Editor’s Note: Javad Heiran-Nia directs the Persian Gulf Studies Group at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Iran and has written several times for Stimson on Iran’s foreign and domestic politics. Hessam Habibi Doroh is a researcher at Khayrion Think Tank, a Bratislava based think tank and consulting platform focusing on the MENA region. Doroh is also the author of “Sunni Communities in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2013-2021,” teaches International Relations, intercultural and interreligious studies and is working on a PhD at the University of Public Service in Budapest.
By Barbara Slavin, Distinguished Fellow, Middle East Perspectives Project
The notion of regime change has been openly advocated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump, both during and following the Israeli and American strikes on Iran.
On June 23, two days after U.S. bombers joined the Israeli war and struck Iranian nuclear sites, Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social: “It’s not politically correct to use the term ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???” Yet, following a ceasefire on June 24, Trump moderated his stance, emphasizing that regime change involves chaos—a scenario the U.S. and many in the region seek to avoid.
The regime change agenda clashes with the West’s historical record of failed interventions in the Middle East as well as with Trump’s own stance and that of many of his MAGA followers. For years, Trump has castigated Democrats and Republicans alike for forcefully seeking to change the governments of countries with which the U.S. has an adversarial relationship, particularly in the Middle East. During his campaign for a second term, Trump argued that President Joe Biden “has sent our blood and treasure to support regime change in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and every other globalist disaster of the past half-century.” During his first major trip abroad, in May, Trump, in a speech in Riyadh, said, “In the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built… And the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, has supported regime change in Iran as the ultimate guarantor of his country’s security. On June 13, just hours after Israel began bombing Iran, he urged Iranians to “unite around your flag” and fight for freedom from what he described as an oppressive regime.
Israel targeted not only nuclear sites but also Iran’s state television headquarters, aiming to disrupt state cohesion and incite public protests. However, the primary public response was not mobilization for regime change but the spread of collective fear.
Some sociologists have argued that external variables could potentially lead to systemic changes in Iran’s political structure. Iranian sociologist Asef Bayat suggests that either internal power struggles or external interventions may trigger such transformation.
In the aftermath of the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests against mandatory hijab in 2022-2023, certain political and social groups—including segments of Iran’s reformist movement—concluded that popular protests alone were insufficient to achieve structural change. Former President Seyed Mohammad Khatami, in a statement on the eve of the 44th anniversary of the 1979 Revolution, argued: “While protests against various grievances are understandable, a little reflection shows that given the balance of power and the government’s capacity, its [mechanical] overthrow is impossible. The slogan of overthrow mainly serves as a pretext for increased restrictions and further repression.”
Despite the military pressure and the temporary destabilization of Iranian state structures during the 12-day war, public support for externally driven regime change failed to materialize. Several sociological mechanisms explain this. Iran’s strong sense of national identity, deeply shaped by collective memories of foreign intervention, fosters public opposition to external interference. During World War II, despite Iran’s declared neutrality, Allied forces occupied the country, forcing Shah Reza Pahlavi to abdicate. Post-war Soviet reluctance to withdraw from northern Iran and support for separatist movements have also left enduring scars on the national psyche.
The 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh that reinstalled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as well as the Shah’s perceived dependence on the West deepened an anti-colonial sensitivity, as did the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, when most of the world supported the aggressor, Iraq. Even among internal critics of the regime, foreign-sponsored regime change is widely perceived as a violation of national sovereignty.
Further, the post-9/11 experiences of Iraq, Libya, and Syria have served as cautionary tales in which fear of instability outweighs the promise of a more representative and less repressive government. The public’s rational calculus favors maintaining an unsatisfactory status quo over risking national collapse.
Crucially, the absence of a viable, unified opposition has exacerbated this reluctance. The 2022 protests underscored deep fragmentation within Iran’s opposition movements. The exiled son of the Shah remains a contested figure with limited appeal among key social constituencies, particularly the middle class, leftist factions, ethnic groups, and Islamists, especially Iranian Sunni Muslims.
Some Iranians, both inside and outside the country, believe that foreign powers fundamentally oppose the emergence of a strong Iran, regardless of its political leadership. Shireen Hunter, a former Iranian diplomat under the monarchy and a professor at Georgetown University, points to Iran’s exclusion from NATO and Israel’s historic refusal to sell strategic weaponry to Iran, even during the Shah’s reign, as evidence of this enduring skepticism.
Similarly, Roham Alvandi of the London School of Economics and Political Science argues that the prospect of a powerful Iran—irrespective of its governing ideology—is a strategic nightmare for Washington and Jerusalem. He suggests that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology is an inevitable response to this regional dynamic, one that long predates the Islamic Revolution. A nuclear Iran would end Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the Middle East and forever alter the strategic balance in the region. Iran, with 90 million people, is three times the size of France and has the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves and third-largest crude oil reserves. Alvandi writes: “Future leaders of Iran, like past ones, will be acutely aware that a strong and powerful Iran will never be welcomed in Jerusalem or Washington—unless Iran is willing to accept a subordinate position in the region, which no Iranian politician in this era of populist nationalism can accept.”
