![\"WASHINGTON,](\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2264284194.jpg?fit=4824%2C3216\")
Whoops, he did<\/span> it again.<\/p>\n We need to adjust our language for President Donald Trump\u2019s so-called regime-change efforts. Let\u2019s call them \u201cregime adjustments.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump was fresh off his successful regime-adjustment operation in Venezuela<\/a> when he decided to double down on his newly interventionist streak. Along with Israel, Trump attacked Iran with one of the largest military operations in at least a decade. The war \u2014 and that\u2019s what it is \u2014 came only days after a gathering in Washington of Trump\u2019s \u201cBoard of Peace<\/a>,\u201d which includes Israel, marking, ironically, the board\u2019s first war.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to imagine what success, even by Trump\u2019s loose standards, will actually look like in Iran.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Unlike Venezuela, though, this time it\u2019s hard to imagine what success, even by Trump\u2019s loose standards, will actually look like \u2014 if there can be any measure of success at all.<\/p>\n In a somewhat rambling video message posted on Truth Social announcing the new Iran war, Trump offered no evidence as to why a preemptive or preventative attack was necessary at this time. Iran, after all, was in the middle of negotiations with the U.S. over its nuclear program, with negotiations set to continue the following week and, according to insiders<\/a>, making solid progress. Unlike the U.S., Iran had made no moves that could be interpreted as aggressive or preparatory for initiating military action against either Israel or the U.S.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Instead of articulating any reasoning or goals for his strikes, Trump declared a decapitation strategy and exhorted the people of Iran to rise up and \u201ctake control\u201d of the government: DIY regime change.<\/p>\n He demanded that the security services and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps \u201clay down\u201d their arms and join the people \u2014 presumably the same people<\/a> they had been brutally cracking down<\/a> on only a month ago. There were no instructions on how the people were supposed to \u201ctake control\u201d or who might be the leader to guide them. Nor did Trump give instructions to the security forces on how exactly they were supposed to lay down their arms and join the people. Hand over their arms to whom? Or did he have in mind a depot that would be set up somewhere IRGC personnel could drop off their AK-47s and assorted other weaponry?<\/p>\n Reza Pahlavi, the former shah\u2019s son, pretender to the throne<\/a>, and the most visible and possibly popular among opposition leaders, also exhorted his fellow Iranians to rise up at this opportunity to change the regime \u2014 in his own favor, of course.<\/p>\n It has been telling, however, that neither the U.S. nor even Israel \u2014 Pahlavi\u2019s most ardent booster \u2014 have been promoting him as the replacement for the regime that they\u2019re in the process of decapitating.<\/p>\n There has been no plan, at least none apparent or even hinted at, to have Pahlavi brought to Tehran in the hope that millions will, like Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini\u2019s arrival from Paris in 1979, greet him at the airport and escort him to a palace.<\/p>\n The clearest endorsement Pahlavi has won to lead Iran was a probing interview on \u201c60 Minutes\u201d on the second day of the war \u2014 best understood as an expression of Bari Weiss and David Ellison\u2019s hope<\/a> for an Israeli-backed regime in Iran, not as a vouch of support from the Trump administration.<\/p>\n\n
No Reasoning, No Goals<\/strong><\/h2>\n