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For the current regime in Iran, a "win" will be simply surviving. It's quite possible for them to do that, IMO. They've already taken the harshest hit that an autocracy can take, the leaders were killed. If they put new leaders in place then that will prove that this isn't just a strong-man organization held together by personality and personal power - it consists of a whole sub-population who want it to continue existing.
At that point the only way you're going to get rid of it is a very thorough boots-on-the-ground conquest. You can possibly do that through civil war instead of your own soldiers, but that depends on there being an opposition that's at least somewhat organized and motivated by long-term intent. The US evidently hasn't set one of those up, and I think Israel would have a hard time too. So yeah, this doesn't look so great for the US.
You're talking about substituting an adversarial government with a stable replacement. Trump and Hegseth are talking about bombing the shit out of Iran. There is no strategy required to achieve their goals. They're already accomplishing them.
I'm not talking about America's goals, I'm talking about Iran's goals. The issue is what a "win" is for Iran.
It's unclear what a "win" is for America since they don't see to have much of a long-term plan or goal here. If it's simply "bomb the shit out of everything" I guess they could claim a win. But that's just the proverbial pigeon knocking over all the chess pieces and shitting on the board.
And now the same regime is going to have a new generation of leadership with a thirst for vengeance.
America and Israel really screwed the pooch on this one, as if anyone's surprised...
I would be incredibly naive for us to assume Khameini was just another tinpot dictator. There's no way that, knowing this day would come, he hasn't made a priority of building institutional resilience designed to withstand his demise and/or an attack from Israel/US. He was in his late 80s. We can be sure that the conversation around who would succeed him was happening even before this war started.
As terrible as he was, he was by no means politically unintelligent. Unfortunately we can't say the same for America's leadership at the moment.
Regime change is incredibly difficult work, even with strong political will and support from the people. America arguably had that with Afghanistan, and even with much of the resources of the world, couldn't pull it off.
Yeah, but the fact that they were able to take out a big chunk of second-in-commands and potential successors at the same time doesn't help the stability much.
That meeting they were having should really have been a Zoom call.