Prospects for Regime Change in Iran: Myth or Reality? - by Dr. Eric Lob

 

Professor Dr. Eric Lob

Associate Professor at Florida International University

The probabilities of regime change in Iran in the post-war period appear to be low. Israel and the United States primarily targeted Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure and personnel. Despite threatening to assassinate Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in his bunker, they refrained from doing so and largely left the political establishment intact. One exception was Ali Shamkhani, Khamenei’s advisor, who oversaw five rounds of nuclear negotiations with the United States that Iran abruptly canceled after Israel had attacked it on June 13th. The fact that Israel targeted Shamkhani indicated that it intended to disrupt and sabotage the negotiations. President Donald Trump and his administration may have instructed Israel to spare Iran’s leadership to gain greater leverage in the negotiations within the context of coercive diplomacy. They may have also done so due to the American debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the low appetite for a repeat of such suboptimal scenarios among isolationists in the US government and society. Trump and others around him seemed to understand that the prospects of regime change in a large country of 90 million people with strong nationalist sentiments and diverse ethnic and religious groups would open a pandora’s box by creating uncontrollable chaos and another American quagmire.

Contrary to Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran is a sizeable state actor with greater geographic and institutional depth. Consequently, it was able to conserve its command-and-control structure after it had sustained a swift and significant blow by replacing assassinated senior commanders. Iran also apparently continued making decisions and implementing policies through an emergency and ad-hoc military and political council. During the twelve-day conflict, these measures allowed Iran to inflict or impose a cost on its adversaries by launching missiles and drones at Israeli targets and then American bases in Qatar and Iraq. Domestically, the regime acted quickly and decisively to promote its survival. In the event he was assassinated, Khamenei purportedly put a contingency plan in place by proposing three candidates to replace him as supreme leader. Throughout the war, the regime arrested hundreds and executed several suspected spies, collaborators, and dissidents. It also disabled the Internet and other communications to reduce further infiltration by the Israeli and American intelligence services, and to mitigate the mobilization of political opponents inside the country. At the same time, shutting down these services left Iranian citizens without sufficient information to adequately anticipate and respond to ongoing Israeli strikes.

In these post-conflict conditions, and assuming the ceasefire holds, changes to the regime will probably occur through restructuring or reshuffling within the pre-existing military and political establishment. This scenario appears likely given the lack of a viable political opposition. Outside of Iran, individuals and organizations like the Shah’s son and the Mojahedin-e-Khalq are not necessarily any more democratic than the regime and lack legitimacy among a sizeable segment of Iranian society, not to mention a disunified diaspora. Behind the belligerent and bombastic rhetoric, the Iranian regime, or certain elements inside it, feels vulnerable and paranoid. These sentiments predated the current conflict and were exacerbated by degraded proxies by Israel and direct confrontation with it since the Gaza war, along with the downfall of the al-Assad regime in Syria. The regime also feels a deeper sense of strategic loneliness after having been largely abandoned by its regional proxies and international partners like Russia and China during the conflict. Furthermore, it feels betrayed and deceived by the United States for ostensibly negotiating in bad faith and allowing Israel to drag it directly into the war. These sentiments also apply to the European Union for threatening to impose snapback sanctions against Iran and to the IAEA for censuring Iran’s nuclear activities and failing to condemn the Israeli and American attacks on its safeguarded facilities in violation of international law.

In the end, the Iranian regime will likely emerge from the conflict more defiant toward the West, as evidenced by the decision to suspend cooperation with the IAEA. Since the war, there seems to exist an even stronger consensus inside the Iranian state and society in favor of weaponizing the nuclear program to deter future Israeli and American attacks. Such a move would have a high probability of detection and would presumably invite more of these attacks on a preemptive basis, as Israel attempts to maintain its monopoly on nuclear force in the region. Domestically, and as epitomized by the abovementioned arrests and executions during the conflict, the regime will likely remain more repressive, particularly with persistent perceptions of weakness and feelings of paranoia within its ranks. This repression risks rendering the regime more vulnerable by incentivizing Iranians to resist it by cooperating with the United States and Israel, as well as participating in popular protests and political violence inside the country.