When President Trump expressed hope last weekend that air war He was opening a front against Iran and overthrowing the country’s regime, he was betting against history.
Never before have warplanes, missiles and bombs been enough on their own remove a government And replace it with another one. The US military has overturned governments in the past, but all of those operations have required troops or at least an indigenous force.
Trump has made no secret of his desire for regime change. A few hours after launching the first air strike, he Called on Iranians to rise up against his government, saying “This will likely be your only chance for generations.” On Thursday, he said they should be involved in choosing Iran’s next leader, and then wrote on Truth Social on Friday that the US would insist on “unconditional surrender” and “the selection of a great and acceptable leader” before striking a deal to “bring Iran back from the brink of destruction.”
But American military leaders have demanded managing expectations In public briefings on what the war could achieve. They say the aim is to strip Iran of ballistic missiles, unilateral strike drones and ships that threaten US forces and allies, as well as dismantle what remains of the country’s nuclear program.
Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command, which is monitoring the war, told reporters on Thursday that US strikes could benefit Iran’s opposition by “targeting the headquarters and the people who are targeting protesters” and urged Iranians to stay in their homes and “remain calm”.
But the U.S. military has not promised to take steps to topple Iran’s regime or bring new leaders to power in Tehran, such as arming the opposition or providing air cover for a potential uprising.
differences of opinion have also come forward The goal of war between America and Israel. Elbridge Colby, the Defense Department’s top policy official, told Congress on Tuesday that the Pentagon was pursuing “scoped and appropriate objectives” by focusing on Iran’s offensive military capabilities. When MPs asked why the war started? an air strike resulting in death Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded bluntly, saying, “They are Israeli operations.”
Airstrikes have long been a way to project military power for US administrations that want to reduce the risk of American casualties and avoid engaging in ground wars. US military officials say they have greatly reduced Iran’s ability to launch ballistic missiles and have sunk much of the country’s navy. But without American or local ground forces, they have never toppled and replaced a foreign government.
“Air power alone can do many things well, but regime change is not one of them,” said Frank Kendall, who served as Air Force secretary under President Joe Biden.
digging in
Despite Israeli and American firepower raining down on Iran, the strikes have yet to take out core structures of the regime, designed to stifle dissent at home and absorb external shocks.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was established in 1979 ensure the survival of the revolutionary regimeThis includes 190,000 active-duty soldiers. These are in addition to the more than 300,000 troops in Iran’s conventional army and about 600,000 irregular militias that the regime can mobilize, according to estimates by the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.
After Khamenei was killed, the regime convened an 88-member assembly, which named his son Mojtaba as the new leader.
If the regime buckles or falls, an early signal would be defection from those forces or simple acts of refusal to follow orders among the ranks, as happened during Iran’s 1979 revolution that brought the current regime into existence. Other signs of the regime’s grip weakening could include major industrial action, such as strikes among oil workers.
The fog of war in the early days of the conflict has made it difficult for American experts to identify those indicators, and some experts are skeptical that they will emerge.
“We’re not seeing it, and we’re not likely to see it,” said Alan Ayer, a Persian-speaking former diplomat who served on the U.S. nuclear negotiating team with Iran. “The IRGC and other elites benefit most from the status quo and would prefer to fight rather than switch.”
If the regime falls, the establishment of a new government in Iran could provide Washington with a partner with whom the US and Israel could work to stabilize the country, secure Iran’s supply of enriched uranium, and eliminate what remains likely to be a stockpile of hidden missiles, drones, and sea mines.
But another scenario is that the Iranian regime survives while the administration around it largely collapses — an outcome that could spread chaos to the country of more than 90 million people that sits in the world’s most critical region. energy shipping lane In the Persian Gulf.
The survival of the regime would also present Trump with a difficult dilemma: persist with an air and naval campaign that could reduce Iran’s offensive capabilities, or expand the scope of the operation by taking additional steps to support political factions or separatist groups inside the country.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said sending US ground troops to Iran was not part of current plans, but late Saturday Trump said they could be used if there was “a very good reason.”
Trump’s recent calls to Kurdish officials in Iraq fueled speculation that he was hoping to encourage attacks against the regime Kurdish fighters in neighboring Iran. But Trump also said Saturday that he rejected the idea because “the war is complicated enough without involving the Kurds.” Even if the White House took such steps, the Kurdish minority would represent another point of pressure on Tehran, but they would not be seen as a viable force to rule the country.
“Ultimately, there has to be a political process. There has to be someone who can step into the void and begin the difficult work of government,” said Joseph Votel, a retired four-star Army general and former head of Central Command.
history lesson
The theory that air power could deliver a decisive victory was outlined by Italian General Giulio Douhet, who argued in a 1921 treatise, “The Command of the Air”, that strategic bombing could win a war by destroying a country’s “vital centers”, which he defined as industry, transportation, communications, government, and “the will of the people.”
His argument that bombing industrial centers would lead to quick victory was seen by many as a reaction to World War I and the prolonged, brutal war. But it was controversial at the time and not put into practice.
Although bombing contributed to Germany’s defeat in World War II, it took ground attacks by the Allies to win that war. The US’s provocative attacks on Tokyo did not force Japan to surrender, which only happened when the US escalated with conventional air strikes and dropped two atomic bombs on Japan five months later.
Decades later, the emergence of stealth technology and precision-guided weapons revived the idea that air strikes could be decisive. Colonel John Warden, who in the 1980s led the Air Force Directorate, which was tasked with developing new ideas for applying air power to conventional warfare, argued that the US had the means to induce “strategic paralysis” that would eliminate an opponent’s ability to effectively marshal its military forces.
That approach was embodied in the 1991 “Desert Storm” campaign, in which the US-led coalition ousted Iraqi troops from Kuwait. The 38 days of air strikes proved highly effective. Nevertheless, the campaign did not end even after a four-day ground battle. Some senior officials in the Saudi-backed George H.W. Bush administration were not supportive of wholesale regime change, although the military did try to bomb Saddam Hussein, who was also commander in chief of Iraq’s armed forces.
Since then, American air power has played an essential role in defeating opponents, although successful campaigns to remove the regime have involved American or local ground forces. The 78-day air campaign by the US and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies in 1999, which reversed the attacks of the Yugoslavian army on Kosovo, benefited from resistance on the ground by the separatist Kosovar militia, the Kosovo Liberation Army, and warnings from the British Army that it could go on the ground.
In 2011, US and allied air power ended the regime of Libyan strongman Moammar Gaddafi, although it required the help of opposition forces on the ground. After a brief period of revolutionary hope, Libya divided into two rival governments a few years later.
“We have consistently found over time that air power is very effective, but air power is most effective when it is part of a joint force,” said Kelly Grieco, an air power expert at the Stimson Center.
air and land
Part of what makes air power such a powerful tool, he said, is that it prevents enemy forces from being able to safely concentrate, and when enemy forces become dispersed, they lose their offensive power.
“That’s why you often need your ground forces or capable local partners,” he said, “because they force the adversary to concentrate” so they become vulnerable targets for air campaigns.
Even the strongest supporters of air power do not think it can single-handedly change the dynamics inside Iran, although they say it could set up an environment in which political change can occur by seriously weakening the regime.
“You can remove everything that a state needs to be a threat to you and make future operations very difficult and perhaps impossible for them,” retired Air Force Colonel John Warden said in an interview.
“Now, if you want a new government to come in, someone from the inside needs to do something to step up and actually take control.”
Michael R. write to gordon michael.gordon@wsj.com And on Jared Malsin jared.malsin@wsj.com
