Why Israel and the US were so deadly wrong about regime change in Iran

“Why Israel and the US were so deadly wrong about regime change in Iran Submitted by Hamid Dabashi on Tue, 04/21/2026 - 13:38 Israel fooled Trump into war on Iran using the same network of native informants and think tank operatives that paved the way for the quagmire in Iraq A demonstrator holds a banner depicting US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a protest against the US-Israel war on Iran in Rome, Italy, 14 March 2026 (Filippo Monteforte/AFP) On Back in June 2018, when yet another Israeli - US - Saudi euphoria about "regime change in Iran " was in the air, I published a short essay in which I argued that the idea of regime change in Iran was delusional. Even earlier, in 2010, I published a book, Iran, the Green Movement and the USA , in which I identified the endemic struggles of Iranians against the draconian measures of their ruling government as a "civil rights movement" seeking civil liberties - and not a revolutionary uprising to which additional help could be provided by Israeli or American genocidal Zionists seeking distraction from their crimes against humanity in Palestine . In a recent interview with LBC News in the UK , soon after the ceasefire negotiated in Islamabad between the US and Iran, I was reminded of that essay and that book, now more than a decade and a half old, and cited them to the host interviewing me. He wondered why, despite the fact that there are people like me living and writing in the US, its officials still commit such follies, hoodwinked by Israel. The simple response, I offered, is that people like me are not the people to whom the regime change cabal of genocidal Zionists talk - nor would I talk to them. But who does talk to American Zionists in positions of power, sitting behind an immense military machine, to start bombing Iran , destroying its colleges and universities, targeting its innocent children, damaging cultural heritage sites, and targeting its civil infrastructure - all based on the fraudulent assumption that they can change its regime? The simple answer to that principal question is that Israelis , led by their war criminal thug fugitive Benjamin Netanyahu , fooled the egomaniac Donald Trump into unleashing the might of the American military against Iran. But in doing so, these megalomaniac Zionists were aided and abetted by a coterie of regime-change, native-informer expatriate Iranians instigating war against their own homeland from their hideouts in US Neanderthal think tanks like the Hoover Institution, or ingrained Zionist outfits like the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation, with The New York Times leading the propaganda machinery for such regime change. Iranians know these treasonous characters well. It is time for the world at large - Americans eager to reclaim their homeland from Israeli lobbies in particular - to know them too, and hold them accountable for the havoc they have wreaked on their own homeland by insisting that Americans must send their children into harm's way. 'Which path to Persia?' With a little internet search, one might come across a solid piece of evidence called "Which Path to Persia?" (2009). The document was commissioned and funded by a notorious reactionary outfit, the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. From the very first page, it becomes clear that the document was commissioned by the CIA. From the very first page, it becomes clear that the document was commissioned by the CIA... positing the whole existence of Iran as a trouble, an issue, a menace, a danger that must… be neutralised Among the people whom the authors of this document - all known American think tank operatives - thank are a pair of expatriate Iranian brothers, Abbas Milani and Mohsen Milani. The older brother in particular, Abbas, is infamous for having spent a lifetime advocating violent US- and Israeli-instigated regime change in his own homeland, from which he fled decades ago. He is now gainfully employed at a reactionary neocon think tank at the Hoover Institution in California, where he fools his employers with a joint he calls the Iran Democracy Project. What is this document about, in which these Iranian expatriate brothers are thanked for their fruitful contributions? It starts by positing the whole existence of Iran as a trouble, an issue, a menace, a danger that must, one way or another, be neutralised. The three options articulated in this pamphlet "to deal with Iran" are diplomatic, military - with particular allusion to Israel as leading this option - and, finally, regime change, which includes the options of a velvet revolution, an insurgency and a coup. The reluctant final option is containment. This document is dated 2009, long before the events of 2025-26, when all these subversive options were being put into effect, as The New York Times was giving the self-same warmonger, regime-change expatriate operative and his ilk plenty of back-to-back columns to continue calling for regime change in Iran. The Iraqi model In a recent expose, even The New York Times had to admit the sheer stupidity of the Israeli intelligence they sold to Trump, deluding themselves that they could effect regime change in Iran. Gathered in the Situation Room, Netanyahu and his Mossad chief, David Barnea, convinced the US president that they could dismantle the Islamic Republic in just four days. Where do these Israelis get their intelligence? They pretend to be omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. They are not. What western 'experts' mean when they predict Iran's collapse Read More » They actually get their corrupt intelligence from