The mainstream media has been obsessed with the fear of regime change ad nauseam for two weeks now. Another headline appears every day making the same unoriginal argument that God forbid Israel, or the United States, contemplate regime change in Iran because it would open the gates of hell. The Washington Post has run more than seven pieces warning about regime change in Iran. With the bombing by the United States of Iranian nuclear sites, the anti-regime change lobby has reached a crescendo of false warnings.
The current story in Time magazine has the screaming headline, “In bombing Iran, Trump looked past 80 years of U.S. regime change mistakes.”
A recent NBC News piece argues that U.S.-led regime change is doomed to fail, pointing to Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya as cautionary tales. The piece, while emotionally resonant, is intellectually shallow, a retreat into historical fatalism rather than a meaningful engagement with facts or the present geopolitical reality.
Worse, it arrives at a time when the U.S. airstrikes against Iranian nuclear installations have radically altered the strategic landscape. The conversation is no longer whether regime change in Iran is a viable option, but whether it is an urgent necessity. NBC’s piece offers no constructive vision for confronting what happens if the regime remains in place.
The argument rests on a selective reading of history that reduces complex interventions to simplistic failures while completely ignoring the dramatically different context in Iran today. Iraq in 2003, Afghanistan post-Sept. 11, 2001, and Libya in 2011 were all deeply flawed efforts, not because regime change is inherently unworkable, but because those missions were undermined by strategic incoherence, poor planning and willful ignorance of on-the-ground realities.
To cite these examples as irrefutable proof that regime change must never be attempted again is not analysis, it’s paralysis. And that paralysis emboldens regimes like Iran’s, which are not only internally repressive but also externally aggressive, funding terrorism and threatening regional and global stability. Such fatalistic analysis only helps these regimes to think they are undefeatable and encourages them to continue with more brutal internal repression.
Iraq and Afghanistan: Lessons, not excuses
Let’s consider Iraq. The military removal of former leader Saddam Hussein was swift and popular among many Iraqis, particularly the Kurds. But what followed was a series of self-inflicted wounds. The disastrous policy of de-Ba’athification stripped Iraq’s institutions of experienced officials and left hundreds of thousands with nothing to lose, many of whom joined the insurgency. Compounding this was the failure to anticipate Iran’s exploitation of the post-war chaos. U.S. policymakers allowed Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias like the Badr Brigade to flood into the country and take root within Iraq’s new security apparatus.
Afghanistan was no better. After toppling the Taliban, the United States and its allies failed to grasp that the movement was not just a loose band of extremists; It was a deeply ideological insurgency with a religious and tribal backbone, supported and sheltered by Pakistan. Even Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was found hiding comfortably within Pakistani territory, a supposed ally. Yet Washington never applied real pressure on Islamabad. As a result, the Taliban waited, regrouped and eventually reclaimed the country with some help from Iran, which was determined to ensure neither Iraq nor Afghanistan would become a paradigm of stability and prosperity for the Iranian people.
The core problem in both these cases was not regime change itself. It was the lack of strategic vision for what comes next. These are painful lessons, yes, but they are not arguments for inaction. History is not a closed case study of unchanging warnings. Like science, it evolves through trial, failure and adaptation.
Why Iran is different
Iran is not Iraq. It is not Afghanistan. It is not Libya. Iran has a highly educated population, a long history of interaction with the West, and an overwhelmingly young and disaffected society deeply alienated from its religious rulers. Unlike Saddam Hussein or the Taliban, the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy is brittle, propped up by brute force and propaganda rather than genuine popular support.
There have been four major uprisings in Iran since 2009, and all were met with extreme state violence. This is not a nation resigned to tyranny. It is a nation yearning to be free if only the odds would tilt in their favor.
And that brings us to the present moment. The U.S. military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities have put the regime on notice. The strikes are not merely punitive; they signal a reassertion of red lines long crossed. In this new environment, regime change is no longer a hypothetical taboo subject; it is an unavoidable policy decision to make.
A viable path forward
Critics argue that there is no organized opposition within Iran capable of leading a post-regime transition. That’s true, but there are other options. The failure of Iran’s opposition is a problem, but not a justification for inaction.
Iran’s military contains potential elements for regime change. The regular army and the younger officers within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are not monolithic in their loyalty to the clerical elite if the regime is weakened. Many can be encouraged to take action and save Iran and what is left of its infrastructure instead of becoming martyrs for the ayatollahs.
These officers could be encouraged—through covert support, intelligence coordination and diplomatic incentives—to form a transitional government aimed at restoring order and preparing the ground for the future elections. This would be a military-led shift from within, not a foreign invasion. No boots on the ground. No decade-long occupation. Just a carefully supported tipping of the internal balance of power.
Such a transition would be more orderly, more legitimate and far more stable than the status quo, which is one of creeping nuclear crisis, internal collapse and a power vacuum, all recipes for another failed state.
Ending the 1953 myth
The NBC News article also trotted out the tired mythology surrounding the 1953 CIA-backed coup against then-Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, an event often misrepresented as the genesis of Iran’s anti-Western stance. Let’s clarify the facts.
Mossadegh was not “elected by popular vote.” He was appointed by the shah, per Iran’s constitutional structure at the time. When he was legally dismissed for unconstitutionally dissolving the elected parliament by a dubious, disputed referendum, he refused to step down. That, not the CIA’s involvement, constituted the real break with legality, or a coup. Furthermore, the clerics who later formed the Islamic Republic were no fans of Mossadegh. They feared his secularism and his ties to the Communist Tudeh Party, and they supported the shah’s reinstatement.
To say that 1953 “poisoned” the Iranian people against the West is a convenient simplification that ignores the real drivers of Iran’s radicalism: The 1979 Islamic Revolution and the ideology of Khomeinism. Anti-Americanism was not born in 1953. It was institutionalized in 1979 by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose political Islam was vehemently opposed to Mossadegh and either executed, imprisoned or exiled Mossadegh’s supporters after he came to power.
The stakes now
The debate about regime change in Iran is not just academic. It’s happening in real-time, in the aftermath of U.S. strikes, in the corridors of power in Tehran and the whispers of dissent echoing through Iranian cities.
NBC, Time, The Washington Post, The New York Times and those who share their repetitive outlook would have us believe that all options are off the table because mistakes were made in the past. But mistakes were made because of poor execution, not because the goals themselves were illegitimate. If we allow those errors to harden into doctrine, we are essentially conceding the field to regimes like Iran’s, regimes that will not stop at repression inside their borders but will project violence far beyond them.
Regime change in Iran is not just a moral imperative. It is increasingly a strategic one. And the sooner we stop hiding behind the ghosts of Iraq and start building a smarter, more focused path forward by learning from past mistakes, the better the outcome will be for the Iranians, for the region and the world.