During the 12-day war, Israeli attacks killed more than 400 Iranian civilians, inflicted severe damage on hospitals—including Farabi Hospital in Kermanshah—struck oil depots in northwest Tehran and a fuel storage facility in the south of the city, disrupted power grids across the capital, and heavily damaged the headquarters of Iran’s state broadcaster. Yet these aggressive measures failed to fracture Iranian society. Reformist and opposition figures, including frequently jailed dissidents such as Mostafa Tajzadeh and Narges Mohammadi, condemned Israel’s attacks, with some advocating for nuclear concessions to end the conflict.
Israel’s strikes inadvertently lent credibility to the government’s longstanding depiction of Israel as a hostile enemy – a representation not widely endorsed by the Iranian public prior to the Israeli attacks. The government also focused on nationalism as opposed to the defense of the system. In a symbolic shift, following the Israeli assassination of the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed a regular army officer—not a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—as Bagheri’s successor, signaling a more nationalist rather than ideological posture.
Despite the widespread fear in Tehran and the mounting civilian suffering, the government deliberately avoided framing the war as a struggle for the regime’s survival. Instead, the dominant narrative focused on themes of sovereignty, resilience, and proportionate response—rejecting discourses of collapse, revolution, or total war. The decision to keep metro stations open around the clock as civilian shelters and to ensure the operation of government ministries, even under direct attack, served to reinforce this message of stability and institutional continuity.
The Israel-Iran War revealed a complex sociopolitical landscape in which Iranian society, though deeply dissatisfied, prioritizes internal reform over externally driven regime change. The concept of chaos phobia—a collective aversion to the uncertainty associated with violent systemic collapse—proved decisive in shaping public attitudes.
Applying Ulrich Beck’s ‘Risk-Averse Society’ framework, the preference for preserving the status quo as the ‘lesser evil’ over embracing the risks of intervention emerged as a rational response grounded in historical experience and regional comparisons.
Ultimately, the failure of the externally imposed regime change strategy underscores a fundamental miscalculation about the resilience of national identity, the fragmented nature of the opposition, and the absence of a clear and credible post-regime vision.
Editor’s Note: Javad Heiran-Nia directs the Persian Gulf Studies Group at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Iran and has written several times for Stimson on Iran’s foreign and domestic politics. Hessam Habibi Doroh is a researcher at Khayrion Think Tank, a Bratislava based think tank and consulting platform focusing on the MENA region. Doroh is also the author of “Sunni Communities in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2013-2021,” teaches International Relations, intercultural and interreligious studies and is working on a PhD at the University of Public Service in Budapest.
By Barbara Slavin, Distinguished Fellow, Middle East Perspectives Project
The notion of regime change has been openly advocated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump, both during and following the Israeli and American strikes on Iran.
On June 23, two days after U.S. bombers joined the Israeli war and struck Iranian nuclear sites, Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social: “It’s not politically correct to use the term ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???” Yet, following a ceasefire on June 24, Trump moderated his stance, emphasizing that regime change involves chaos—a scenario the U.S. and many in the region seek to avoid.
The regime change agenda clashes with the West’s historical record of failed interventions in the Middle East as well as with Trump’s own stance and that of many of his MAGA followers. For years, Trump has castigated Democrats and Republicans alike for forcefully seeking to change the governments of countries with which the U.S. has an adversarial relationship, particularly in the Middle East. During his campaign for a second term, Trump argued that President Joe Biden “has sent our blood and treasure to support regime change in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and every other globalist disaster of the past half-century.” During his first major trip abroad, in May, Trump, in a speech in Riyadh, said, “In the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built… And the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, has supported regime change in Iran as the ultimate guarantor of his country’s security. On June 13, just hours after Israel began bombing Iran, he urged Iranians to “unite around your flag” and fight for freedom from what he described as an oppressive regime.
Israel targeted not only nuclear sites but also Iran’s state television headquarters, aiming to disrupt state cohesion and incite public protests. However, the primary public response was not mobilization for regime change but the spread of collective fear.
Some sociologists have argued that external variables could potentially lead to systemic changes in Iran’s political structure. Iranian sociologist Asef Bayat suggests that either internal power struggles or external interventions may trigger such transformation.
In the aftermath of the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests against mandatory hijab in 2022-2023, certain political and social groups—including segments of Iran’s reformist movement—concluded that popular protests alone were insufficient to achieve structural change. Former President Seyed Mohammad Khatami, in a statement on the eve of the 44th anniversary of the 1979 Revolution, argued: “While protests against various grievances are understandable, a little reflection shows that given the balance of power and the government’s capacity, its [mechanical] overthrow is impossible. The slogan of overthrow mainly serves as a pretext for increased restrictions and further repression.”