US think tanks that The New York Times advertises loudly and clearly. They get it from the "Iran experts" they manufacture in American think tanks on both coasts. Just look at the opinion columns of The New York Times and follow those they publish back to the think tanks they come from. That is where this corrupted intelligence originates. There is a very simple and threadbare pattern to the treachery. Recalling the prelude to the US invasion of Iraq back in March 2003, two key figures come to mind: Ahmed Chalabi (1945-2015) and Kanan Makiya. Add to them the name of Nayirah al-Sabah - and follow the pattern. Chalabi was a convicted Iraqi fraudster who spread the false news that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, which a charlatan American journalist named Judith Miller, a rabid Zionist, in turn published in The New York Times to prepare the groundwork for the US invasion of Iraq. Kanan Makiya is an Iraqi dissident who was prominently featured in the US media as the critical voice of expatriate Iraqis, telling the world what a horrible man Saddam Hussein was. Sabah was the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter , Saud Nasser al-Saud al-Sabah, who testified before the US Congress about Kuwaiti infants being killed by Iraqi soldiers in their incubators. Time eventually proved that these three deceitful native informers were rank charlatans whom the US media aggressively promoted in their concerted efforts to demonise Iraq and Iraqis, and to pave the way for the US invasion of Iraq based on non-existent weapons of mass destruction. An old script, new characters Fast forward a couple of decades, and lo and behold, we have exactly the same figures cooked up in the preparatory stages for the genocidal Zionist-instigated Israeli-US invasion of Iran. The key character in this redundant scenario would be the dimwitted, indolent Reza Pahlavi, posing like an Ahmed Chalabi who wants to return to rule an Iran he left as a teenager and simply does not understand. For Makiya, we have a couple of competing candidates, among them Abbas Milani and Karim Sadjadpour , and for Sabah, we have the notorious charlatan Masih Alinejad . Same sugar lumps, different bucket. We can, of course, dig a bit deeper. This episode began with Israeli propaganda fooling itself into producing a film version of Azar Nafisi's notorious spoof Reading Lolita in Tehran . That was the first salvo in demonising Iran in anticipation of regime change. In at least two of my books, Post-Orientalism (2009) and Brown Skin, White Masks (2011), predicated on Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks , I have already demonstrated how, when Orientalism as a mode of imperial knowledge production yielded to area studies think tanks, the project began to rely on native informers telling American strategists what they wanted to hear rather than what they needed to know. Now go back and read the op-ed pages of The New York Times and other US media outlets , with their endless succession of bad-faith propaganda , and count the number of pieces these expatriate Iranian think tank operatives have published systematically demonising Iran and falsely forecasting its imminent demise. These op-eds are signposts to the sources of bad intelligence these treasonous expatriate Iranians are giving to their employers, who should now reconsider the terms of these operatives' employment and ask for their money back. They should never buy these native informers without a money-back guarantee. Regime change regime of knowledge The era of area studies is over, just as Orientalism was over. The production of knowledge has now shifted to discredited, deeply ill-informed think tanks, from the Hoover Institution to the Heritage Foundation to the American Enterprise Institute. These think tanks are deeply invested in their sanctioned ignorance, wishful thinking and astonishing stupidity. The expatriate Iranian contingent of these think tanks, all shameless traitors to common decency, is responsible for being party to the Israeli machination that triggered Trump into this war. These expatriate Iranian operatives are as much anti-American as they are anti-Iranian with not an iota of investment in a liberated future for either country Not only 90 million-plus Iranians, but also 300 million-plus Americans who wish to liberate their country from endless, pointless wars, are watching these soulless, gutless, comprador, gun-for-hire native informers. The question Americans have to ask themselves is very simple: how could a gang of treasonous expatriate regime changers who mobilise the Israeli and American armies to invade their own homeland be loyal to their adopted countries? If they are willing to help lay waste to the country where they were born and raised, what is their sense of loyalty to the country that they use and abuse like a cash cow for a lucrative living? Masses of Americans are mobilised to oppose corruption and decadence in their own government, secure and rescue their civil liberties from an imperial presidency, and once and for all pull the plug from under an Israeli killing machine they have financed for generations. These expatriate Iranian operatives are as much anti-American as they are anti-Iranian, to the core of their diasporic existence, with not an iota of investment in a liberated future for either country. Someone has to hold them accountable for years of spreading dangerous lies that have placed Iranians and Americans alike at risk. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. War on Iran Opinion Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:29 Update Date Override 0

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