Pat Walsh

A second US/Israeli attempt, in 6 months, aimed at regime change in Iran has failed.

The last attempt, made during June 2025, involved an Israeli sneak attack followed by a 12 day War on Iran.  Iran responded with a defensive war that hurt Israel so much that Trump was forced to intervene on its behalf.  And Trump launched a piece of theatrics that drew a line under the conflict and enabled a swift US exit before things became very serious.

But the unfinished business of the US/Israel in Iran resulted in a renewed attempt at regime change using different means in January 2026.

The US has been fomenting discontent with the Iranian economic situation by means of its punishing Sanctions regime.  Economic hardship produced the protests.  Trump has been particularly responsible for the Iranian economic crisis because he ripped up Obama’s nuclear deal of 2016, and imposed tough economic sanctions.  The US President ratcheted these up to unprecedented levels in 2025.  Europe,  in its present slavish state,  followed suit—despite knowing better—kow-towing to Trump.

As a result of the US Sanction regime, Iranian oil sales’ revenue declined by two-thirds:  and the resulting dollar shortage produced inflation of around 50 per cent in the country. 

On the 28th December, as Trump met Netanyahu at Mar-a-lago, the Iranian currency suddenly suffered a 30 per cent drop in value on the international markets.  This resulted from a concerted attack on the rial by Western traders who engaged in ‘short-selling’.

The resulting fall in the value of the currency caused consternation in Iran, set off bazaar protests:  lighting the fuse.

The bazaari element had always been a strong supporter of the existing regime—pictures of the original Ayatollah Khomeini always adorn the shops there.  But, historically, when the Bazaar went on strike, it was seen as serious for any administration.

A deal would surely have been done to quell the discontent if it had not been for the activation of the US/Zionist part of the plan.  The plot was to turn a commercial protest into a violent insurrection—which could not be just left with no response:  the plan was to get enough people killed to justify a US intervention and “regime change” in the classic way.

There is ample evidence that both the US and Israel began stoking insurrection in Iran out of the protests.  Israel, in particular, is known to have plans and agents in place in several states to take advantage of such events. 

It has emerged that 40,000 Starlink terminals were found to have been imported into Iran. These provide a satellite connection for high-speed internet in remote areas, by-passing more regular means of connection.

The capture of these terminals, and the Iranian neutralisation of Musk’s Starlink through Chinese technology, disrupted the planned insurrection;  and the Internet was immediately shut down by Tehran for security reasons.

Netanyahu and Trump had evidently given the plan the go-ahead on New Year’s Night during the former’s visit to Trump’s Mar-a-lago resort.  Israel wanted the exercise US military power to destroy Iran’s air defences and ballistic missiles, in order to leave it defenceless.  After all, Israel had learnt in 2025 that it could not attack Iran with impunity.  To do this it needed Iran’s defences removed some-way or another.

The Israeli press has admitted that Mossad and its agents were involved in this project of social disruption.  When the protests began in early January, the former US Secretary of State and Directer of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, tweeted on X:  

“The Iranian regime is in trouble… Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them…”

Alistair Crooke, former British diplomat, also revealed that a large force of Iraqi-based Kurds, trained by the US, simultaneously crossed the border toward Kermanshah to foment trouble in Iran.  And Turkish Intelligence, monitoring the movements of the Kurdish force, informed the Iranians—enabling them to destroy the incoming army, killing over 200.

The US/Israeli-manufactured ‘insurrection then took the form of the provocative burning of private property, bazaars, hospitals, schools, along with 25 mosques.  It was the paid activists of the US/Israel who killed over 200 police, and shot civilians—with Israeli-supplied small arms—with the object of provoking the clampdown by the authorities:  as the Iranian administration attempted to calm protests and ameliorate the situation.

Wild casualty figures allegedly resulting from the disturbances in Iran were provided to the Western media by the Centre for Human Rights in Iran.  This Centre is not based in Iran—it is based in New York and is financed by the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington.  Its Chairwoman, Minky Worden, usually runs anti-China disinformation in the West.  Another prominent spokeswoman used by Western media is Masih Alinejad:  she has received nearly 1 million dollars from the NED over the last decade.

