The waiting game in Iran
The killings have reached enormous levels. The mullahs are like cornered rats with very sharp teeth:
With the Iranian regime conducting one of the deadliest crackdowns in recent decades despite repeated warnings by President Donald Trump, the U.S. and several Western countries have advised their citizens to leave the country immediately.
The advisory comes amid reports that the U.S. was pulling out hundreds of troops from bases in the region, including the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest American military installation in the Middle East. “The Pentagon has begun withdrawing some U.S. troops and assets from a key base in Qatar as a precautionary measure while President Trump weighs whether to take military action against Iran, officials said,” The Washington Post reported.
The British broadcaster Sky News saw this as “a signal the US is readying a strike – or giving itself the option to do so.”
The death toll is reported to now be as high as 15,000. It’s impossible to know, but there’s little doubt it’s very high, and more to come.
Trump needs to do something effective, and it should happen as soon as possible. From the Times of Israel, on why it hasn’t happened yet:
Israeli and Arab officials have suggested the Trump administration hold off on striking Iran for now, believing that the Islamic Republic may not be sufficiently weakened in order for a US attack to topple it, NBC News reported Tuesday.
The report came as US President Donald Trump told reporters that he has not yet decided what course of action he will take in response to Iran’s killing of protesters.
Protests have taken place across all of Iran’s 31 provinces, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. It said Wednesday that at least 2,571 people had been killed and more than 18,100 had been arrested in the more than two weeks of protests. The Mossad is said to believe the death toll is more than twice as high.
NBC said that Israeli and Arab officials prefer the US wait to strike until the Iranian regime is further stretched, and that this message was relayed in talks held the past few days involving US political and military leaders.
Can this report be trusted? Or is it a pretense to try to get the mullahs to believe no action is forthcoming any time soon when in fact something is imminent?
Making due allowance for things that might not be reported or reported unreliably, withdrawal from Qatar would seem to make direct intervention in Iran more difficult.
If regime change does come to Iran, let’s hope that what the replacement turns out to be is not worse.
Can Kasapoglu in The National Interest, “Three Forces Shaping Post-Revolutionary Iran”
concluding paragraph:
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/three-forces-shaping-post-revolutionary-iran
How do we topple a regime of fanatics without a mass invasion?
That seems to me to be the key question.
If the Islamic Republic has 5% support of the Iranian people, that’s still 4.5 million potential fanatics.
I can’t imagine the US would go to targeted assassination and it’s unlikely we would try and capture him, since there is no legal authority to do so. But experts don’t discount that strategy. It seems to me, that would only be an option if we know of a military leader waiting to establish order away from theocratic control.
Has a regime ever been toppled by an air campaign? Bosnia and Kosovo come to mind. All three used intensive bombing campaigns over extended periods of time, but if the Islamic Republic is as fanatic as the proxies it funds, they would rather be martyred than give up power.
That question doesn’t strike me as a well formed one, Brian.
Rather, it seems to me, we ought be asking ourselves and our allies “how do we help the overwhelming unarmed majority of Iranians to topple their despised regime of fanatics?”
Means need not be disregarded as we proceed to answer to our ends, so, that is, some constraints may dictate the extent of our efforts. But let’s at least begin with some clarity as to those ends we seek.
@Brian E:but if the Islamic Republic is as fanatic as the proxies it funds, they would rather be martyred than give up power.
Perhaps, but there’s only so many of them. The clerics can’t repress the country by themselves, they rely on thugs and hirelings and the military, and they may not be as willing to die as the clerics are, especially if they’re not getting paid. It’s not like they can’t probably get basically the same position in whatever government is likely to replace Iran’s current one.
I doubt a breakup. Most (excluding the Turks and Arabs)of the people of Iran are ethnic Iranian, just not from Persis. Probably why the dominant Persians always called their county Iran “land of the Aryans” and not Persia.
Brian E on January 14, 2026 at 1:09 pm said:
How do we topple a regime of fanatics without a mass invasion?
Target IRGC and other security forces that are protecting the regime. Let the Iranian people do the rest.
Has a regime ever been toppled by an air campaign?
