Dr. Michael Wise is a founder and investor in numerous technology companies. He is a graduate of YU and holds a PhD .in Theoretical Physics from Brandeis U., is the author of Israel demography study (BESA) and has published numerous articles about Israel sovereignty and demographics in Judea and Samaria. mlwise@gmail.com
Lara Trump put the question plainly: "Regime change has never been the goal, though. It's been denuclearization. Can you have one without the other?"
Marco Rubio's answer was equally plain: "The regime has to change. You may not have a regime change, but the regime has to change."
That exchange captures the dilemma facing Washington and Jerusalem. A nuclear-capable Iran that still funds proxies from Lebanon to Yemen is not a foreign-policy result. It is a failure.
October 7 exposed the limits of a containment strategy that assumed the Iranian axis could be managed indefinitely. It cannot.
Without a fundamental shift in Tehran, Donald Trump and the Republican Party face a difficult road into the midterms, and Benjamin Netanyahu's long-term security case for Israel remains unfinished. The months ahead will carry more geopolitical weight than most years. What happens in Iran will shape elections, alliances, and the security architecture of the region for a decade.
The question is not whether change is desirable. Iranians deserve a government that does not jail, beat, or kill those who raise inconvenient questions. The international community has a legitimate interest in an Iran that does not call for the destruction of neighboring states or wage proxy war across the region. The harder question is how change actually happens and what history tells us about paths that work versus paths that make things catastrophically worse.
Why It Has Failed
The Islamic Republic was not built as a typical government. It was constructed as a revolutionary system with overlapping redundancies designed to crush dissent. The Revolutionary Guards, the Basij militia, the intelligence apparatus, and the clerical oversight structure absorb pressure from one another. This is not a state you destabilize with a single shock.
American policy has given that system breathing room. The Obama administration pursued the JCPOA. Trump withdrew from it. Biden attempted to re-enter negotiations. Sanctions work only when they are sustained and credible over a long period. They have never been. Every time pressure became serious, inconsistency taught the regime that patience is a winning strategy.
Inside Iran, the population has not been passive. Major uprisings in 2009, 2019, and 2022 after the death of Mahsa Amini were broad and courageous - and then crushed. Hundreds were killed in 2019. Thousands have been imprisoned across cycles of unrest. In 2026, the IRGC and the Basij slaughtered as many as 50,000 protesters, by various estimates, after the outside world again failed to convert moral support into durable tools.
President Trump then pledged, "we have your back," warning that if Iran "shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, the United States of America will come to their rescue," and telling Iranians after U.S. military operations that "It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations." A promise is not a strategy. Calling on unarmed civilians to rise against a regime willing to massacre its own people, without organized support, is a moral hazard.
The opposition has remained fragmented. The diaspora spans monarchists, reformists, MEK supporters, Kurdish factions, and secular democrats. They agree on little beyond opposition to the current regime. Many exile groups spend their energy denouncing rivals rather than building a coalition. Reza Pahlavi speaks persuasively about inclusiveness, but he would carry the same "foreign-sponsored" liability that destroyed his father's legitimacy. The Mojahedin-e-Khalq, frequently promoted in Western political circles, commands almost no organic support inside Iran. Iranians who know its history regard it with deep suspicion.
Western governments have found it nearly impossible to rally behind a unified alternative.
Millions of Iranians also have a personal stake in the system's survival. Basij members, morals police, and regime functionaries know that collapse likely means reprisals. That is not only ideology. It is survival. Any serious plan that ignores them is not a plan.
What History Actually Teaches
History does offer examples. They are not flattering, and they do not all point in the same direction. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 without a Western invasion. Decades of economic pressure, internal contradictions, a failed war in Afghanistan, and a population that had quietly lost faith did the work. Reagan's military buildup accelerated the strain. Radio Free Europe kept information flowing. When Gorbachev attempted reform, the system could not hold.
Ideological delegitimization plus sustained economic pressure, over a long timeline, can bring down even a heavily armed authoritarian state.
In 1953, the U.S.-backed coup that ousted Mohammad Mosaddegh haunted American-Iranian relations for decades and helped produce the very Islamic Republic the West now opposes. The Shah of Iran fell in 1979 because a broad coalition: religious establishment, intellectuals, merchants, working class united around a single goal. The Islamic Republic has survived 47 years of isolation, war, assassination, and economic collapse. The system Khomeini established was domestically rooted. It gave millions of previously marginalized Iranians power, position, and status.
Airstrikes can destroy nuclear facilities and missile depots. They cannot destroy a governing system, an ideology, or a patronage network.
