Unfortunately, there is still no serious political will inside Washington for regime change in Iran. Yet Israel’s long-term survival is inseparable from regime change in Tehran. As long as these Islamist fanatics remain in power, there will be no meaningful change in the Islamic Republic’s hostility toward Israel, the United States, or the West itself.
The regime’s ideology is built not on coexistence, but on permanent confrontation, antisemitism, revolutionary expansionism, and the export of instability across the Middle East.
At the same time, the central demand of the Iranian people continues to be ignored. Millions of Iranians did not rise up, sacrifice, suffer imprisonment, torture, and death merely to replace one dictator with another extremist from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). They rose up for the end of the Islamic Republic itself.
The danger now is that Washington may ultimately accept a cosmetic transition in which figures such as Ahmad Vahidi — a sanctioned terrorist accused in the AMIA bombing and deeply tied to decades of bloodshed against Jews, Israelis, Americans, and Iranians alike — emerge as de facto power brokers in a post-Khamenei structure. That would not represent transformation. It would merely preserve the machinery of terror under a different face.
The Iran war is far from over
The war between the United States, Israel, and the Islamic Republic has not truly ended. It has merely entered a more dangerous phase shaped by temporary arrangements, proxy escalation, and strategic exhaustion. Both Washington and Tehran appear to be pursuing a temporary agreement designed not to solve the crisis, but merely to freeze it while the region remains deeply unstable.
The fundamental questions remain unanswered. Iran’s nuclear program, enriched uranium stockpiles, ballistic missiles, and sponsorship of Islamist terrorism remain unresolved, even as headlines focus narrowly on reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The flames consuming the Middle East cannot be extinguished simply by restoring maritime traffic.
Many Gulf allies now quietly wonder whether President Donald Trump is ultimately searching for an exit strategy from the Middle East rather than a decisive strategic outcome. Regional governments expected Washington to finish what the war began.
At the same time, neither Washington nor Tehran appears committed to fully ending the confrontation. Iran has exploited wartime conditions to intensify executions, silence dissidents, and continue domestic repression without interruption. While diplomats speak of de-escalation, the machinery of fear inside Iran continues operating uninterrupted.
The White House never truly embraced regime change as official policy. Although Washington sought to avoid a wider regional war, the current administration increasingly appears focused on temporary crisis management rather than resolving the crisis at its roots. Yet this approach ignores the central reality of modern Iran: the Iranian people themselves demanded regime change at enormous human cost. The core demand of the Iranian people — the end of the Islamic Republic — was effectively excluded from negotiations despite costing more than 45,000 innocent Iranian lives.
This has frustrated many of America’s regional allies. Several Gulf states quietly supported American operations in hopes Washington would finish the unfinished task, yet the United States ultimately failed to address the security concerns of its own regional partners.
Meanwhile, Tehran’s propaganda apparatus celebrates survival as victory. The regime’s media machine mocks the United States while loudly declaring triumph in war, although nobody can clearly define what exactly Iran supposedly won. For the ruling elite, mere survival after Israeli and American strikes has become a form of ideological victory.
Inside Tehran, however, confidence is far weaker than the propaganda suggests. There is little genuine trust in any agreement, and many within the regime believe they still retain leverage because they do not view themselves as fully defeated. The ceasefire has effectively provided the regime breathing space — allowing Tehran time to regroup and rebuild.
One unresolved issue continues haunting the negotiations: The United States still has not succeeded in removing roughly 400 kilograms of enriched uranium from Iranian territory, even as Washington appears to have retreated from earlier demands tied directly to Israel’s long-term security. This raises an uncomfortable question: what exactly is the strategic value of a merely tactical ceasefire?
Regional powers have also complicated the equation. Countries with long-standing military and intelligence ties to Tehran, including Pakistan, have acted as intermediaries partly to preserve their own regional alliances. The result is strategic paralysis rather than resolution.
The Islamic Republic’s record of aggression spans decades. Its catalogue of crimes and destabilizing activities is far too extensive to be reduced to another temporary diplomatic formula. Endless negotiations with Tehran have repeatedly produced delay rather than transformation.
Trump himself now appears caught between contradictory instincts. He simultaneously threatens military escalation while stepping back from confrontation, creating uncertainty that confuses both adversaries and allies alike. Critics increasingly ask whether the entire 11-week war achieved any lasting strategic objective at all. Some even argue that if regime change was never seriously pursued, the war risks appearing as little more than a temporary geopolitical spectacle rather than a decisive turning point.
The deeper geopolitical reality is equally troubling. The United States and Israel largely stood alone in confronting the Islamic Republic, while much of Europe avoided meaningful confrontation under the justification of preventing regional escalation. Yet avoiding Tehran — the source of the crisis itself — does not solve the crisis.
Iran’s strategy has been brutally effective in one respect. By threatening attacks across the region and targeting neighboring states, Tehran successfully frightened many US partners into believing the costs of wider war would become unbearable. The regime intentionally raised the perceived price of conflict to strengthen its negotiating position.
At the center of the uncertainty lies a more profound question: Will the CIA and Mossad eventually pursue or publicly support a comprehensive strategy aimed at regime change in Iran? Ultimately, however, the final stage of transformation can only come from the Iranian people themselves.
As the atrocities of Iran’s regime continue, the conflict increasingly resembles a controlled state of attrition rather than a path toward peace.
This became unmistakably clear when Iran attacked US naval vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, effectively testing Trump’s willingness to return to direct war while simultaneously benefiting from the ceasefire itself. Tehran has now entered a strategy of calibrated confrontation — attacking below the threshold of full-scale war while maintaining constant pressure on Washington.
Inside Iran, the power structure itself appears increasingly unstable. Following the possible removal or death of Mojtaba Khamenei, the Islamic Republic has entered a stage of hollow political theater in which officials may be performing the role of authority without real authority actually existing. Trump risks negotiating not with a functioning government, but with what increasingly resembles a political corpse.
In practice, one institution now dominates everything: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has become the true center of power inside Iran. During wartime, IRGC influence has reached historic levels, and even civilian officials cannot accept peace arrangements without its approval.
At the same time, the United States continues maintaining naval pressure and partial maritime containment around Iran while attempting to avoid immediate resumption of total war. The Strait of Hormuz itself has become the epicenter of global instability. Iran increasingly treats commercial shipping as leverage while threatening global energy markets.
This reveals the deeper strategic reality: America’s primary challenge is no longer simply the Iranian state itself, but the IRGC’s ideological-security structure that ultimately controls all major decisions. Diplomats may negotiate, but commanders decide.
And the IRGC has little incentive for peace. The Guards have evolved into a war-driven institution that profits politically, strategically, and economically from permanent tension and controlled instability.
Meanwhile, ordinary Iranians remain trapped inside a digital prison. For nearly 12 weeks, much of Iran has experienced severe Internet censorship and blackout conditions while the regime itself continues enjoying unrestricted high-speed access to spread its official narrative.
The regime may still project defiance abroad, but internally the picture is grim. Iran’s severe economic and social deterioration has become impossible to deny, and the regime’s crisis of legitimacy is far deeper than many outside observers realize.
The ceasefire may survive temporarily. But without addressing the ideological structure of the IRGC, the unresolved nuclear threat, and the demands of the Iranian people themselves, this is not peace. It is merely the intermission before the next phase of the conflict.
The writer is a Middle East political analyst. His recent book, Tehran’s Dictator, examines the theocratic era of Ali Khamenei (1989-2026). @EQFard