Libya. In that case it was a bad idea. In Iran it’s a good idea.
In 1979 Iranians managed to topple the Shah without US military help. The US role in that revolution was basically not to help either side.
The problem was that liberal Iranians, allied with the conservative Muslim Iranians, thought that the mullahs would fade into the background when it came to running the country.
They chose poorly.
@Don: Let the Iranian people do the rest.
Exactly. That’s the key element in this calculation. Trump absolutely won’t win this war for the Iranians and nation-build. They will have to do the heavy lifting.
However, I suspect that the US can provide selective leverage that could make big differences at critical junctures.
I notice that Netanyahu and Trump have been making appeals to the Iranian people, distinguishing them from the mullahs, since Trump came into office a year ago.
Contrary to Niketas Chenionates, I am sure Israel and the US have been gaming out such scenarios for the past year and likely have some pretty good ideas already.
@huxley:Contrary to Niketas Chenionates, I am sure Israel and the US have been gaming out such scenarios for the past year and likely have some pretty good ideas already.
It’s not contrary to me because I never said they didn’t have good ideas. What I question is to what degree assets are physically in place to execute those ideas.
Other day I referenced that while Maduro was gone in a day in the news, in reality months were spent preparing including physically locating the necessary assets near Venezuela.
Iran would be a lot tougher to regime change than the other countries mentioned for various reasons.
The mullah regime is horrible, and while Shah Jr. might be an improvement I’m not convinced he would be all that great and I imagine many Iranians feel the same.
@Marisa:Shah Jr. might be an improvement
In his defense, his dynasty does date all the way back to 1925, almost before my grandpa was born, and ruled Iran for almost seven years longer than the mullahs have. Hard to argue with tradition. Might be tough to find another Iranian soldier serving under the British to found a new dynasty, after all.
Neda Agha-Soltan, January 23, 1983 – June 20, 2009
Your people haven’t forgotten you.
I can guarantee you that Israeli & American Special Forces are already in Iran. Guarantee it. The decapitation strikes that Israel & the US have carried out against Iran would have been impossible without support from within the Iranian regime, probably the armed forces.
My guess is that the West is working to turn the Iranian military against the regime and then support the coup with military assets.
YoungHegelian:
That is inconceivable. 🙂
I heard on the news that the Iranian regime has threatened Trump with assassination — “This time [the bullet] won’t miss”.
https://nypost.com/2026/01/14/world-news/iran-issues-sickening-assassination-threat-against-trump-this-time-it-will-not-miss-the-target/
Boy, these clowns are just begging to have a JDAM dropped down their chimney chute, aren’t they?
That question doesn’t strike me as a well formed one, Brian. – sdferr
Let’s approach this from another angle. I asked Grok what level of support is necessary for a revolution to succeed. The study it referred to is “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict” (published in 2011 by Columbia University Press) by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan.
According to the study, with 3.5% active participation, which would mean over 10,000,000 Iranians actively striking, protesting, other acts of disruption, there is historically a 53% or greater chance of success. Since 2010, the success rate drops to 34% or greater.
There is no evidence the number of active protesters meets the threshold of support.
Since the likelihood of success is low with internal actions alone, especially given the level of barbarity the regime is willing to inflict on its citizens, how large will the military action need to be by the US and Israel to topple the regime externally?
I hope the regime can be toppled and a stable government that is western friendly/neutral be established– but actors like Russia and China have a real stake in the regime’s survival.
Using Libya isn’t a good example IMO, since there were factions of armed rebels fighting the Gaddafi regime. NATO militaries flew over 26,000 sorties over a 7 month period.
The regime is only going to fall if the military capitulates and backs the only visible rebel leader, the crown prince, or the instability grows and allows other foreign actors (Russia and China) to foment rebellious factions supportive of anti-western ideology and a full-blown civil war ensues.
Um, Iran’s population is ~92 million.
1% is 920,000.
Times 3.5 is 3,220,000.
Looks to me like that “threshold” has been overwhelmed.
Sure hope the mullahs read the Chenoweth and Stephan study, be a shame if they didn’t know they’re supposed to pack it in.
sdferr– and math was my good subject. 🙂
Trump new stance on Iran?
