“We’re going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground,” said Donald Trump, as he stood at the lectern in his white USA cap and announced the launch of a “massive and ongoing” military operation against Iran.
“It will be totally, again, obliterated.” He had to say “again” because he has insisted over and over that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been “utterly obliterated” last summer, after Operation Midnight Hammer.
But the objective of these latest midnight or very early morning strikes, conducted again by US and Israeli forces working together, is already far broader than the wiping out of weapons of mass destruction – whether that be uranium enrichment sites or Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities.
A series of loud explosions has been heard in cities and at sites across Iran. Smoke was seen rising from the presidential compound and Iran’s National Security Council. US-Israeli forces have also attacked various camps in western Iran – and a known Hezbollah site south of Baghdad in Iraq.
This is a regime change war by proxy, and the most dangerous foreign policy operation Trump has conducted
In reply, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps announced on Telegram that it has launched a wave of retaliatory strikes. In Israel and various Gulf states, people are being rushed to shelter.
“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people,” said Trump.
“We cannot take it anymore. For too long, they have threatened us, our allies, and the entire world with their nuclear ambitions and their missiles,” he said.
Trump told the Iranian leadership, its military and its police forces to surrender: “lay down your arms or you will face certain death.”
Crucially, he added: “To the great, proud people of Iran I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. When we are finished take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations.”
This is a regime change war by proxy, then, and the most dangerous foreign policy operation Trump has conducted. Instead of American boots on the ground, the US and Israel hope to knock out the Iranian leadership so that anti-regime forces inside Iran can take over.
“For many years you asked for America’s help but you never got it. No President was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a President who is giving you what you want. America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action – do not let it pass.”
Of course, while Trump can control what the US military does, America cannot direct let alone conduct a popular revolution in Iran. Air strikes may kill large numbers of Iranian senior commanders. Experts agree that the Iranian regime has been weakened in recent months by intensified sanctions and recent protests.
But nobody can say whether Ayatollah Khamenei’s brutal government will collapse following these strikes. And if it does, whether the regime’s collapse will lead to a flowering of freedom in Iran – or a long and bloody civil war similar to the one that nearby Syria has experienced, which was a boon to Islamic terrorist groups and the cause of another huge migratory wave into the West.
In his speech, Trump spoke of Iran’s long history of anti-American violence, going back to the embassy hostage crisis in 1979, and bombing of American marines by Iran’s proxies in Beirut in 1983. He’s not wrong to talk about all the evil the Iranian regime has done in the past. But Iran’s present and future is what matters now, and the question is whether America and Israel can remote-control a revolution on the ground through bombs from the air.
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