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A regime change for Iran remains a strategic option, analyst warns

A Tehran-based analyst says Washington has never fully abandoned the idea, despite operational limits and geopolitical risks

The view that a regime change for Iran remains a strategic option continues to influence Washington’s long-term approach toward Tehran, according to Afifeh Abedi, an analyst at a Tehran-based strategic studies center. She argues that the United States has never fully abandoned the objective of promoting political change from the outside, even when past attempts have failed to deliver concrete results.

Abedi points out that this strategic orientation has deep historical roots and has repeatedly resurfaced in different political cycles. Direct military initiatives, she notes, have often revealed the operational and political constraints faced by Washington, demonstrating how costly and complex any intervention on Iranian territory would be.

According to the analyst, the absence of tangible success does not indicate a shift away from the goal itself, but rather reflects the current geopolitical environment, which limits the ability to translate intent into action. Iran, she emphasizes, cannot be compared to smaller or more fragile systems, as it maintains a broad range of military, political, and social capabilities capable of generating significant and multidimensional costs for potential adversaries.

On the risk of renewed confrontation, Abedi says that Tehran remains convinced that Washington preserves a credible willingness to consider military options, even if those options are restrained by global balances and by extremely high strategic costs. As a result, Iran continues to strengthen its defensive posture in order to discourage external pressure.

In this broader framework, Abedi concludes that a regime change for Iran remains a strategic option, but one that carries long-term security consequences and strategic uncertainty for the United States.

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