Yesterday, with word from Israel that the air traffic corridor to Tehran was being closed looked like a sure indicator of coming kinetic intervention.
But today, Bloomberg cites Trump reversing course…again.
“President Trump said he had been assured that killings of protesters by the Iranian regime had stopped.
“’We’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping — it’s stopped,” Trump said to reporters during a gaggle at the White House, according to Bloomberg. ‘And there’s no plan for executions or an execution.’”
Is Trump just getting played?
“’We’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping — it’s stopped,” Trump said to reporters during a gaggle at the White House, according to Bloomberg. ‘And there’s no plan for executions or an execution.’”
Is Trump just getting played?- TJ
If he’s getting played, we’ll know soon enough.
This is good news for several reasons. If the regime stops the wholesale slaughter of the rebels, the internal destabilization of the regime can solidify around a leader.
It gives the US more time to place the right number of assets in the ME to sustain a long term action against Iran. At this time, we don’t have an aircraft carrier in the region.
AI leads agley
“hold off on striking Iran for now, believing that the Islamic Republic may not be sufficiently weakened in order for a US attack to topple it”
Leaving out whether we should or not … If the US military is so weak that it can’t formulate a strike force sufficient to topple Iran’s government, then we have even bigger problems than those obvious.
@DT: If the US military is so weak that it can’t formulate a strike force sufficient to topple Iran’s government
The US military and its logistical tail have not invented teleportation yet, true, but since no other military has either I don’t think “weak” is exactly the right term.
I don’t know where we got the idea that these things are done in days. Movies, I guess. Most of us are old enough to remember the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, which took months to prepare. Maduro’s capture also took months to prepare, done at time of our choosing, not a reaction to an event.
Those slightly older remember President Peanut’s failed military raid trying to free the Americans held hostage by Iran, 1980 IIRC.
Reports everywhere that Iran just closed their own airspace. Only flights that ask permission may land.
@TJ: Is Trump just getting played?
I say this is more negotiation and possibly deception. Remember the Iranian nuclear sites? Trump sounded like he was getting weak and getting played.
But when the two weeks were up?
KA-BLOOEY!
I doubt the current situation will be quite so climactic. I think it will be more like a chess endgame. Trump will send arms here, blow up IRGC there, cut off money elsewhere. Or let up as the mullahs let up.
But the final act will be the mullahs lose and the people win.
Then there will be a new set of problems, though probably not as bad as the mullahs.
”’We’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping — it’s stopped,’ Trump said to reporters during a gaggle at the White House…”
Wow! The mind boggles.
”Is Trump just getting played?”
It sure looks like it. He’s been played by Putin multiple times on the global stage, so being played by the mullahs would be on character for him. TACO.
”I don’t know where we got the idea that these things are done in days.”
First of all, America maintains a multitude of air and naval bases in the area for just such contingencies. Second, Trump told the protesters 12 days ago that we were “locked and loaded” ready to act at a moment’s notice should Iran start killing protesters.
Iran has been killing protesters for over 12 days now, and over 12,000 protesters have been killed. As a result Trump has…issued a tariff. That after initially dismissing the killings as a stampede. Sites that track movement of military assets are dark — which they weren’t during the 12-day war, the attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, or the build-up to the Venezuela operation — so in all probability nothing is currently happening. Perhaps that will change, or perhaps TACO.
In the last year Trump has issued four ultimatums to Vladimir Putin, and Putin has violated all four of them, in some cases within 24 hours. In response, Trump did…nothing. Actually, it was worse than nothing. On one occasion he actually **eased** sanctions. Thus, the prognosis is not encouraging. Trump gets played more often than Charlie Brown.
@mkent:First of all, America maintains a multitude of air and naval bases in the area for just such contingencies
Real life isn’t a movie. That there are bases in the area, even a “multitude”, indeed even if there were a “plethora”, doesn’t mean that at short notice they can supply a force large enough to do anything meaningful toward regime change in Iran. Logistics does not operate on binary logic.
