The Regime Survives, Trump Has to Deal, and Iranians Are the Biggest Losers

The U.S.–Israel war on Iran was supposed to end quickly in either an “unconditional surrender” or regime change. Weeks into the conflict, none of it has happened. There appears to be little cause for celebration in Washington, notwithstanding Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s daily jingoistic proclamations.

There is, of course, even less cause for celebration among the population living under nightly aerial assault in Iran. Pro-war Iranians in the diaspora, too, seem to have tamped down their initial exhilaration over the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

It appears that neither the U.S. nor Israel had any plan if the Iranian nezam, or regime, decided to punch back after being subjected to a massive surprise attack on February 28. Those counterpunches have led to the deaths of U.S. service members, Israeli civilians, and migrant workers living in the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf.

Then there is the economic cost. Oil and gas production and transit are frozen in the Gulf, thanks to Iran’s missile strikes that hit regional energy infrastructure and its closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The markets, accordingly, are in disarray.

“Everyone,” Mike Tyson once said, “has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Iran’s leaders seem to think they have the upper hand right now — they have rejected a ceasefire offer from the U.S. outright — but Donald Trump might have more tricks up his sleeve.

The U.S. is moving troops into the Persian Gulf, potentially with a limited ground invasion looming. Trump, reports suggest, is most likely to go after a small island where Iran keeps an oil terminal for its tankers, or one of the islands closer to the actual Strait, which he would like to see open to all sea traffic.

For now, talks might not be in the offing, despite Trump’s proclamations — most recently that, despite the “fake news,” talks are ongoing and going well. Even by seizing Kharg Island or any other Iranian territory, however, Trump will not make the Iranians buckle. Short of a full-fledged regime change invasion, taking an Iranian outpost in the Persian Gulf may shift the balance of power, but not topple the government. Talks will still be necessary to end the war.

So, the assumption at this point is that the regime will survive — and the ones who really pay for that will be the Iranian people.

Who to Talk To

There is a generous view about Trump’s intentions: that there actually was a realistic plan, one that wasn’t about forcing capitulation or actual regime change. Though some Iranians, especially the former crown prince Reza Pahlavi and his supporters, had certainly hoped for a war of regime change, it’s plausible that Trump was merely seeking a regime adjustment, as he secured in Venezuela.

Even that plan, though, has fallen apart more than once. As Trump himself has said, when Khamenei and his family were targeted for assassination by Israel in the opening salvo of the war, some of the people that the U.S. had identified as potential Delcy Rodríguez types were also killed.

It all makes one wonder whether the close coordination between Israel and the U.S. didn’t extend to letting the Israelis know that Trump would be satisfied with a Venezuela outcome. Or, if the Israelis did know, then whether they intentionally undermined those plans.

If that’s what happened, it would also explain the later Israeli assassination of Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, who appeared to be Iran’s top official in the physical absence of the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.

Killing Larijani would have helped to forestall any deal that Trump might make with the regime. Larijani, a conservative but known as a pragmatist who, as parliament speaker, had supported the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the U.S., could be someone that Trump may have been able to leverage as a partner in a peace deal. Like the other potential interlocutors Trump had in mind, however, he ended up very dead.

Now the person being openly talked about in Washington as someone to talk to is perhaps the last pragmatic conservative in the top leadership, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, a former commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps like Larijani. Trump has hinted this is who he is speaking to but hasn’t name-checked him, for fear, he said, that Qalibaf too would end up somehow targeted by the Israelis. (This perplexing mouse-and-cat game recalls Bill Clinton’s quip after a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996: “Who’s the fucking superpower here?”)

It’s unclear at this stage if Qalibaf has the mandate to negotiate a deal with Trump — or whether the Iranian leadership even wants a deal yet. Instead, the Iranians may prefer to continue bleeding the enemy — and the world economy — while creating chaos in the region, all to establish a deterrence against future attacks.

That possibility is only made more likely because ultra-hardliners in Iran are ascendant — no thanks to Israeli assassinations of anyone who might be likely to deal or want a deal.

Larijani, after all, was replaced as Iran’s top security official not by a fellow pragmatist, but by an arch-conservative hardliner and former Revolutionary Guard commander Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr. And the former head of the IRGC, Mohammad Pakpour, who was killed in the strike on Khamenei’s compound on February 28, has been replaced Ahmad Vahidi, arguably more hardline as compared to his two immediate (and assassinated) predecessors.

Bad to Worse for Iranians

With reformers, moderates, and proponents of engagement with the West sidelined and irrelevant to decision-making, it seems pretty obvious that whatever plan B the Trump administration is cooking up, the options range from bad to worse, both for America and the Iranian people.

Iran’s leadership believes it’s in the driver’s seat at this stage in the war. Its most powerful tool has been economic: the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which is driving Trump and others in the administration mad. Hegseth said the Strait would be open if Iran hadn’t closed it, and Secretary of State and national security adviser Marco Rubio said the Strait will be open if Iran opens it. Indeed.

Short of complete regime change, however, opening the Strait by force will be an extremely difficult challenge.

Trump’s bad-to-worse choices are to make a deal that will be viewed by many as a loss for American credibility and a win for Iran — or to double down with a ground invasion that not only will result in American casualties, but also might fail to even secure leverage to open the Strait. An Iraq-style invasion with tens of thousands of troops and a prolonged war might result in the U.S. being able to impose a supplicant leader, but it is hard to imagine that Trump would make the decision to make such a move.

As for the Iranian people, the Islamic Republic will be more repressive than even before and will mercilessly put down any revolt by its citizens. Iranians will suffer first in the aftermath of a war that has killed innocent civilians and destroyed infrastructure and cultural heritage sites. Then they will have to live under a system that will be suspicious of any dissenter or opposition activist as an agent of Israel or the CIA.

Iran’s Islamic system post-war will be more radical and more militarized in a less centralized form; Khamenei’s death will become a cold comfort to Iranians inside and outside the country.

Trump’s own misunderstanding of Iran, Iranians, and especially the leadership in Iran has brought him to this bad-to-worse choice. If he chooses his least bad option, however, the elephant in the room will be Netanyahu. What he will decide to do if a ceasefire and a deal leaves the Iranian regime in place able to project power?

Israel’s attempts to block an early end to the war and its continued campaign to destroy as much Iranian civilian infrastructure as possible has shown that Netanyahu cares as little for the Iranian people as Trump and his supporters do, including Iranians who celebrate the war as bombs fall on their compatriots.

Maybe Trump will decide to go completely rogue and continue his war of total destruction, irrespective of what the end game is. That, sadly, would be yet another way the Iranian people will be paying the bill.