The Time for Regime Change in Iran Has Arrived

F or nearly two months now, the Iranian people have bravely taken to the streets to call for the overthrow of their totalitarian masters, facing down harsh, violent repression in the process. These demonstrations have been large-scale and nationwide, stemming from myriad factors that are not easily addressed by the regime. They have also come at a time when the status of the government in Tehran has never been lower. The movement has already eclipsed the most serious recent rounds of protest in both size and anti-regime fervor. But the mullahcracy’s response has been just as severe. Credible sources have placed the number of dead in the regime’s crackdown at over 30,000, with many more imprisoned or otherwise disappeared. This death toll dwarfs previous cycles of repression. To put it simply, the mullahcracy is trying to kill its way out of these protests. And it seems to be working.

Enter Donald Trump. The president has been a vocal supporter of these protests, bucking his predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who had tepid, if any, words of encouragement for the demonstrations under their watch. On the contrary, Trump has not only said forthrightly that America stands with the Iranian people, he has explicitly threatened the regime if they did not stand down and halt the killing. His Truth Social posts have suggested that “help is on the way” and that the regime would “pay a big price” for any further killing of protesters. For weeks, the administration waffled on these promises, engaging in furious rounds of negotiation with the Iranian regime over its nuclear weapons ambitions while that same regime murdered its people with impunity. At the same time, American military assets were surged to the region in numbers that have not been seen in years. Now, those negotiations have collapsed — unsurprisingly, given the mullahcracy’s intransigence — and the White House has shifted to a far more forceful approach.

As of this writing, American and Israeli forces have struck Iranian assets across the country, focusing on the regime’s repressive apparatus, its power projection capabilities, its defensive and retaliatory capabilities, and its command-and-control infrastructure, including the nation’s military and civilian leadership. In a video statement released on social media, Trump said that the key targets of this “massive and ongoing operation” are the regime’s ballistic missile industry, its navy, its regional terrorist proxies and the Iran-based infrastructure that supplies and controls them, as well as the mullahcracy’s remaining nuclear weapons sites. According to the president, these pose a serious threat to “our core national security interests.” The regime itself is also in the crosshairs, with the president telling “the great proud people of Iran” that “the hour of your freedom is at hand” and exhorting them to “seize control of [their] destiny, and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within [their] reach.” This is no Operation Midnight Hammer — the successful attack on Iran’s nuclear sites last summer — but a far broader and more intensive approach. The goals are nothing short of complete obliteration of the danger posed by the mullahcracy and its final overthrow by the Iranian people.

But are these goals actually within our “core national security interests?” The answer is a resounding yes. Iran has killed hundreds, if not thousands, of American citizens around the world. The Islamic Republic’s first major international action in 1979 was the raiding of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the taking of hostages; it has not stopped attacking Americans and our interests since. It has continued its nuclear weapons program apace, despite years of diplomacy on our part and last summer’s kinetic strikes. It is building an enormous arsenal of ballistic missiles with which to endanger Americans and our allies in the Middle East, Europe, and even further afield. Many of those missiles have already been launched against various nations in the the Middle East, including ones that have explicitly denied U.S. access to their airspace for an attack on Iran. The regime is a destabilizing force that massacres its own citizens, aids and abets our Russian and Chinese enemies, foments terrorist violence around the globe, and seeks to destroy both America and our Israeli friends. Their ideology is one of apocalyptic messianism that, paired with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, could very well spell the doom of humanity — in fact, that’s the whole point.

These strikes, relying heavily on our dominating position in the air and on the seas, will degrade the regime’s capacity to carry out those malign aims. But time will tell if they are able to truly effect a change in the government in Tehran. To finish the job, more will be required in support of the Iranian people.

The most important non-kinetic action that we could take in this regard would be targeted at the regime-imposed communications blackout. Since January 8, the mullahcracy has shut down the internet, cut off internal communications networks, and confiscated satellite dishes that could be used to bypass these restrictions. Undermining this attempt to control communications would allow internal opposition networks to coordinate, send information outside of Iran, and hamper the regime’s ability to respond to attack. America has incredible tools by which we can effectuate this policy. We can smuggle satellite dishes, satellite phones, and platforms like Starlink into Iran, as well as disable the jammers that the government is using to disrupt satellite connectivity. We can hijack regime communications platforms, interfering with internal command and control networks and taking over the remaining operational television and radio broadcasts.

Another form of anti-regime action the U.S. could take involves more direct aid to the rebels. That could come in many forms, including sharing intelligence on the locations of security forces and leadership or smuggling weapons into the country, if possible. The best use of unique American strengths in this fashion would be through cyberwarfare. Using these tactics, we could cripple command and control systems, including the government’s intranet and communications, making it far harder to activate the tools of repression.

Kinetic strikes like the ones we have already engaged in are critical as well. Without decimating the regime’s repressive apparatus and ability to strike both externally and internally, even the strongest rebellion is destined to fail. Taking out key regime targets like weapons systems, ammunition depots, control nodules, and military forces will reduce its ability to enforce its malign will on the Iranian people and help pave the way for this rebellion to succeed. Decapitating the regime, both politically and militarily, can cause internal chaos that anti-regime forces can exploit. Combined with the president’s offer of “total immunity” to regime forces that lay down their arms, these attacks could further destabilize the mullahcracy and its apparatus of oppression. A combined approach like the one detailed above, alongside our capable Israeli partners, has the best chance of toppling the Islamic Republic since its violent foundation nearly half a century ago.

This assertive approach does face some challenges, although less problematic than critics maintain. One objection to American action is that it could give the regime a means by which to discredit the protesters as foreign stooges and thus justify repression. The issue here is that the regime is already doing that; if U.S. action is able to meaningfully degrade Iran’s ability to suppress opposition, the trade-off is well worth it.

Another more reasonable objection is that any American strikes would be too little and too late to make a difference. The actions thus far have seemingly disproven this claim, as the Iranian regime is clearly scrambling, while anti-regime demonstrations have ramped up once again over the past few days. Regime change itself may be fraught for many reasons. Iran is far more complex than Venezuela, for example. There is no internal, universally recognized opposition, the regime is ideologically fanatical in a way that Nicolás Maduro’s was not, and nearly half a century of totalitarian repression has warped Iran’s society and economy in profound ways. But the alternative — allowing the mullahcracy to remain in power to murder Iranians, endanger Americans, and pursue the acquisition of nuclear weapons — is untenable.

The brave people of Iran, beaten down by the evil mullahcracy for almost 50 years, have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to overthrow their oppressors. Likewise, America has a similar opening to eliminate the growing threat from the Iranian regime once and for all. Taking Tehran off the geopolitical chess board will not only harm our other enemies; it will advance and protect our core security interests. The Islamic Republic has endangered and attacked America since the first day of its existence. It is far beyond time we respond in kind.