What can possibly go wrong in Iran?

This article by Global Geneva Americas' Editor William Dowell was first published as part of A Different Place.

So, Israel and the United States now have complete control over Iran's airspace, and they can bomb just about anywhere, at any time they want. What could go wrong? How about everything?

Bombing Iran is fine if you want to destroy a specific installation, or say a few hundred uranium-enriching centrifuges, but installations can be rebuilt, and centrifuges are relatively easy to replace. For any kind of permanent solution, you need boots on the ground, and no one who knows anything about Iran wants that.

Knowing your facts: How many Iranians are on the other side?

Tucker Carlson recently asked Senator Ted Cruz, if he had any idea of how big Iran’s population is. Cruz said, No, he didn’t know. Actually, the figure is 91.5 million. Of those, 125,000 to 150,000 are committed members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRG). Another 1.5 million to 3 million are Basiji—a fanatical militia, roughly equivalent to America’s National Guard, only on steroids.

During the Iran-Iraq War, the Basiji overran numerous Iraqi positions relying on human wave attacks. The Iraqis were better equipped with better weapons and more advanced technology. The Basiji had fanaticism and numbers on their side, and it turned out that in the end, that is what counted. Israel’s Self-Defense Force (IDF) has roughly 175,000 active soldiers reinforced by roughly 465,000 reservists, but Israel’s entire population is only a little more than 9 million people, and of those, less than 8 million are actually Jewish.

What do we really expect to happen?

The real question here is whether Israel’s Operation Rising Lion will have a lasting impact and put an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, or will it merely succeed in waking a sleeping lion? For the moment, the answer is less than sure. Israel might be able to use an American bunker-busting bomb to knock out Iranian centrifuges buried deep in a mountain, but it will be difficult to know unless one has access on the ground, and that’s not likely to happen.

There appears to be growing interest in seeing whether the Israeli campaign can succeed in triggering regime change. Iran’s ‘Supreme Guide’ Ali Khamenei is in his mid-80s and just about ready for retirement. There have been indications that members of Iran’s elite, including Khamenei, may be getting ready to seek political asylum in Moscow.

But what do we really expect to happen if Khamenei leaves? The real muscle in Iran is the IRG—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, which has now evolved into at least eight military organizations and effectively runs its own industries. If Khamenei goes, the most likely result will be a power struggle among members of the IRG until a strong man eventually emerges. It’s safe to say that that strong man is not likely to be a friend of Israel, or the West.

Diplomacy far the better route...

Iran’s government was always much more likely to evolve into a more civilized structure through diplomatic negotiations than in response to a bombing campaign. Evolution beats revolution almost every time.

If Netanyahu thinks that he can gain support from Iran’s downtrodden masses, he is kidding himself. Although Netanyahu’s outrage at Hamas’ massacre of some 1200 Israeli civilians on October 7 is totally understandable, any sympathy he might have gained was lost when Israeli troops bombed and killed more than 50,000 civilians in Gaza—the majority of whom were women and children. Then Talmud advises leaving revenge to God.

Netanyahu might have survived even the unnecessary gore wreaked on Gaza, but the siege conditions that Israel has imposed over the last three months, creating an artificial famine that is effectively starving nearly two million people, most of whom had nothing to do with anything, have made any kind of reconciliation between Israel and the Islamic world nearly unthinkable.

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Bombs do not win hearts and minds

Even if Netanyahu had not decided to behave like a war criminal, it’s hard to win hearts and minds with a bombing campaign. Although Israeli pressure might eventually make the current government in Tehran collapse, the odds are that it would only be replaced by something even worse. Since neither Israel nor the U.S. is likely to have forces on the ground, their only option will be to watch the ensuing chaos make an already bad situation even worse.

Iran’s suspicions about the United States are also likely to be enflamed by the bombing campaign. Although relatively few Americans feel much of a connection to the Middle East, most Iranians are acutely aware that their current mess traces its roots back to the CIA coup that overthrew Iran’s government in 1953.

History is crucial

The CIA was acting in support of Britain, which opposed the country’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh’s, efforts to nationalize Britain’s Anglo-Persian Oil Company. In place of a national government, the U.S. and Britain imposed the Shah of Iran, whom they hoped they could use as a puppet, guaranteeing access to Iran’s oil.

The puppet did not remain a puppet for long. Instead, he became a violent potentate who upset Iran’s traditional social balance and began imprisoning and torturing wide swaths of the population.

