern.
By early 1953 the U.S. government, under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorized the CIA to prepare a covert plan to remove Mossadegh and restore effective power to the shah, who at the time held a more ceremonial role. British intelligence had been pushing a similar agenda, and the two services collaborated on both the strategy and its implementation.
The operational details, especially those declassified in recent decades, paint a striking picture of a carefully planned clandestine political intervention that was successful, rather than a simple military invasion.
A far cry from ‘bomb and hope’
The British-American budget for the joint plan was modest by military standards. It was aimed at propaganda and influence operations, and it sought to shape public perception and political support.
Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
It was composed of three elements. First it funded newspapers and printed propaganda designed to discredit Mossadegh, portraying him as corrupt or sympathetic to communism. The propaganda also promoted fears of instability and communist infiltration.
Second, according to declassified histories, agents staged “false flag” incidents – attacks attributed to communists, for example – to stoke fear and backlash against Mossadegh among religious and conservative groups.
Third, the coup planners attempted to engage influential clerical leaders and organizations to amplify anti-Mossadegh sentiment.
Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
Shaping the crowds on Tehran’s streets proved critical to the operation. The CIA organized demonstrators to pose as pro-shah protesters, including paying individuals to chant slogans and confront Mossadegh supporters.
These orchestrated demonstrations climaxed on Aug. 19, 1953, when pro-shah forces and sympathetic leaders in the Iranian military – with CIA financial and logistical backing – seized key points of the country, confronted Mossadegh loyalists and helped topple his government. Estimates suggest around 200 to 300 people were killed in the chaotic fighting in Tehran.
What might have been, and what might be
The Mossadegh coup occurred in a less transparent world. However – and regardless of how you feel about it – the coup suggests the value of having a strategy to accomplish political change and, beyond Israel, bringing allies along if possible.
So far, Trump has called for the Iranian military and the Revolutionary Guard to lay down their arms. But the Trump administration has provided no guidance on how to do so, or to whom to do so.
Surely, the administration should be able to devise a plan for potential political change in Iran. It has insight from the years it has spent negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran. Recent events suggest the extent of Israeli, if not American, penetration of Iran.
Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images
In 2018, for instance, Israel’s Mossad national intelligence agency broke into an Iranian facility and stole archives on Iran’s nuclear activities, 55,000 pages and another 55,000 files stored on CDs.
In June 2025, Israel conducted covert drone operations deep inside Iran, in concert with airstrikes on Iranian missile and military infrastructure. Mossad reportedly established an undercover drone network and launched explosive drones to neutralize air defenses and missile launchers before the main attack.
The successful targeting of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his close associates in the latest round of airstrikes suggests the extent of likely Israeli monitoring of Iranian communications by Mossad and the CIA.
Crises tend to put pressure on governments to open communications channels, and the take from any successful eavesdropping might be passed to opposition groups to help them organize and avoid capture.
If Israel can smuggle explosive drones into Iran, it should be able to make the satellite internet provider Starlink and its kin available to enable the opposition to better – and more safely – organize.
It is late in the day to emulate the Mossadegh coup with information operations, and it is probably more difficult in an era of ubiquitous social media, not newspapers. But it’s not too late to try.
I believe those brave opposition elements in Iran, who have been killed by their government and bombed by the United States and Israel, deserve no less.
Gregory F. Treverton is Professor of Practice in International Relations at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Deirdre says
We are so screwed. Trump would be delighted if there was some kind of actual attack here, so he could cancel midterms. He doesn’t care about anyone’s life, just lining his own pockets and feeling like he’s a big shot.
Israel’s always had the Epstein files to blackmail him and a lot of other people, plus they paid for him to president in bribes, just like 94% of our government, which is why I think congress won’t stand in Trump’s way.
We are war criminals, I think the working term is terrorism, we’ve targeted and bombed four schools and 20 hospitals in Iran so far, because Hegseth says he won’t tolerate any ‘woke’ ideology. He thinks this is some kind of pissing contest, a macho man playing with people’s lives. I’d like to punch that smirk right off his face.
That’s not enough! We have to wage war now with Latin America? All these people are going to die for nothing, we’ve already lost.
Can anyone imagine if anyone did that to us? I’m sick about it, I’m enraged these innocent little kids were murdered for no reason by monsters, we’re the bad guys and we’re just warming up.
Netanyahu is living in his bunker with his boys while thousands of people die throughout the Middle East, and they’re bombing the crap out of Israel. Maybe this will put a dent in their genocide against the Palestinians. Looks like their iron dome isn’t protecting them anymore!
Our fancy missiles and weapons aren’t going to do us much good because we don’t have the brains to win the fight, most of our military bases have been bombed, costing us trillions of dollars. If anyone thinks this isn’t going to affect affordability they’re crazy.
This war is going to be primarily economic, the dollar being central to the world’s economy is at its end, the empire has died. Wait until gas prices double and see how well our economy is going to run, and that’s just the start of it.
Pretty likely there will be boots on the ground, apparently our military can apply as conscientious objectors if they don’t want to commit war crimes for Hegseth’s holy war.
PaulT says
In ancient times Donald Trump would have been characterized as a ‘Lord of Chaos’. No one knows why he went to war with Iran and neither does he.
The only subjects Trump seems able to retain are perceived slights and insults for which he will always seek revenge, his obsession with the lost 2020 election is a case in point. Every other decision appears to be a response to the most recent conversation in which he’s been involved, in the case of the attack on Iran either goading by Netanyahu or the promise of ‘a great victory’ from Hegseth since Trump is obsessed wirh ‘winning’.