Whether Trump eventually does anything meaningful toward regime change in Iran is not known now, but it sounds like some people really want him to blow something up already whether it actually accomplishes anything or not.
om:
My post on Carter’s failed mission to rescue the hostages taken by Iran.
TACO [Trump Always Chickens Out]
mkent:
Oh, BS. Ask the mullahs about their nuclear weapons program. Ask Maduro who challenged Trump to come and get him.
Putin is trickier because he has nuclear weapons. Do you want Trump going toe-to-toe and threatening Putin with ultimatums? I don’t.
huxley at 8:39 replies to me.
Smart surmises — yet too generous for some.
My indicators say perceptive, as well as probable. So…!
Brian E observes “ At this time, we don’t have an aircraft carrier in the region.”
Fox News says a carrier group is already en route….
News check — I am wrong. Here’s AI answer, and signs of caution:
Current U.S. Military Situation Regarding Iran
U.S. Military Assets in the Region
The U.S. military is facing challenges in deploying sufficient assets to address multiple global threats, including Iran.
The USS Gerald R. Ford, currently in the Caribbean, is not expected to be sent to the Middle East due to concerns about extending its deployment beyond the planned seven months.
Other carriers, such as the USS Theodore Roosevelt and USS Abraham Lincoln, may be options for deployment to the Middle East, but they would take weeks to arrive.
President Trump’s Stance
President Trump has indicated a strong military response to Iran’s actions against protesters, stating, “Help is on the way.”
The Pentagon is considering military options but has not yet mobilized additional aircraft or ships to the region.
Re Trump Iran options.
But US land bases in the region offer more.
neo:
I was in grad school at the time. Iranian foreign graduate students were not un
common on the OSU campus.
Earlier during the Yom Kippur war I was an undergraduate at a different college and there were also many Iranian foreign students, some appeared quite wealthy. The Sha was still in power at that time. One of the Iranian students was Jewish which surprised me (the ignorant American).
Has a regime ever been toppled by an air campaign?
In the Iraqi Revolt of 1920 the RAF played a decisive role in helping to suppress the uprising. It was the first time in the as-yet short history of military aviation that massed aircraft (mostly bombers) were used tactically to achieve strategic results.
It’s a really interesting story.
om:
For the past several years, until I experienced severe medical problems, I worked with a retired U.S. Army officer (25 years of service, numerous deployments to the Middle East) to help the Assyrian Christian community in Iraq (Nineveh Plain region) organize a military force capable of defending itself against genocidal Islamist attacks. He was born in Iran and raised, in Iran, as a Roman Catholic. He immigrated (legally) with his family to America while in his early teens, became a naturalized U.S. citizen, played football at Gordon Tech HS in Chicago, went to college, and joined the army after graduating, eventually rising to the rank of LT. Colonel.
”That there are bases in the area, even a ‘multitude’, indeed even if there were a ‘plethora’, doesn’t mean that at short notice they can supply a force large enough to do anything meaningful toward regime change in Iran.”
Then Trump lied two weeks ago when he told the protesters that we were “locked and loaded” and ready to help if things went south. The main Iranian opposition leader, apparently believing that lie, quoted it when telling the protesters to take to the streets. Hundreds of thousands of protesters followed that direction, and now thousands of them are dead.
So Trump shot off his mouth, and thousands of innocent people died. Yeah, I’m kind of sore about it.
”Ask Maduro who challenged Trump to come and get him.”
And what did that accomplish? Maduro is gone, and Rodriguez has replaced him, just as Maduro replaced Chavez. The same regime still controls Venezuela. Trump won’t take them out, because it can’t be done in just a few hours. So now the people who were out on the streets of Caracas celebrating a week and a half ago are being rounded up and imprisoned. They weren’t freed after all.
Nor will he allow Gonzalez, the leader the Venezuelans chose by a 67-30 margin, to take power, because Trump just doesn’t like him. He says Rodriguez and her murderous regime can stay in power as long as she gives us the oil. So it really was a (short) war for oil.
The result of all of that is that now America is seen around the world as a pariah nation. It used to be that our allies didn’t always agree with our methods, but they trusted our motives and agreed with the results. Now neither of those are true as well.