Despite the military pressure and the temporary destabilization of Iranian state structures during the 12-day war, public support for externally driven regime change failed to materialize. Several sociological mechanisms explain this. Iran’s strong sense of national identity, deeply shaped by collective memories of foreign intervention, fosters public opposition to external interference. During World War II, despite Iran’s declared neutrality, Allied forces occupied the country, forcing Shah Reza Pahlavi to abdicate. Post-war Soviet reluctance to withdraw from northern Iran and support for separatist movements have also left enduring scars on the national psyche.
The 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh that reinstalled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as well as the Shah’s perceived dependence on the West deepened an anti-colonial sensitivity, as did the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, when most of the world supported the aggressor, Iraq. Even among internal critics of the regime, foreign-sponsored regime change is widely perceived as a violation of national sovereignty.
Further, the post-9/11 experiences of Iraq, Libya, and Syria have served as cautionary tales in which fear of instability outweighs the promise of a more representative and less repressive government. The public’s rational calculus favors maintaining an unsatisfactory status quo over risking national collapse.
Crucially, the absence of a viable, unified opposition has exacerbated this reluctance. The 2022 protests underscored deep fragmentation within Iran’s opposition movements. The exiled son of the Shah remains a contested figure with limited appeal among key social constituencies, particularly the middle class, leftist factions, ethnic groups, and Islamists, especially Iranian Sunni Muslims.
Some Iranians, both inside and outside the country, believe that foreign powers fundamentally oppose the emergence of a strong Iran, regardless of its political leadership. Shireen Hunter, a former Iranian diplomat under the monarchy and a professor at Georgetown University, points to Iran’s exclusion from NATO and Israel’s historic refusal to sell strategic weaponry to Iran, even during the Shah’s reign, as evidence of this enduring skepticism.
Similarly, Roham Alvandi of the London School of Economics and Political Science argues that the prospect of a powerful Iran—irrespective of its governing ideology—is a strategic nightmare for Washington and Jerusalem. He suggests that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology is an inevitable response to this regional dynamic, one that long predates the Islamic Revolution. A nuclear Iran would end Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the Middle East and forever alter the strategic balance in the region. Iran, with 90 million people, is three times the size of France and has the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves and third-largest crude oil reserves. Alvandi writes: “Future leaders of Iran, like past ones, will be acutely aware that a strong and powerful Iran will never be welcomed in Jerusalem or Washington—unless Iran is willing to accept a subordinate position in the region, which no Iranian politician in this era of populist nationalism can accept.”
During the 12-day war, Israeli attacks killed more than 400 Iranian civilians, inflicted severe damage on hospitals—including Farabi Hospital in Kermanshah—struck oil depots in northwest Tehran and a fuel storage facility in the south of the city, disrupted power grids across the capital, and heavily damaged the headquarters of Iran’s state broadcaster. Yet these aggressive measures failed to fracture Iranian society. Reformist and opposition figures, including frequently jailed dissidents such as Mostafa Tajzadeh and Narges Mohammadi, condemned Israel’s attacks, with some advocating for nuclear concessions to end the conflict.
Israel’s strikes inadvertently lent credibility to the government’s longstanding depiction of Israel as a hostile enemy – a representation not widely endorsed by the Iranian public prior to the Israeli attacks. The government also focused on nationalism as opposed to the defense of the system. In a symbolic shift, following the Israeli assassination of the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed a regular army officer—not a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—as Bagheri’s successor, signaling a more nationalist rather than ideological posture.
Despite the widespread fear in Tehran and the mounting civilian suffering, the government deliberately avoided framing the war as a struggle for the regime’s survival. Instead, the dominant narrative focused on themes of sovereignty, resilience, and proportionate response—rejecting discourses of collapse, revolution, or total war. The decision to keep metro stations open around the clock as civilian shelters and to ensure the operation of government ministries, even under direct attack, served to reinforce this message of stability and institutional continuity.
The Israel-Iran War revealed a complex sociopolitical landscape in which Iranian society, though deeply dissatisfied, prioritizes internal reform over externally driven regime change. The concept of chaos phobia—a collective aversion to the uncertainty associated with violent systemic collapse—proved decisive in shaping public attitudes.
Applying Ulrich Beck’s ‘Risk-Averse Society’ framework, the preference for preserving the status quo as the ‘lesser evil’ over embracing the risks of intervention emerged as a rational response grounded in historical experience and regional comparisons.
Ultimately, the failure of the externally imposed regime change strategy underscores a fundamental miscalculation about the resilience of national identity, the fragmented nature of the opposition, and the absence of a clear and credible post-regime vision.
