When President Trump announced that he was taking the United States to war against Iran, he offered a long list of ambitious goals. Then he added the most audacious objective of all: regime change. “Air power rarely produces friendly regime change,” said Robert A. Pape of the University of Chicago, a prominent scholar of air power. But none of those scenarios would be the transition to democracy that many Iranians hope for — the more positive version of regime change. ... After offering regime change as one of the reasons for the war, we may not only fail to produce regime change; we could see a second massacre.”

Source: Los Angeles Times March 02, 2026 21:16 UTC