BBC fact-checkers have not been employed to challenge the widely varying figures given of deaths.  These range from hundreds to tens of thousands.  This confirms that these BBC activities are solely directed against Russia, and against Trump!

A vast disinformation campaign about the situation in Iran was launched in the West, with the object of establishing a narrative that “this time is different” , which is to say that the “regime” was under dire threat and would imminently collapse.  This propaganda offensive aimed to generate momentum in Iran and to instil confidence that the Government could be overthrown.  Many news agencies suggested that the Supreme Leader would be shortly getting on a plane to Moscow—just as Assad had done!  Just one more push . . .

The exiled son of the deposed Pahlavi Shah was trotted out as an alternative government:  a ridiculous proposition.

A far more likely scenario for “regime change” in Iran than the return of the Shah, if the US had succeeded, would have been a replacement of the Iranian clerical rulers by the military—the Revolutionary Guard Corps.  Perhaps, in the end, someone told Trump this.

During the disorder, the idea presented by the Western media was that the situation in Iran was a mirror image of the 1979 overthrow of the Shah.  But in 1979 the Shah could not depend upon his army—which surrendered to the Revolution—whereas the current Government has security forces which are very willing to both kill and die for it.  They will not melt away in favour of some foreign-imposed figurehead. 

Furthermore, there was no general strike in Iran, paralysing the State, as there was in 1979. 

There was, therefore, no internal force which could force State collapse, despite any internal discontent there might be.

The 1979 Revolution was a truly internal Iranian event.  It caught Washington—which held that it was Communism which posed the danger to the Shah’s regime—by surprise.  This had the consequence that Iran’s subsequent development would be Islamic.  And no alternative functional opposition has ever emerged.

The West presents the 1979 events as a hardline Islamic Revolution, but it was nothing of the sort.  Much of the revolution was inspired by ideas from the French Enlightenment—just like the Constitutional Revolution that had been suppressed in the first few years of the 20th Century. 

In 1979 an activist part of the urban population, which had grown massively with the Shah’s petro-development, were motivated against the Shah by a desire for individual rights. The Left was a strong component in the situation.  But this part of the Revolution was an alien development and it became submerged in the Islamic Republic:  because the most substantial opposition to the Shah came from the clerics, who the Shah feared to silence, and from rural poor.

The Shah, who had just had a celebrated meeting with US President Jimmy Carter, realised the danger to his regime, and made a notoriously incendiary blunder by denouncing the clerics as sodomites and alcoholics.  This attack outraged the Iranian public and sparked off mass protests that were repressed with substantial State violence.

Shia Islam was anti-state in character and never aspired to take power in the state.  The Ayatollah stepped up to the job of taking charge of Iran, and then governing the State, as a matter of duty to the people.

The 1979 Revolution developed some of the characteristics of the French Revolution, organising its own kind of Islamic Thermidor.

It is this urban part of Iranian society, motivated by a desire for internal reform, which has been struggling to free itself of the clergy’s straight-jacket.  This dichotomy forms the basis of internal Iranian politics, when left to its own devices.  But the West is not content to leave Iran to its own devices.  And, even worse, the West has largely outsourced its Iranian policy to Israel—which has no interest in the welfare of Iranians:  its sole intent is to disable or destroy the Iranian State.

I don’t think it is worthwhile spending any more time on the internal politics of Iran because what is happening is being determined by two external forces—that infamous double act of Israel/US.  Their intentions towards Iran run in parallel.  The only  question is which is in the driving seat at any one time.

President Trump himself was certainly inciting insurrection in Iran by promising a military operation like that in Venezuela—and urging people to stay on the streets (to be killed).  At the point when Trump made his statement that the US was “cocked and loaded”, no one had been reported killed.  Now it is said that thousands have since died—despite, or because of, Trump’s threat. 

It is only Trump who is responsible for these deaths:  it was he who raised false expectations. 

As the insurrection began to wane, Trump tweeted “keep protesting, help is on its way”:  just to give it a boost.

At that point Trump was asked by a US journalist: 

“Do you see any checks on your power, on the world stage? Is there anything that could stop you, if it wanted to?” 

