First, in contrast to what you may have seen being pushed by a small group of online influencers, this was not WWIII, it did not lead to ‘boots on the ground’ or thousands of Americans dead. Those were lies.
Israel’s current plan is to wrap up the operation this week. President Trump has made it clear that he intends no further attacks unless Iran escalates.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that Israel would welcome the fall of the Jihadist regime in Tehran, but that’s up to the Iranian people. Israeli planes have hit regime security targets like the Basji militias and the gates of a notorious prison, making a potential revolution more viable, but that’s it.
President Trump’s ‘regime change’ tweet touched off hysteria from the usual suspects who claim to be more MAGA than Trump, but the reality is he has the same position. It would be a good thing if the regime falls and if American external pressure can do it, that would be good, but there won’t be any nation-building.
There’s a big difference between regime change and nation building. In the Bush/Obama era, people tended to conflate the two. If an evil regime fell, we needed to have a plan to build democracy there.
Some people still stick to that worldview, they’re perhaps the last neo-cons or liberal interventionists (otherwise an endangered political species), but they’re a minority with no influence on Trump.
Regime change is possible without nation building. It means defeating or overthrowing enemy governments, directly or indirectly. There was regime change in WWII with some nation building. The Cold War ended with regime change without nation building. If Iran’s Supreme Leader and his theocracy end up collapsing as a result of the Israeli and American strikes, that will be regime change, but it’s only nation-building if we go in and start trying to manage the outcome.
I’m skeptical that there will be regime change in Iran. I think nation building is wildly unlikely. And remember the same people telling you we would be doing nation building were also telling you that WWIII was about to break out.
A realistic approach is to look at how Trump actually thinks without the hysteria or the projection.
Trump would welcome the fall of Iran’s regime, he isn’t sending in troops for nation building.