Skip to content

Real-Time Analysis: Accelerating Regime Evolution in Iran 

Commander-in-chief Of IRGCorps, Hossein Salami
The late commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami, who was killed in the June Israeli strikes on Iran, speaks during a ceremony marking the anniversary of the death of the late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi at a square in southern Tehran on May 15, 2025. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

As the Israel-Iran war intensifies, talk that Israel or the United States want to effect regime change in Tehran has grown. This question is at the core of deciding and shaping U.S. interests. Public statements aside, both know the constraints making this highly unlikely. Judging from the target sets in the current conflict, it appears as if Israel’s strategy is to weaken the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as the center of gravity of the Iranian political system and create a vacuum that the country’s regular armed forces, the Artesh, are trying to fill. This could change Iran’s behavior in Israel’s favor.  

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country’s airstrikes could bring regime change to Iran. In a subsequent interview, he remarked: “It could certainly be the result, because Iran is very weak,” adding that “the decision to act, to rise up, at this time, is the decision of the Iranian people.” Shifting the burden of regime change to the population is common in these scenarios. 

Regime change became controversial after the U.S toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 and the Baathist regime in Iraq two years later. Both wars showed that while military force removed regimes, they also led to years or decades of large, costly military deployments without favorably affecting either country’s politics. In Iraq, the move pushed the country into Iran’s orbit and led to the rise of the Islamic State. In Afghanistan, Washington was forced to hand the country back over to the Taliban. Regime change is no longer a serious U.S. strategy. 

Nonetheless, the phrase remains part of the popular lexicon and is clouding public understanding of the nature of the war between Israel and Iran, which has quite quickly shifted to expectations of Israeli-led regime change. If the United States required large ground deployments to achieve regime change against far weaker powers than Iran, it is not likely that the Israeli air force can do so in a country of 92 million slightly smaller than Alaska with difficult mountainous terrain. While U.S. involvement might facilitate toppling the Iranian government, Washington seems hesitant to go beyond neutralizing the country’s hardened main nuclear facility at Fordow. Israel is trying to rope the United States into the war, but Washington seems more invested in ongoing backchannel talks with Tehran.    

Netanyahu’s own statements therefore clearly indicate that his government is under no illusion that it can dictate events in Iran to guarantee regime change. Therefore, the question becomes: What is the strategic objective of Israel’s military campaign? Israel and the U.S. are on the same page as far as the aim of blocking Tehran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. But beyond that, their interests seem to diverge.  

Israel certainly appears to be trying to weaken the regime, which even without nuclear weapons, has posed a significant threat through its proxies. Therefore, it is in Israel’s interest to go beyond targeting Iran’s nuclear capabilities. This would explain its elimination of most of the top commanders of the IRGC but does not necessarily point to a focused regime change campaign. By weakening the IRGC it may well be hoping to precipitate an internal struggle that would empower pragmatic elements within the Iranian security establishment, especially the Artesh, that would be more open to a broader de-escalation with Israel and accommodation of Tehran’s core security interests 

A New Lines report describes an internal process of evolutionary regime change underway in Iran for nearly 20 years. The Islamic Republic was shifting from a theocracy to a military-dominated regime, given the weakening of the clergy and its growing dependence upon the security forces. The report outlines how the outcome of this potential shift relied on the ability of the parallel military institutions to arrive at a power-sharing mechanism.  

However, at the time, there was no inkling that a little over a year later Israel would launch a major military campaign against Iran. The report forecast that this shift would follow the impending death of 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel’s targeting of the IRGC leadership attack has likely accelerated that process. A key indicator that the Artesh has stepped into the breach is the appointment of its commander-in-chief, Maj. Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi, as the chief of staff of the Armed Forces General Command overseeing both the IRGC and the Artesh. This followed the killing of the general command’s previous commander, IRGC Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri.  

Given that the Islamic Republic is experiencing its worst national catastrophe  since its founding, internal criticism of the IRGC’s policies would be expected. That, coupled with the inability to defend the country from air attacks, may further empower the Artesh. After all, it is a more secular and professional military force whose mandate is defending the nation-state of Iran, which lacks the ideological zeal of the IRGC and its fealty to the Khamenei-led regime.     

It is too early to tell what will become of the IRGC-Artesh relationship. But the Artesh will try to enhance its influence over the national security decision-making process to deal with the current state of emergency. An intense factional tug-of-war is likely occurring over how to resume negotiations with the United States before further losses threaten the regime. The Artesh’s challenge is how to visibly respond to Israeli attacks while negotiating its way out of the fight. 

The extreme scenario in Iran entails chaos and regime infighting, with different rebel groups – ethnic and political – taking advantage. At the moment, however, the regime is still in place. Although it cannot defend itself from external attacks, it can run an effective police state. A more likely scenario is an internal reengineering of the regime, one that would be ready for a compromise with the United States. In other words, Iran is primed for a shift in behavior,  and not of the regime.  


The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not an official policy or position of New Lines Institute.

Related Articles

Place and Purpose Drove Montreal’s Cultural Evolution 

Place and Purpose Drove Montreal’s Cultural Evolution 

Montreal’s emergence as a cultural powerhouse is no accident – it is a story of vision, deliberate investment, historical turning

Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Prospects for Peace

Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Prospects for Peace

In this episode of the Contours podcast, host Eugene Chausovsky sits down with Dr. Farid Shafiyev, the Chairman of the

Afghanistan: The Forgotten

Afghanistan: The Forgotten

In this first episode of Eurasian Connectivity in the new year, host Kamran Bokhari speaks with Dayne Curry, the country manager for Mercy Corps in Afghanistan, about developments in the Taliban-ruled country since its exit from the headlines.

The Syrian Democratic Forces’ House of Cards in Deir ez-Zour

The Syrian Democratic Forces’ House of Cards in Deir ez-Zour

Calvin Wilder and Aram Shabanian explore the late August's clashes between the SDF and Arab tribes in Eastern Syria