When the USSR invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, assassinated President Hafizullah Amin and installed a more compliant government, it kicked off an era of war and terror that has not ended 47 years later. When the USA and allies invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, it initiated a period of war and terror that may now be coming to an end with a degree of political stability and less violence in the last two years. When France and the UK with seemingly reluctant support from the USA intervened in Libya in 2011, weakening the rule of Muammar Gaddafi so insurgents found and killed him, it opened a period of war and chaos that has produced a fragile balance between two competing governments and intermittent violent conflict between them.  

Regime change

The US objective in attacking Iran together with Israel is not self-defence. There was no evidence of any imminent threat to either Israel or the USA. For that reason, the attack is yet another breach of international law, the third time the USA has launched an unprovoked attack on a foreign state in the last nine months. 

In his initial eight-minute video posted on his ill-named ‘Truth Social’ platform, Trump set out the aim in terms of degrading Iran’s military capacity, its regional role, and its nuclear ambitions, and then calling on Iranians who oppose the current regime to rise up against it once the attacks are over. A New York Times report now says the timing of the attack was driven by intelligence that supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei and other senior leaders would be meeting in his compound. That suggests that regime change was at the forefront of the thinking all along, that degrading military capacity is a means to that end, and that the nuclear dimension might be less important.

So it seems Trump has dropped his previous stance against prolonged wars and the ambitions of regime change. The examples of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya offer insights about the different possible outcomes.

They prove nothing, of course. They warn of chaos, prolonged violence and deep insecurity and danger for ordinary citizens, but it is indeed possible that Iran could find a peaceful path to a different kind of state. That millions of Iranians are sick of the Islamic Republic is clear from the demonstrations at the start of the year and the sickening violence with which they were put down shows how far the regime believed it had to go to retain its grip.

However, despite being decapitated with the death of the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, some of his family, and others, the Iranian state survives. The religious hierarchy, the civil administration, the military and the IRGC (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) all seem to be in still functioning condition. Unless the army mutinies or foreign forces intervene, the IRGC faces no adequately armed opposition to the efforts it will make to reassert regime control of the country. 

Boots on the ground

Among the differences between the examples of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya is the presence of foreign forces. The Soviet military spent from 1979 to 1989 fighting the mujaheddin (pre-Taliban) in Afghanistan, and the USA and allies spent from 2001 to 2021 fighting the Taliban. In Iraq, US forces were present in strength from 2003 to 2011. In both countries, the outsiders tried to remake the state. In Afghanistan neither Soviets nor US and allies could defeat the opponents of the different orders they tried to establish. In Libya, the British and French intervention was more of a drive-by with no boots on the ground; Libyan factions with foreign financial and political support were left to battle it out.

On the face of it, there seems little likelihood of the Arab states in the Gulf or Israel or the US sending in their forces. In which case, unless the Iranian state and religious structures fragment internally, and despite the existence of several nominally separatist ethnic movements in the country, the state will persist.

It will, of course, be much weakened. Its domestic legitimacy will probably erode even further (though it is always difficult to assess whether foreign pressure will generate a ‘rally-round-the-flag’ response from ordinary people). It will probably strengthen even further its links with Russia, though whether Russia can divert financial or military resources to help its ally is open to question.

Outcomes

It is possible to envisage one chain of events that leads via popular protest and internal divisions to more or less peaceful change. It is possible to envisage another that leads, either via one faction winning out clearly in a power struggle within the regime, or via regime unity, to the reassertion of an even more repressive state authority. And it is possible to envisage a third chain of events that leads via fragmentation to an unresolved factional power struggle, and via external financing to the emergence of a counterforce inside Iran that to some degree balances the strength of the IRGC, and thus to civil war and mayhem.

It is beyond me to say which of these is more likely. Israel and the USA have flipped the coin and it is far from clear where or how it will land.