Wasielewski, an expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran under way since Saturday still raised questions about Washington’s goals and strategy.
He said the declared U.S. aim of depriving Iran of the ability to produce nuclear weapons and of its conventional ballistic arsenal was justified, but that statements and actions aimed at toppling the Islamic Republic were less clear. Trump has called on Iranians to rise up and overthrow the regime, he said, while his administration says regime change is not its goal.
Wasielewski said a change of government in Iran would be doubly beneficial, removing a dangerous regional regime while eliminating Iran’s nuclear program, but highlighted what he called a key problem: asymmetric power.
“The Iranian regime still enjoys the support of the regular army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). These are the people who have weapons; protesters in the streets don’t,” he said.
He said he did not rule out a regime collapse but did not yet see sufficient grounds for it, and warned that the United States was urging Iranians to rise up without giving them confidence it would not abandon them.
“If we openly say that regime change is a secondary matter for us, then why would Iranians trust us?” he said.
Wasielewski noted that, according to sources cited by PAP, as many as 30,000 Iranians were killed in the streets during recent protests. He said Trump had pointed to Venezuela as an ideal scenario, where the United States achieved diplomatic goals but, in the expert’s view, the regime stayed in power and the public saw no change.
If Iran’s rulers survive the war and continued bombing, Wasielewski said the result would be further cycles of uprisings and repression, even if Iran’s nuclear program is set back by years.
He criticized reports about plans to arm Kurdish militants to spark a nationwide uprising, saying Kurds are a relatively small group concentrated in Iran’s northwest, limiting their military potential, and that their push for autonomy could complicate Iran’s internal situation. He also said the United States had repeatedly betrayed Kurdish allies, making renewed trust unlikely.
On the military operation, Wasielewski said it was proceeding smoothly and that Iran’s response was largely symbolic and poorly coordinated, while strikes against Iran’s nuclear program had so far been positive.
He criticized public U.S. declarations that the war should last no more than four to five weeks, saying that signaled to Tehran how long it needed to endure, and that Trump’s condemnation of “endless wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan could reinforce Tehran’s belief that Americans would not want to be drawn into another prolonged conflict.
(jh)
Source: PAP