There were always limits to what an air war alone could accomplish. When foreign airstrikes have helped topple autocratic regimes in the region, they were supplemented with U.S. troops on the ground, as in Iraq or Afghanistan, or coordinated with local armed militias, as in Libya. Neither option applies in Iran.
Regime change also requires regime fragmentation, which doesn't appear to be happening in Iran.
Despite punishing attacks on internal security organizations, including bases and command centers of the Revolutionary Guard and the plainclothes Basij militias, there has been no indication of serious defections or division. Residents say Iranian security forces are present and active to a degree that is keeping opponents of the regime in hiding.
Tehran residents say the destruction and death caused by the bombing is also turning more people strongly against the war, including many opponents of the Islamic Republic. More than 1,270 Iranian civilians have been confirmed killed so far, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran. U.S. military investigators think American forces likely were responsible for a strike that killed dozens of children at a girls' elementary school in Iran.
The fear is that a government emboldened by its survival and aggrieved by the punishing airstrikes will become a fiercer oppressor.
“In Kurdistan, until people are sure that real and serious changes are actually happening, I don’t think any major change will take place,” said Zagros Enderyarî, an official with the Kurdistan Freedom Life Party, an Iranian Kurdish armed group. archive.ph/VG79c #IranWar #Islamism #Kurds