Netanyahu speaks of regime change in Iran. But it's not the same as regime destruction
On Sunday in an interview with Fox News, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, pontificated on a theme he has become increasingly attached to in recent years: that Israel under his leadership would not simply attempt to dismantle Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes through military attack, but in the process usher in regime change in Tehran.
The government in Tehran, he said, was 'very weak', adding that given the opportunity, '80% of the people would throw these theological thugs out.'
The list of targets in Iran hit by Israel in the last two days appear to confirm that Israel may be pursuing a broader agenda than simply destroying Tehran's nuclear programme – striking police headquarters, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence directorate, and the state television broadcaster while it was live on air.
For all that he views himself as an expert on its internal politics, Netanyahu has never visited Iran. His knowledge of the country is filtered through intelligence briefings, which see Iran as a hostile problem, and through the lens of pro-Israeli thinktanks.
If Netanyahu's comments appear eerily familiar, it is because they are. The same Netanyahu, and Iran hawks in the US, pushed a similar argument in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Iraqis then, like Iranians, the world was told, would welcome the removal of Saddam. The Middle East would be reshaped.
Meaningful regime change, however (whatever that actually means in practical terms), is not the same as regime destruction.
Iraq, where ultimately an incompetent US effort was made at nation-building, and Libya – where it was not – ushered in periods of bloody chaos, which continues in Libya.
Ironically, it is not a story unfamiliar in Iran's own revolution. While there is a tendency, through historical foreshortening, to see the Islamic revolution emerging fully formed in 1979 – the reality is that the fall of the shah triggered a period of competition in Iran between conservative Islamists, communists and different factions within both the Shia clergy and revolutionary cadres.
And the notion that Netanyahu and Israel will be seen as a distant saviour is a dubious one at best.
'Iranian activists, people who fought for freedom and justice all their lives, first of all know that their value has little to do with people like Netanyahu,' Arash Azizi, author of the book What Iranians Want, told CNN earlier this week.
Ali Vaez argued on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Pivotal States podcast, only days before Israel launched its attack, that historically many Iranians – himself included – have been nervous of sudden change.
'I was born after the revolution. Obviously there was a high degree of dissatisfaction within the country even in the 1990s when I was a teenager.
'I think there was this sense in my generation and in my parents' generation that radical change often results in a worse outcome. It ends in grief. It rarely brings about a better situation.
'Reform is better. Evolutionary change is better. That was the concept that we were pursuing.'
Democracy activists in Tehran have echoed that view in recent days: an Israeli war does not help them.
What is clear is that Israel sees regime destruction as an end in its own right, with no interest in Iran's future beyond weakening and destabilising a regional rival.
That is entirely in line with Israel's long-term approach to what it perceives as security issues. Israel backed Hamas against Fatah, a policy whose consequences are visible in the carnage in Gaza today. It backed the South Lebanese army (SLA) in Lebanon, until the SLA's collapse amid the emergence of Hezbollah.
Now Israel is arming violent criminal factions in Gaza against Hamas amid the overwhelming sense that Netanyahu has no plan for Gaza's future even as he is reducing it to rubble.
Netanyahu's enthusiasm for regime change appears to be viewed – for now at least – with some scepticism in Washington.
'They might be more comfortable with regime change than we are,' a US official told Axios. 'They may be more comfortable with destroying the country than we are.'
Iraq and Libya also demonstrate the practical difficulties of a violent transition between regimes. In Iraq, US and other officials promoted figures from the Iraqi exile diaspora, such as Ahmed Chalabi, while having, for a protracted period, a negligible grasp of emerging centres of influence or tribal and sectarian tensions.
In Libya – in the immediate aftermath of Gaddafi – that dynamic was even more in evidence as international missions, including European, struggled as midwives to a transitional government without authority, and challenged by warlordism, even as other powers including the UAE and Russia moved into the vacuum.
Long-term Iran watchers are also highly dubious that Israel can engineer a path to regime destruction through aerial warfare, even in the event of decapitation with the killing of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. They point out that the Israeli offensive could just as easily allow the regime to retrench and accelerate efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon.
More widely there is a risk that Israel's efforts to destabilise Iran could lend new legitimacy to the clerical regime, even in Middle Eastern countries profoundly suspicious of it as they grow increasingly anxious over Israel's increasingly violent reach.
'With Israel's expansion of its offensive to include Iran, there is no telling where the boundaries of this battleground will end,' King Abdullah of Jordan said on Tuesday. His country has faced the recent challenge of hosting both Syrian and Iraqis fleeing their civil conflicts. 'And that is a threat to people everywhere. Ultimately, this conflict must end,' he added.
Peter Beaumont is a senior international correspondent for the Guardian and former Jerusalem correspondent. He covered the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, the Libyan revolution and has reported from Tehran.
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