When the student protesters thrown into prison turn out to be the sons and daughters of the country’s best families, you know the place is in trouble. To complicate matters, the Shah turned to Israel’s Mossad to reinforce his own intelligence operation, SAVAK, which plunged even more deeply into unspeakable torture.

During the last days of the Iranian Revolution, I was in Tehran and asked an American political officer where he was getting his information from. “We depend on SAVAK,” he said. “They’re doing a great job.

Although most Americans thought of the Middle East as a distant place where politics tended to be violent and inscrutable, most people in the Middle East had the feeling that America was close at hand and omnipresent. Not American people, but American weapons, bombs, ammunition, and just about anything from the latest jet fighter to an Abrams M-1 tank or an M-16 rifle.

In short, anything a local dictator needed to remain in power and repress public dissent. Israel was seen by just about everyone in the Middle East as an extension of U.S. policy, a surrogate, a vehicle that Washington could use for plausible denial.

A few years before the Iranian Revolution, I was working in Paris on a story for Time Magazine dealing with torture as a political tool. It didn’t matter whether it was ethical or not; the question was, did it work? Along the way, I asked the head of the Iranian student union in Paris why he kept insisting that the CIA was involved in the Shah’s torture program.

“When you see the same form of torture appear in a dozen different countries, and they have only one connection in common, the answer is pretty obvious,” he said. The student, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, went on to become the foreign minister of Iran’s Revolutionary Government. He was executed a few years later, a victim of the chaotic power struggle that often follows regime change, especially when the change is brought about by violence.

Does America really wish to become re-involved?

A key question now is why, after decades of failure in Iran and in the Middle East, for that matter, the U.S. should want to get reinvolved now, especially since Netanyahu is calling the shots and taking responsibility for shaping the outcome.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s initial instinct was to deny U.S. involvement. That was the correct diplomatic approach. We were not in control, so it made sense to distance ourselves from the outcome.

That approach was quickly overturned by Donald Trump’s eagerness to take credit for what looked to him like a bold action and an easy win. Trump at first announced that Israel’s victory was thanks to sophisticated American weaponry. The effect was to make sure that terrified Iranians knew that America was at least partly responsible for their misfortune.

Trump then went on to claim that “we” had cleared the skies over Iran and destroyed the country’s air defense. After that, he suggested that the U.S. might get directly involved in the attack, notably by providing bunker-buster bombs that involve 30,000 pounds of explosives.

What did the U.S. stand to gain by attaching itself to a risky operation whose outcome was deemed unpredictable by the world’s most knowledgeable experts? Nothing. The U.S. stood to gain nothing except make itself a target for future terrorist attacks.

Trump, on the other hand, hoped that if the campaign did go well, he might get a Nobel Peace prize by attaching himself to Netanyahu. It goes without saying that that’s not likely to happen.

The Iranians are more than aware

On the positive side, however, the Iranians know that they are walking a nuclear tightrope. If their response to Netanyahu crosses a certain threshold, they could become targets for a nuclear attack either from Israel or the United States. As a result, their response has been low-key, and they’ve suggested that they are ready to negotiate a more peaceful outcome.

Trump’s reaction has been to say, “Too late! You had your chance.” Having closed the door on further negotiation, Trump went on to say that he doesn’t even know himself what he plans to do. He might get involved. He might not. He’d make up his mind a second or so before his final decision on whether to get involved or not.

When Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick for National Intelligence chief, remarked that the CIA had concluded that the Iranians probably weren’t really trying to build a bomb, Trump suggested that she didn’t know what she was talking about. Trump apparently knows more than the CIA, but how?

There is a theory in defense strategy that sometimes having a wild man in power has its advantages. The other side realizes that he is just crazy enough to do almost anything, so one wants to be especially careful. Trump seems to have sensed that and to be playing the crazy man to the hilt, but it can also prove to be a dangerous game.

Ironically, the one world leader that Trump seems to like and trust almost as a bosom buddy, Vladimir Putin, was asked what he thought about Israel attacking Iran. “We are millimeters away from World War III,” Putin replied. He may be right, and for once, he just might be the sane voice worth listening to.

Foreign correspondent and author William Dowell is Global Geneva's America’s editor based in Philadelphia. Over the past decades, he has covered much of the globe, including Iran, for TIME, ABC News and other news organizations.