In Romania in 1989, Nicolae Ceausescu's government collapsed quickly once the security forces refused to keep firing. A regime can lose popular support entirely and still survive as long as its enforcers comply. When they stop, the end comes fast.
Libya in 2011 is the model to avoid. NATO air power prevented Gaddafi from crushing the rebellion in Benghazi. Gaddafi fell. The country fractured. There was no credible transitional plan.
Iran is not Romania, not Libya, and not the Soviet Union. Nuclear ambitions complicate military options. A proxy network across Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria allows asymmetric retaliation. A genuine base remains among a segment of the population, particularly in rural areas and among the religious establishment. Geographic and demographic scale make a swift military operation essentially impossible without catastrophic consequences: a protracted regional war, disruption of the Strait of Hormuz, a nationalist rally around the flag, and, in a chaotic collapse, the nightmare of unsecured nuclear material.
Plans that ignore these facts are not strategies. They are wishes.
What Could Actually Work
Denuclearization without a change in the regime's character is theoretically possible only through a high-leverage diplomatic framework: verified technical constraints, intrusive IAEA inspections, and enrichment caps, exchanged for ironclad security and economic guarantees. Historical examples of voluntary denuclearization such as South Africa, and the post-Soviet states occurred when political identity shifted or when leaders received absolute security guarantees.
Rubio's point still stands. The regime has to change, even if the faces in Tehran do not all change on the same day. The existing cost-benefit calculus is the problem.
A serious path would require several things at once.
-Sanctions must be locked in, enforced by allies, and tied to specific, verifiable conditions. The goal is not punishment. It is making the cost of the current path higher than the cost of change.
-The Iranian people must be supported directly: secure communications, independent Persian-language media, and a clear public distinction that the United States stands with Iranians as a nation rather than against them. The Mahsa Amini protests showed that the desire for change is real and broad. Woman, Life, Freedom was not a slogan invented in Washington. No one will risk their life for a political transition designed in a foreign capital.
-The Revolutionary Guards must be given reasons to fracture. They have enormous economic holdings. Targeted sanctions on those holdings, combined with clear signals that individuals who step back from enforcement will be treated differently, could create defection incentives over time. If the security apparatus splits, the regime loses its enforcer.
-The opposition must unify around a platform Iranians own. Western governments should stop playing favorites among factions. Diaspora groups must stop attacking one another and start practicing the democratic compromise they preach. Vague appeals to "freedom" are not a program. The goal should be stated plainly: an Iran that treats its citizens with dignity, pursues national interests through normal diplomacy, and abandons revolutionary aggression toward neighboring states.
-The proxy financing pipeline must be closed. Every dollar that flows through that network funds the regime's regional strategy and the story it tells its own people. Enforcement against oil smuggling, pressure on intermediaries, and action against proxy leadership degrade both.
Foreign powers must also acknowledge their limits. They can apply pressure and create conditions. They cannot install a government Iranians will accept as their own. A "Made-in-USA" leader in Tehran will command no more lasting legitimacy now than the Shah did after 1953.
-Bombing campaigns alone will not dismantle a theocratic state with millions of invested supporters. Encouraging revolt without organized support places ordinary Iranians in mortal danger. Backing fringe exile groups for geopolitical convenience repeats past mistakes Inside Iran, the population has shown remarkable courage and but has been left without the tools to convert that courage into durable change.
Conclusion
Regime change in Iran has failed because the efforts applied have never matched the scale of the problem. Pressure has been inconsistent. Opposition has been fragmented.
But now we learn of Trump’s “D-Day Economic" plan. The Trump Administration is entering the “endgame" of its Iran campaign. A major escalation of financial pressure on Iran, described as the “single greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against an adversary." It will sever every economic lifeline sustaining the Iranian government.
Trump warned that any country, business, bank, airport, or government entity providing any lifeline to Iran would face “tremendous economic consequences." He said Iran had “failed to take" opportunities for a deal and would now face economic warfare on an unprecedented scale. The plan targets oil exports, shipping & trade routes, financial channels including oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, and front companies. Countries aiding Iran will be targeted. Trump said “you know who you are," warning allies and adversaries alike.
Iranian officials understand the end-game is in place. They hysterically threaten “earthquake-like retaliation" against all US allies and blockage of all oil exports through the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.
A serious, sustained, coordinated strategy that learns from history, supports the Iranian people, maintains consistent pressure, and refuses to own a transition it cannot legitimize is the only path with any real chance of producing results in time to matter.
The Iranians who marched under Woman, Life, Freedom deserve better than another cycle of protest followed by silence. The political leaders who need this to succeed have every incentive to finally do it right. That path exists. It will not be found by repeating the errors of the past.