With diplomacy stalled, Trump returns to floating regime change in Iran

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It’s a question President Donald Trump has privately been asking his national security team for months: Why aren’t the Iranian people toppling their leaders?

It was an outcome he seemed relatively certain of at the start of the war, convinced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that street protests would flare up in Tehran after an intensive round of strikes.

Other American officials, having read intelligence assessments suggesting that wasn’t likely, weren’t so sure, and the issue was hotly debated before the first strikes began, according to people familiar with the matter. Still, Trump launched the conflict in late February with a call for a government takeover.

“This will be probably your only chance for generations,” he advised the Iranian people in a video the night the war began.

The idea quickly faded from view, replaced by the more urgent imperative of negotiating with the regime to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. By June, Trump insisted he “never cared about regime change” in Iran, claiming he was in negotiations with “very rational people” and that American attempts at ousting foreign governments “never work.”

Those comments aside, Trump continued wondering why his calls for government overthrow went unheeded, people familiar with the matter said.

Now, with traffic through the strait still below pre-war levels and diplomacy with Iran at a standstill, Trump has returned to the concept he began the war with six months ago.

“When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?” he asked on social media Tuesday.

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The pendulum swinging back to regime change advocacy was the latest déjà vu moment in a war that seems to cycle through familiar patterns in month-long increments.

A month-long period of relative calm was punctured this week after the United States and Iran traded strikes over three consecutive days, returning to the same sequence of retaliation that stretched on for weeks earlier this summer.

Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to wipe out Iran’s civilian infrastructure, said Wednesday he was prepared to order an even larger round of destruction if needed.

“It was a very heavy attack last night and we’re prepared to do another one any time we want,” he said, while also saying he did not believe the renewed fighting would last long.

There are currently no substantive attempts at returning to diplomacy after Trump ordered his envoys to halt their discussions with Iran last month, according to officials. Instead, Trump says he is content with the status of the conflict and sounds in no hurry to reach a durable conclusion to the fighting.

“I like our position now,” he wrote on social media this week, “with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing.”

Many in Trump’s orbit would prefer the conflict recede from the forefront of political conversation entirely for the next two months as voters begin to cast ballots that will decide the balance of power on Capitol Hill.

While the president has discounted the role the midterms are playing in his Iran decision-making, senior advisers and Republican allies on Capitol Hill have all issued warnings that renewed conflict would spell trouble on Election Day.

“I don’t know how much more they can take, but, you know, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter,” Trump said of Iran on Wednesday. “And I’m not affected by the election.”

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The desire for a less visible conflict dovetailed with a shift in the administration’s strategy — to try choking off Tehran’s finances, including by threatening sanctions on its largest trading partners. The Treasury Department has yet to impose the biggest of those threatened penalties.

But part of the Trump team’s calculation in trying to cut off Iran’s financial lifelines — and worsen the country’s economic conditions — was to prompt anger among disillusioned Iranians toward their leaders. Officials privately acknowledge that average Iranians will bear the brunt of the new sanctions.

Already, the economic sting in Iran is real. Inflation has soared, and food prices are increasing by the week. The rial, Iran’s currency, has plunged in value. Iran’s top officials acknowledge they are suffering a host of economic problems.

“We are apologetic that these problems exist, as we find ourselves in a full-scale economic, military, and security war,” Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said before the new Treasury Department measures were announced last week, according to state media.

Still, some US officials said there was little intelligence to indicate a renewed likelihood that Iranian protesters would take to the streets to oust their leaders, even as the economic situation in the country grows increasingly dire.

American intelligence assessments before the war began concluded a joint US-Israeli operation was unlikely to lead to regime change, and months into the conflict officials said the regime had not lost its grip on power.

And decades of crippling western sanctions have done little to weaken the regime, against the hopes of successive American administrations. Protests have instead been met with fierce crackdowns, including at the start of this year when the Iranian government unleashed one of the worst crackdowns in the Islamic Republic’s history.

Analysts said Iran’s leaders were well attuned to Trump’s objectives in trying to tighten the noose economically.

“The Iranian leadership sees this kind of economic campaign of economic pressure not in isolation, but as part of a broader campaign by the United States, which at some point is going to also have an element of domestic unrest and eventually lead either to regime change or to bring Iran to better terms with the United States,” said Hamidreza Azizi, senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group.

Trump was coy when asked this week whether the US, perhaps through the CIA, would arm Iranian dissidents looking to overthrow the regime

“I’d love to tell you that,” he said Wednesday in the Oval Office, “but it wouldn’t be appropriate to say.”

And even after questioning why Iranians weren’t rising up, he acknowledged he knew the answer to his own query.

“I understand their plight,” he said. “They’re being shot right now.”

