Former CIA operative: regime change in Iran is much harder than the US thinks

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free

Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world

The writer is a former CIA operative with deep exposure in the Middle East

The United States and Israel have done significant damage to Iran’s military and security apparatus. Senior commanders have been killed at a pace rarely seen in modern warfare.

The regime’s sense of impunity has been shaken. These are real achievements. But the Islamic republic remains what it has long been: a regime that is brutal at home and destabilising abroad.

Military success should not be confused with political transformation. That is the dilemma now confronting Washington and its regional allies: how to exploit battlefield gains without falling into the familiar illusion that pressure alone can produce regime change.

After 26 years in operations with the CIA, including helping lead sizeable covert action programmes, my experience tells me there is no silver bullet here — least of all in covert action.

What some foreign-policy theorists miss is that political culture cannot be redesigned from the air, and human nature cannot be remade from a conference room in Washington. The question now is whether we understand Iran well enough to influence its fracture without owning the collapse.

Most serious observers already understand that uncomfortable truth. The prospects for immediate political change in Tehran remain slim. As the scholar Karim Sadjadpour has observed, the Revolutionary Guard and military are seeking to ensure regime survival because it is in their economic interest. Even after military setbacks, the regime’s core instruments of coercion remain intact enough to shape succession and survival.

America’s Gulf partners, especially the UAE, have no interest in being left across the water from a wounded animal. A prolonged war would raise the costs sharply: repeated missile and drone threats, disruption to shipping and insurance through the Strait of Hormuz, pressure on investor confidence in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and the latent risk of Iranian proxy or covert retaliation on Emirati soil.

The UAE’s leaders know that when the sorties end and the headlines move on, they will still face the consequences. Their concern is not only whether the Islamic republic survives, but whether it survives angry, cornered, and even more dependent on asymmetric retaliation.

For our part, the US intelligence community will need to be vigilant and resourced sufficiently so as to deal with a return to a cold war with the Islamic republic that could involve lethal operations directed at American officials.

That is why the United States should resist the temptation to move beyond President Donald Trump’s stated aims, which could lead us to slide into an open-ended campaign for regime change. The danger is not merely mission creep. It is the risk of a truly regional war.

For more than a generation, some US policymakers have believed the Middle East could be fixed, reordered, or remade through force and political engineering. That conceit has failed repeatedly because it misunderstands how power actually works in the region.

That is particularly relevant when discussing alternatives to the current regime. There is no cohesive opposition prepared to take the reins. The Iranian diaspora is fractured. The Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or MEK — an exiled opposition group with controversial internal practices and little credibility inside Iran — is not a viable vehicle for legitimacy.

Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah and the best-known monarchist figure in exile, remains the most recognisable opposition name abroad, and that should be acknowledged.

He may yet emerge as a genuine champion of the Iranian people, but prominence is not the same as power and he does not yet command the loyalty of the security or military institutions that would determine any serious transition.

Washington should also avoid squandering whatever goodwill remains among ordinary Iranians who distinguish between their rulers and the outside world. In conducting military operations, the US takes tremendous care to minimise risk to civilians. That is why the investigation into the bombing of the school in Minab should be allowed to run its course. If it is ultimately determined that the United States was responsible, Washington should acknowledge the mistake and apologise. That is both morally right and strategically wise.

History offers sobering lessons when it comes to covert action. It has in some cases contributed to regime change: the 1953 CIA-British coup in Iran that removed Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, and the 1954 US-backed overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala. But those episodes also reveal the limits.

Covert action can help topple a leader. It rarely builds legitimacy, institutions or a durable political order. And the consequences — backlash, repression, instability or long-term anti-American grievance — can arrive years later.

The wiser course is strategic patience: continue for a time to degrade the regime’s lethal capabilities, but dial down the bombing at the earliest opportunity so as not to harden civilian sentiment or squander goodwill. Above all, Washington should continue to consult closely with Gulf allies who will be left to manage the consequences long after the kinetic phase ends.

Iran may yet change. In fact, this is likely. But history suggests it is far easier for the United States to weaken this regime than to shape what comes next.