Categories: Opinion

Why the Mullahs Can Be Toppled Without Occupying Iran

Iran has reached a point where protest alone may no longer be sufficient to dismantle the Islamic Republic’s entrenched machinery of repression. The latest nationwide unrest, coupled with the regime’s increasing reliance on brute force, demonstrates a hard truth: as long as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Basij militias, and internal security forces remain intact, the mullahs will survive, regardless of public anger.

In this context, the discussion is no longer whether the Iranian people want change, but whether the conditions can be created that allow them to achieve it. This is where the role of the United States under a Trump administration, together with Israel, becomes decisive.

Protests Are Crashing Against a Wall of Armed Power

Iran’s protest movements have repeatedly shown courage, geographic spread, and political clarity. What they have lacked is one thing: the ability to neutralize the regime’s coercive instruments.

The Islamic Republic is not sustained by popular legitimacy. It is sustained by:

Armed security forces loyal to ideology rather than nation
Intelligence services designed to crush dissent preemptively
Militarized economic monopolies that fund repression

Without degrading these pillars, protests—no matter how large—are eventually drowned in blood, arrests, and fear.

Why Targeted Bombing Changes the Equation

Limited, precision strikes against regime security infrastructure and command centers would not be about “regime change from the air.” Rather, they would be about breaking the regime’s monopoly on violence.

Such strikes could:

Disrupt command-and-control structures used to coordinate crackdowns
Undermine morale within security forces already stretched thin
Signal to the population that the regime is no longer invincible
Create space for mass defections and paralysis within coercive institutions

History shows that authoritarian regimes rarely fall because of protests alone. They fall when the security forces can no longer—or will no longer—carry out repression.

Why This Moment Is Different

This is not an abstract or hypothetical scenario. Several factors converge now:

Iran’s regime is internally brittle
Economic collapse, elite infighting, and generational hostility have hollowed out the system’s legitimacy.
The protest movement is political, not reformist
Calls now openly target the Supreme Leader and the entire clerical order.
External deterrence already exists
Israel has demonstrated the ability to strike Iranian assets. The United States has unmatched capacity to impose overwhelming pressure quickly.
Trump’s posture removes ambiguity
Unlike prior administrations obsessed with restraint and nuclear diplomacy, Trump’s language signals willingness to escalate if repression continues.

This combination creates a rare window in which external force can act as a catalyst rather than a substitute for internal revolution.

Bombing the Regime Is Not Bombing Iran

A crucial distinction must be made: the Islamic Republic is not Iran.

Targeting regime security organs and power centers:

Weakens the oppressor, not the nation
Reduces the regime’s ability to massacre civilians
Aligns external action with internal popular will

For decades, Western hesitation has been justified by fear of “rallying Iranians around the flag.” That logic no longer holds. The Iranian street increasingly sees the regime—not foreign powers—as the primary enemy.

Israel and the U.S. as Enablers, Not Occupiers

Neither Israel nor the United States needs to occupy Iran, administer it, or design its future. Their role would be narrower and more realistic:

Shatter the regime’s security backbone
Deter mass slaughter
Let Iranians finish the job themselves

This approach recognizes a fundamental reality: revolutions succeed when the balance of fear shifts. Once the people fear the regime less than the regime fears losing control, collapse becomes possible.

Conclusion: Force as a Gateway to Freedom

The Islamic Republic has survived because it has convinced its people that resistance is futile. Carefully calibrated strikes against the regime’s instruments of repression could finally destroy that illusion.

In such a scenario, bombs would not replace protest—they would empower it. The fall of the mullahs would not be imposed from outside, but unlocked from within.

The choice before Washington and Jerusalem is stark: continue watching heroic protests be crushed one cycle at a time, or reshape the battlefield so that the Iranian people can at last decide their own future.