Regime Change Was the Goal in February. By July, Every Track Had Failed.

On July 20, the headline was that Donald Trump was "considering" regime change in Iran ^[1]. But the administration had already called it "the best thing that could happen" on February 17 ^[2], formally established it as a goal on March 4 ^[3], and on March 6 ordered a military campaign to demolish what it called a "tyrannical theocracy" — even as Trump said in the same period "I'm not going to start wars, I'm going to stop wars" ^[4]. What is being framed as a July decision was decided in February. The question five months later is not whether the administration wants regime change. It is what happens when every instrument of regime change has been tried and none has worked. The opening instrument was the decapitation strike. On February 28, US and Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ^[5]. The regime survived the succession: his son Mojtaba assumed the supreme leadership and dismissed US commitments as "utterly worthless and devoid of credibility" ^[6]. The theocracy's formal structures persisted — Mojtaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader, Pezeshkian as President — and the diplomatic channel, however strained, remained open ^[7]. The man at the top was gone. The system he built replaced him within days. Even as the strikes were being ordered, US intelligence was contradicting the nuclear rationale that justified them. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified that Iran's enrichment program had been "obliterated" in June 2025 and was not being rebuilt. National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent resigned on March 17, stating Iran posed no imminent threat ^[8]. The administration's own intelligence apparatus had undercut the casus belli while the regime-change instruments were already in motion. The second instrument was the covert coup. A Mossad-led, CIA-backed plan to trigger an internal uprising using Kurdish forces and former president Ahmadinejad was active from February 28. Trump personally contacted Kurdish armed groups on day four of the campaign to support an offensive aimed at dividing Iran and toppling its government ^[9]. Turkey blocked the operation. The Kurdish opposition refused to fight: the East Kurdistan Defense Units stated they had "not taken the side of any power, nor launched any attacks against the Iranian regime" ^[10]. Trump later admitted the weapons meant for Iranian protesters never reached them: "I think the Kurds kept them for themselves" ^[9]. In early July, after the peace deal collapsed, the IRGC launched more than 50 missile and drone strikes against Kurdish opposition groups, actively suppressing the very forces the US had tried to weaponize ^[10]. The remaining instruments collapsed in quick succession. By April, the US and Israel had destroyed 70 percent of Iran's steel capacity ^[11]. The naval blockade forced Iran to dump oil in the Persian Gulf ^[12]. The Pentagon evaluated entry points for a ground invasion — Kharg Island, the Strait of Hormuz, Abadan-Khorramshahr — and requested $200 billion in supplemental war funding, deploying 2,500 Marines ^[13][14]. Trump maintained deliberate ambiguity about ground troops: "If I were, I certainly wouldn't tell you" ^[13]. Then the ground option collapsed from inside the administration. In mid-July, Vice President Vance publicly ruled it out: "We're not gonna send 150,000 ground troops in, in order to accomplish a change in a regime" ^[7]. The administration's own number two had declared the central instrument of regime change off the table. Vance also argued that bombing alone could not permanently secure the Strait of Hormuz ^[7]. The diplomatic track was never a genuine off-ramp. On March 1, one day after the February 28 campaign began, the US rejected Iran's nuclear framework proposal and offered instead a permanent supply of free nuclear fuel — a proposal that would have eliminated domestic enrichment and that Iran rejected ^[15]. By April, Secretary Rubio was describing the US approach as "not between war and peace, but between different forms of involvement in the same war" ^[16]. And when Rubio did signal a diplomatic opening in July, it was itself conditioned on regime change: "if the guys that want to do something productive for Iran win and take control of that system, or take control of the negotiations, that'll be a very positive development" ^[6]. Even the off-ramp required the regime to fall first. By mid-July, the administration faced a strategic stalemate. The Pentagon had ceased press briefings. Military officials warned of insufficient supplies to sustain a wider war ^[17]. Iran had withdrawn from negotiations entirely: Foreign Ministry spokesperson Baghaei announced Iran had no plans to resume talks, and Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei declared the peace agreement worthless ^[7][18]. Every prediction the administration had made — a four-to-five-week war, gas below three dollars a gallon, a popular uprising — had failed to materialize ^[19]. Trump had called upon "all Iranian patriots who yearn for freedom to seize this moment" and "take back your country." No uprising came ^[19]. The one outcome that materialized was the one US intelligence had warned about in February. By June 13, the theocracy had shifted toward IRGC military-junta control — a leadership more prone to high-risk behavior, still pursuing nuclear capabilities, and more isolated from diplomatic channels ^[20]. The regime change the administration sought did not happen. What happened instead was the consolidation of the harder-line faction US intelligence had predicted would emerge if the regime was pushed to the brink. The 10 consecutive nights of airstrikes that began in mid-July — targeting military sites, civilian-adjacent infrastructure including bridges in Hormozgan province, a children's cancer hospital in Ahvaz, and the Darkhovin nuclear power plant — are undeniably an escalation in both scope and duration ^[6][18]. But escalation is not the same as a new strategy. They are the continuation of a regime-change operation whose every prior instrument has failed. US intelligence warned in February that pushing the regime to the brink would consolidate IRGC control and produce a more dangerous adversary ^[20]. That is the regime now being bombed. The administration has no plan for it.