”Do you want Trump going toe-to-toe and threatening Putin with ultimatums?”
Trump has already given Putin ultimatums, four times in just his second term. All four times Putin ignored them and did exactly what Trump told him not to do. Trump backed down all four times. It was not a good look.
mkent, Trump is using the military in alignment with MAGA– no forever wars, no quagmires. Part of this is recognizing the limits of our military power.
I asked the question whether air power alone can topple a regime.
One example given was Libya– but that was aiding armed rebel groups.
I think a closer example might be Kosovo, but that included a continuous air campaign lasting several months with over 10,000 bombing strikes and around 78,000 sorties.
But one of the problems Iranians face is they have no/little armed resistance. There is no evidence that any of the IRGC has defected, because the structure of the Iranian economy makes it harder for them to capitulate. The success of the regime is their personal economic success, according to some people knowledgeable about the regime. Some the Basij militia may have stopped fighting, but there should be evidence that there are cracks in the IGRC or Artesh forces.
According to Grok:
The US and Israel may still mount an air campaign, and it’s been reported that some in Israel think the regime will continue to weaken over time– since the structural economic problems are not going to resolve themselves.
mkent:
Don’t let emotions run rampant. It being “all about oil” regarding Venezuela is particularly specious.
U.S. Intel power is probably a key element of the success of Ukraine against Russia, and that power might readily be re-focused toward Iran.
It is thus possible that the U.S. has a historical surplus of intel and crypto tools available to use against the mullahs, and this might have the effect of delaying or deferring any kinetic military action.
Yes, this is a SWAG.
‘the cracker barrel motif, might matter in this case, except Powell seem to ignore the Baathist broke the regime,
now there is no quick and easy regime to collapse the regime, the strikes at Fordow and associated locations, weakened some of their retaliatory capability,
but has limited impact on population centers deep in the interior,
naval assets were more focused in the caribbean although some air assets have been moved into the region,
And what did that accomplish? Maduro is gone…
mkent:
Maduro is gone … exactly.
Your point was TACO — Trump Always Chickens Out. Apparently you require the dictionary definition:
_______________________________
always – At all times; invariably.
_______________________________
Therefore, Trump doesn’t ALWAYS chicken out and you were wrong. Throw in the history-changing destruction of Iran’s nuclear sites and you were doubly wrong on a crucial issue by saying TACO.
QED.
Does saying wrong things bother you? Or do you just make a lame attempt to change the subject then move on to your next opportunity to attack Trump?
I follow Mossad on x.
They tweet that the fake attack was a huge success in gathering info on what the mullahs do if attacked. Makes sense, hope it’s true, hope Trump attacks soon, before too many brave Iranian protesters are murdered.
https://x.com/MOSSADil
Huxley:
But Trump did chicken out. In both of those cases Trump only allowed military force to be used for a few hours and forbade their use for any longer. In the first case, the damage to Iran’s nuclear program was only partial. In the second case, no significant change was done to the evil regime in Venezuela. The extended military campaign to actually achieve long-lasting change in each case was forbidden by Trump. That’s chickening out.
The same thing is happening now in Iran. The word on the street is that Trump only wants a military option that can overthrow the mullahs in a day, but there aren’t any. So instead Trump does nothing. That’s chickening out.
”Part of this is recognizing the limits of our military power.”
If Trump wasn’t going to do anything because he didn’t have the power, then he shouldn’t have told the protesters that “Help is on the way!” In a betrayal reminiscent of the Bay of Pigs but on a much, much larger scale, hundreds of thousands of people trusted him, and now thousands of them are dead. I seem to be the only one here who cares about that.
In other news today, Britain, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have announced that they are all moving troops to Greenland to protect it **from the United States.**
mkent has let his emotions get the better of himself.
How much of Iran’s nuclear weapons program must be destroyed mk? 99.999999% by your measurement? Otherwise it is a TACO failure?
How much is enough?
It can never be enough?
Don’t let emotions run rampant.
Regarding Europe and Greenland. Will they keep China and Roosia out? For the most part they haven’t been too effective dealing with Russia’s war on Ukraine but they are Oh so worried about Greenland. Nearly useless they are.