Regime change in Iran to reshape power balance

Regime change in Iran is no longer a matter of if; it is a historical predetermination the Iranians have been paying for with their blood for 47 years. And as they deserve it for a better future, President Donald Trump is the right change manager that history has assigned to help make it happen.

As I was writing this analysis, count down has begun for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to exit the stage—and he has no other option left other than worsening the situation with further repression, given the nation-wide unrest and spiraling distrust coupled with reported mutiny of his loyalists that renders incapacitation of his authority.

Internet blackout that Tehran thought would quell the politico-economic conflagration has only unearthed the long-hidden fear of a regime vainly attempting to hide its loss of public trust while the slaughter of thousands of democracy seekers has aggravated the widening chaos.

For humanity’s sake, all democratic nations should throw their weight behind those brave demonstrators to crush the tyrannical regime whose security forces’ barbaric behavior has irreversibly backfired under the misleading pretext of crushing what Khemenei calls “the enemies of Allah”.

Every government needs stability, but sustaining it with repression and massive slaughter of innocent freedom seekers is not the right way to preserve government credibility. Alas, Iran’s so-called theocratic posture has only deceived its citizens.

The regime change is actually long overdue. It should have occurred at least during President Barack Obama’s era, but regrettably, Obama’s ideologically-motivated support for the unproven piety of those theocratic rulers, has denied the Iranians a golden opportunity for having a better life, encouraged terrorism against Israel, and plunging the Middle East into prolonged strife.

Since then Iran has energized up to 90 per cent of the needs of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in their desperately futile attempts to wipe Israel out of the world map. But now new pages of Middle East history are being rewritten—not by outsiders, but by those laudably brave Iranians aspiring to have a normal life.

Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis have effed around against Israel and now they found it—that their puppet master is nothing more than a hapless lame duck, not even knowing where to hide midst the avalanche of hatred and enmity flooding the country.

A new democratic government needs to take control of and manage Iran under which scenario the country can re-brand itself as a “peace-loving” nation, mending fences with the United States and Israel.

Not an overstatement that exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi envisioned a regime change that could usher in what he called the Cyrus Accords, recalling the time when Cyrus the Great issued a decree allowing the Israelites to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Second Temple in 538 BCE.

Only a brazenly decisive figure like Donald Trump has the dexterity to lead the desired change, albeit his enigmatic maneuvers that have irked many near-sighted world leaders. Mr. Trump must now prove his publicized resolve to help the democracy seekers by taking concrete actions to facilitate the desired change and bring Iran back to the community of civilized nations.

Once it becomes reality, Islamic State-style terrorism against Israel would lose its relevance, more Arab countries would feel encouraged to join the Abraham Accords, the proposed Cyrus Accords could take shape under a new democratic rather than theocratic fiasco, and if the second-phase of Trump’s Gaza plan is successfully implemented, peace and stability may return to the Middle East as one of the prerequisites for reshaping the global order.

President Trump, therefore, needs to ensure credibility and acceptability of the Gaza Board of Peace along with its Executive Board and the International Stabilization Force to prevent terrorist groups and destabilizing elements from destroying the peace process. Likewise, he needs to ensure peace and stability in Iran—this is a harder strategic homework for the Trump administration to handle.

But the inclusion of high-ranking Turkish and Qatari officials on the Gaza Executive Board is a big obstacle that prevents Israel from trusting the peace plan, more so that of those two countries’ military personnel in the International Stabilization Force.

It is fairly easy to include world leaders on those boards to push the process forward, but the hardest part of the peace plan is disarmament of Hamas whose estimated 30,000 armed fighters in hiding do not wish to surrender their weapons.

Their lack of representation in the peace plan means that they will be the biggest stumbling block to the process, unless Israel moves on to “finish the job” by itself, doing it the hard way.

Now that his cryptic maneuvers on Greenland—which has ostensibly disintegrated NATO—has sent waves of distrust toward American foreign policy consistency—Mr. Trump needs to halt or modify the plan, given that his burning ambitions would adversely tarnish his leadership of the Israel-Palestine peace efforts.

As the new world order is taking shape, optimists can envision an era in which the Middle East achieves stability, the European Union mends fences with Russia, the war in Ukraine abates under a new regional architecture, and the United States redefines its relations with the other major powers.

With Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni having made a personal phone call to Vladimir Putin—an unusual icebreaker that jolts EU cohesion and reaches the Kremlin as an “accommodating surprise” as Vladimir Putin describes it—an Italy-Russia rapprochement could trigger similar fence-mending steps by other European leaders, despite their billions of dollar military aid to Ukraine.

Meloni’s new Kremlin diplomacy and the handshake gesture toward Russia by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz have added ballast to the Italian leader’s vision for a better regional architecture, setting the stage for restoration of the EU’s relations with Russia as a key factor in forming a better-balanced regional order.

But Iran remains at the epicenter of the evolving new global order, given that settlement of the Iranian crisis can reshape the landscape of the Middle East, triggering realignment of major powers’ relations. But in the undesirable event of America’s fresh military attacks on Iran, or killing of its supreme leader, the resulting consequences will stretch far beyond the already unstable region.

Theorists say that even if regime change is the eventual goal, let it be the result of Iran’s own democratic process without agitation or coercion from outsiders, lest a prolonged civil war would be the outcome. But this isn’t what Mr. Trump thinks possible.

Already 47 years have seen such proposition trampled underfoot by Iran’s horendous rules and now is the time to inject a new realism into Tehran that Islamic theocracy is not the right political commodity to be offered to the globally exposed Iranians who are witnessing the merits of democracy elsewhere. [***]