He clearly had no concept of the geopolitical chaos a prolonged war with Iran would cause and seems to have ignored the views of his American supporters who elected him on the promise of ‘No more foreign wars’.
As to an objective or end game, does anyone really believe Trump is stable enough to come up with a rational solution? The more Iran defies his wish to choose its new leader and refuse his demand to surrender, the greater his perception of being slighted and the likellhood he will support Israel’s demands for Iran’s total destruction, not just an end to it’s regional military power.
This is not going to end well if Trump and Netanyahu decide to ‘do a Gaza’ in Iran.
Sherry says
Not every European leader is kowtowing to trump:
Most European leaders have tiptoed around Trump’s war with Iran. Not Spain’s PM
Most European leaders have trodden a fine line between offering limited support for US military action against Iran and warning of a regional conflagration.
Not Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. He has been outspoken in his criticism of US strikes, provoking anger and threats from the White House. But rather than back down, Sánchez and his government have doubled down.
Spain has significant trade and investment ties with the United States and a fellow member of NATO. Last year 4 million Americans visited the country. And just this month, Amazon said it would expand its investment in data centers in Spain to total nearly $40 billion.
The US also has major military facilities in southern Spain, at Rota and Morón. It’s the employment of those bases that kicked off the latest spat, with the Spanish government forbidding their use in support of the Iran strikes.
In angry comments at a news conference Tuesday, Trump threatened to cut off trade with Spain. And he added: “We could use their base if we want, we could just fly in and use it, nobody’s going to tell us not to use it.”
Sánchez did just that. Within 24 hours of Trump’s tirade, he went on national television with a simple message: “No to war.”
Trump’s demands for ending Iran war shift as US military works through its target list
He described the US and Israeli strikes as “reckless and illegal” and said his country would “not be complicit in something that is bad for the world – and that is also contrary to our values and interests – simply out of fear of reprisals from someone.”
Sánchez accused the US of playing “Russian roulette with the destiny of millions.”
Settle down and stay the course people says
Look I get it, “Orange Man Bad”. But To Paul T and Deidre,
Look this regime kills its own people by the tens of thousands and all you keep spouting off about is “Orange man Bad”. He has the balls to end that whole Death to America, Isreal cult in Iran. Clearly the people there want better and I for one appreciate Iran not getting a hold of nuclear bombs as Im convinced they would use it ASAP to assert their twisted dominance of shiria law. Watch how fast the ayatollah son dies. Can there be anyone normal in the region to take over? Or does nobody want peace and freedom like we enjoy?
Keenan Hreib says
Trump. The first ballot Hall of Famer for Israel’s #1 USEFUL IDIOT of all time. To be transactional is to also be exposed, but also to be PLAYED.
To see where we are now with Iran. At war for absolutely nothing. Donald Trump’s and Benjamin Netanyahu’s greed, selfishness, and bloodlust, put the world in jeopardy and unrest.
The real time HOLOCAUST that is on going for the last 2 1/2 years in Gaza has been both the spark and launching pad to what we see in Iran now. All at the behest of the most expantionistic, violent, COLONIAL, nuclear, hyper victimized KAREN in the Middle East.
Well here we are, and the level of stupidity by the United States can not be underscored or ignored.
A combat unit commander told non- commissioned officers at a briefing last Monday that the Iran war is part of Gods plan and that President Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause ARMAGEDDON and mark his return to Earth”.
A complaint was made by a non- commissioned officer and provided to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation(MRFF), which from Saturday morning through Monday evening received and logged more than 110 complaints about commanders in every branch of the military. That # doubled by Tuesday. The complaints remain anonymous due to fear of retribution by The Defence Department. These are the folks we have in high profile positions???
Lets look back at GAZA and the state sponsored Holocaust, disguised as a Genocide, disguised as a war? Well, none of this is a surprise. Not even a little bit. I was saying over two years ago that as horrifying as Gaza is, it is still a likely launch pad to “The Greater Israel” agenda as well as regional war in the Middle East.
Why on Earth are we calling Israeli settlers in the West Bank settlers? They are straight invaders. People, who no matter where they are from can become citizens of Israel as long as they are Jewish. Instantly. Hey, guess what?!?! As an added incentive you can beat the shit out of a Palestinian in the West Bank who has been living there for twenty years and throw them out of their home. Wallah! Instant home. Those mangy Palestinian dogs don’t belong there, and after all… “We are the chosen people.
Now we arrive at Iran. Carpet bombing schools, health facilities, hospitals,airports, and fuel stations,refineries etc… Iran had no nukes and no nuclear indevers and gave the United states everything in terms of inspectors and access. A stronger deal than the Obama deal in 2015, a deal Trump walked away from in 2017 when he was president the first time. Iran did not want a war. Israel did. Here we are and nobody from Trump on down will explain why.
Israel runs American foreign policy in the Middle East and none of it serves America at all. It makes the world a much more dangerous place.
We have to stop letting Israel ZIONIZE us! Stop gaslighting everyone with the same tired narcissistic psychopathic audacity. Israel will deny reality to everyones face while symultaeously playing the victim. No empathy and basic humanity. First they fuck you over and then they make you feel like it’s your fault. We didn’t do it, and if you saw it, you saw it wrong. When it comes to Israel facts are negotiable and now the U.S. is exactly the same.
Until the U.S. escapes the tentacles of Israel, and starts to look at the Middle East through human eyes instead of the theocratic “End of Times”Zionism bullshit!
Israel pulls us down with their lack of humanity for the Middle East as they surf the “HOLOCAUST WAVE” and weez hypervictimization as they call anyone who stands with Palestine, or any Arab country for that matter…. A Anti- Semite.
DISGUSTING.