The US President replied: 

“Yeah, there’s one thing, my own morality, my own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

The manufactured situation, created by the West, is likely to make the Iranian Government desperate and volatile.  It has made many attempts to make peace with the US, and has acted with moderation in the face of serious Israeli provocations.  But that Government is being boxed into a corner:  with the aim of leaving it with  only two options:  to go down fighting by closing the Straits of Hormuz and/or launching a massive response to Israeli aggression in the form of an attack using hyper-sonic ballistic missiles. 

Russia evacuated all its citizens from Israel during the fighting:  it knew the Iranian capability one presumes.

But things did not go according to Imperialist plans.  The US/Israeli-manufactured insurrection in Iran was defeated by 14th January.  And this appears to have happened, not merely through the efforts of the ‘State repressive apparatus’, but by the people themselves—who did not care for the proffered alternative to a functional State.

Trump seems to have had the plan of finishing off the “regime” by means of the concentrated use of its US military power—perhaps in conjunction with Israel—after Iran was in full insurrection mode.  However, the insurrection was put down before US forces were ready to strike.

At that point Trump’s advisors told him, reportedly, that US strikes would probably fail to finish off the “regime”.

Trump is probably also aware that Israel’s objective in Iran is certainly not to turn it into a functional, democratic state.  Israel needs an Iranian enemy to justify its aggressive actions in the region, and to stimulate the tax dollars the US provides.  A nice, Western-friendly Iran is not in its interest.  A democratic Iran would be a rival for Western favours.

What Israel would prefer is another Iraq, Libya or Syria—a chaotic, dismantled, State with millions fleeing toward Europe, Azerbaijan, or Armenia, and militant jihadis assembling and organising in neighbouring countries.  This would provide Israel with future justification for destabilising the territory of Iran, preventing a functional alternative State from emerging.  This is its strategy in Syria—where it remains successful, despite the attempts by the US and Turkey to rebuild the shattered State.

Trump—who opposed the shambles created by the US in Iraq—surely understood this.  If the madcap plan—involving an attempted US death-blow to the Iranian State—had succeeded, that surely would have been the outcome.  But, in the event the insurrection failed.

Later reports have suggested that Israel also came to realise that the time was not right to proceed with implementation of the final part of the plan:  CNN, relying on an Israeli source, reported:

“PM Netanyahu urged US President Trump to delay any attack on Iran, warning that the Iranian regime would not collapse without a prolonged campaign and raised concerns over Israel’s missile defense systems, damaged during the Iran-Israel conflict.”

This confirms what I reported in a previous piece:  that Iran had given as good as it got in the 12-Day War, and its stout resistance to Israeli aggression had forced Israel to call up Trump to produce a bit of theatrics to draw a halt to a conflict in which the Israeli public was buckling and heading abroad to their second homes (see:  https://drpatwalsh.com/2025/06/28/the-war-on-iran-trump-averts-a-catastrophe-of-his-own-making/).

It is interesting that the Democrat jibe of “TACO” (“Trump Always Chickens Out”) has not been aired in America about the President’s backing down in this instance—just when most appropriate!  What can that mean?  Is it realised that this was a serious conflict in which the US lost prestige:  and spreading such a cutting jibe would not serve the national interest?

Trump, himself, is in a bind because the traditional Republican Party is attempting to reassert itself against his MAGA base.  They see their opportunity in Trump’s inability to run for a third term because of the Constitution.

However, this element considers it needs to sideline Vance as well.  Israel is reportedly assisting in this process—because much of the MAGA base is America First and not Israel First.  Israel prefers war-hawk Republicans like Pompeo and Rubio for its interest.  

The division within Trump’s support base began to appear in the 12-Day War last year, and Trump knows he needs to heal it before the US mid-terms in November.

Is that, also, what is at the bottom of the US retreat from the brink in Iran?

Trump has now switched the agenda to threatening tariffs against those states who oppose a US taking of Greenland, a Danish colony.  The pivot to Greenland is classic bully behaviour as Trump knows the Europeans will roll over, after a bit of bluster, rather than fight like Iran did.

But the fact remains:  if Israel has anything to do with it, there is likely to be a US Round 3 with Iran.