Whose Strategy?
The US/Israeli air campaign in context
(A female Israeli air force pilot [IDF])
The joint Israeli-US military operations against Iran that began on February 28th has been unprecedented in several respects.
For the first time since the Vietnam war, which ended in 1975, the US has launched large-scale air strikes without meaningfully consulting either the UN or NATO allies. At the same time, in a moment that is unmatched since the 1978-79 Iranian revolution, there is widespread hope for regime change in Iran — as shown by nationwide demonstrations across the country in January, which resulted in brutal repression and mass executions of over 7,000 Iranians, as confirmed by the Human Rights Activists News Agency. The regime is suspected to have killed at least ten or fifteen thousand more Iranians, but their deaths have not yet been verified.
By taking military action now, the US is seeking to capitalize on this widespread disaffection, to degrade the regime’s capacity to take further repressive action and, in so doing, to give Iranians space to take their fates into their own hands.
Among the many goals Trump has so far mentioned, he is also very clearly motivated by the recent success — as he sees it — of his January 2026 regime decapitation operation in Venezuela, which saw the dictator Maduro removed from power but left the rest of the regime intact.
Political realists must also acknowledge that Trump — whose polling numbers are unfavourable as midterms approach — is seeking a boost from the ‘halo effect’ that successful use of military force in election years provided to Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush. Trump will also know that ‘wag the dog’ failed to deliver positive results for Carter and George H.W. Bush. He no doubt considers himself wilier and more ruthless than either of them, and is once again emboldened by the recent success (as he sees it) of his military action in Venezuela.
The historical reality is that regime change on the scale now hoped for in Iran has never been achieved by air power alone. The closest precedents are NATO’s missions in Libya in 2011 and Kosovo/Serbia in 1999. In the former case, rebel forces were needed on the ground to overthrow the Gaddafi regime. In the latter, Serbia withdrew from Kosovo but Milosevic held power until 2000, when he was ousted after a disputed election and mass protests.