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这是唐纳德·特朗普总统几个月来一直在私下向他的国家安全团队提出的问题：为什么伊朗人民不推翻他们的领导人？

战争开始时，他似乎对这一结果相当有把握，因为以色列总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡相信，在密集空袭之后，德黑兰将会爆发街头抗议活动。

据知情人士透露，其他美国官员在阅读了表明这种可能性不大的情报评估后，对此并不确定，在第一波打击开始前，这个问题曾引发激烈辩论。尽管如此，特朗普还是在2月下旬发动了这场冲突，呼吁政府接管政权。

“这可能是你们几代人唯一的机会，”他在战争爆发当晚通过视频向伊朗人民发出这样的警告。

这个想法很快就被抛诸脑后，取而代之的是与伊朗政权谈判以重新开放霍尔木兹海峡这一更为紧迫的任务。到了6月，特朗普坚称他“从不在乎伊朗政权更迭”，声称他正在与“非常理性的人”进行谈判，并表示美国试图推翻外国政府的尝试“从来都行不通”。

撇开这些言论不谈，知情人士透露，特朗普仍在纳闷，为什么他要求推翻政府的呼吁没有得到回应。

现在，由于海峡交通量仍低于战前水平，与伊朗的外交努力也陷入停滞，特朗普又回到了他六个月前发动战争时所秉持的理念。

“伊朗人民何时才能奋起反抗？”他周二在社交媒体上问道。

凯文迪奇/盖蒂图片社北美/盖蒂图片社

政权更迭呼声再次高涨，这似乎是这场战争中最新的似曾相识的时刻，这场战争似乎以月为单位，不断重复着熟悉的模式。

持续一个月的相对平静在本周被打破，美国和伊朗连续三天互相发动空袭，重蹈今年夏天早些时候持续数周的报复性冲突的覆辙。

特朗普曾多次威胁要摧毁伊朗的民用基础设施，他周三表示，如有必要，他准备下令进行更大规模的破坏。

“昨晚的袭击非常猛烈，我们随时准备再次发动袭击，”他说，同时他还表示，他不认为重新爆发的战斗会持续太久。

据官员透露，自特朗普上月下令其特使停止与伊朗的谈判以来，目前没有任何实质性的外交努力重启外交进程。相反，特朗普表示他对冲突现状感到满意，并且似乎并不急于达成持久的和平协议。

“我喜欢我们现在的处境，”他本周在社交媒体上写道，“我们几乎完全控制了霍尔木兹海峡，而他们的经济正在彻底崩溃。”

特朗普身边的许多人都希望在接下来的两个月里，随着选民开始投票决定国会山的权力平衡，这场冲突能够完全从政治对话的前沿消失。

尽管总统淡化了中期选举对其伊朗决策的影响，但高级顾问和国会山的共和党盟友都发出警告，如果冲突再次爆发，将会给选举日带来麻烦。

“我不知道他们还能承受多少，但是，你知道，不管怎样，都无所谓了，”特朗普周三谈到伊朗时说。“而且我不受选举结果的影响。”

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希望减少冲突的公开性与美国政府战略的转变不谋而合——即试图切断德黑兰的财政来源，包括威胁对其最大的贸易伙伴实施制裁。财政部尚未实施其中最严厉的制裁措施。

但特朗普团队试图切断伊朗的经济命脉，并加剧该国的经济困境，其部分目的在于激起伊朗民众对领导人的不满。官员们私下也承认，普通伊朗民众将首当其冲地承受新制裁带来的冲击。

伊朗的经济困境已然显现。通货膨胀飙升，食品价格每周都在上涨。伊朗货币里亚尔大幅贬值。伊朗高层官员也承认，他们正面临一系列经济问题。

据伊朗国家媒体报道，伊朗总统马苏德·佩泽什基安在上周美国财政部宣布新措施之前表示：“我们对这些问题的存在感到抱歉，因为我们发现自己正处于一场全面的经济、军事和安全战争之中。”

尽管如此，一些美国官员表示，几乎没有情报表明伊朗抗议者再次走上街头推翻其领导人的可能性，即使该国的经济形势日益严峻。

战争开始前，美国情报部门的评估结论是，美以联合行动不太可能导致政权更迭；冲突爆发数月后，官员们表示，该政权并未失去对权力的控制。

尽管历届美国政府都抱有希望，但数十年来西方严厉的制裁并未削弱伊朗政权。相反，抗议活动遭到了残酷镇压，包括今年年初伊朗政府发动的伊斯兰共和国历史上最严重的镇压之一。

分析人士称，伊朗领导人非常清楚特朗普试图在经济上收紧对伊朗的控制的目标。

国际危机组织高级伊朗分析师哈米德雷扎·阿齐兹表示：“伊朗领导层认为，这种经济施压的经济行动并非孤立存在，而是美国更广泛行动的一部分，这种行动在某种程度上也会引发国内动荡，并最终导致政权更迭或促使伊朗与美国达成更好的协议。”

本周，当被问及美国是否会通过中央情报局武装那些试图推翻伊朗政权的异见人士时，特朗普含糊其辞。

“我很想告诉你，”他周三在椭圆形办公室说，“但这么说并不合适。”

即使在质疑伊朗人为何没有奋起反抗之后，他也承认自己知道这个问题的答案。

“我理解他们的困境，”他说。“他们现在正在被枪杀。”