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Donald Trump says the war with Iran will continue until all his goals are achieved, and he's warned more US troops are likely to die. But if one of the aims is regime change, how can the US president achieve that without troops on the ground? And how can he keep the war in check with it already escalating into Lebanon's capital, Beirut, where Israel's begun strikes on Hezbollah after the militant group launched missiles towards Israel?
Today, Hussein Abish from the Arab Gulf States Institute on why the war is unlikely to go as Trump planned. I'm Sam Holing on Gatigle land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.
The conflict in the Middle East has escalated again overnight with both US troops and Israeli citizens killed amid the deepening crisis in Iran. Israel has begun striking Hezbollah in Lebanon after it intercepted missiles launched from Lebanon by the Iran-backed militant group. Iranians within the country and abroad are digesting the news the country's supreme leader has been killed. Three US service members have been confirmed dead and five more seriously injured as Iran retaliates over the US and Israeli military operation.
America will avenge their deaths and deliver the most punishing blow to the terrorists who have waged war against basically civilization.
Hussein, Iran's supreme leader has been killed. Now, he was a brutal dictator. So the world, I think it's pretty safe to say, is not mourning his death.
Mostly not. No, he has some supporters in Iran and in parts of the Arab world and pockets here and there, but basically no. I think most of the world is perfectly glad to say goodbye to this man. He led a system that was uh based on brutal repression internally. And the best example of that was the reaction of the regime to the widespread protests a few weeks ago by killing something between 6,000 and you know, 36,000 people in the space of a couple of days. And so this is a regime that was willing to shoot people down in the streets without hesitation if they felt that was necessary. Really, in other words, a legacy of of brutality at home in order to spread instability and insecurity o in in neighboring states in order to preserve the stability and security of this brutal regime inside Iran.
All right. So, given given all that, should we see this as a success? A success for Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu? At the very least, it was, wasn't it? An intelligence success.
Oh, without a doubt it was an intelligence success. But we've known since the killing of a senior Hamas leader in a bombing inside Iran that how thoroughly penetrated Iran is by Israeli and American intelligence at a very senior level. Israel knows things about who is where inside Iran and the United States does too that they that they shouldn't really be able to know, not just based on signals intelligence but also human intelligence. That there are clearly people deep in the regime who who are turned. And I think Kami uh was bracing for this. I think he knew that if the war started, they'd be looking to take him out right away. And the the really surprising thing is that all these senior national security people would gather in one place under these conditions and and sort of invite such a hit and uh they did and it happened and a lot of them were killed, not just Kami, but a lot of the senior most Iranian national security leadership were killed.
All right. Well, Donald Trump has said this operation, well, this war will continue until all objectives are achieved. Now, he's posted another video on Truth Social.
Combat operations continue at this time in full force and they will continue until all of our objectives are achieved. We have very strong objectives.
And he has warned that it's very likely, Hussein, that there will be more US deaths. We have already seen three US servicemen die, haven't we?
Yeah. At least, you know, Iran is is not incapable. It remains a country with some, you know, ability to strike back. It is only prudent to say there will probably be more American deaths and there probably will be. On the other hand, the extent to which goals can be met depends on what goals, right? It's very reminiscent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq where there was a mishmash of not compatible and sometimes contradictory aims articulated by the supporters of the of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And therefore there was no real metric for judging whether it was a success or a failure. Now, in this case, Trump may actually welcome that because it gives him then the ability to say all objectives have been met, as he did, for example, at the end of the 12-day war last year in June. Uh when he did one major bombing attack against Iran, declared the war over and said that Iran's nuclear program had been obliterated. Now, he says Iran needs to end its nuclear program. But I thought it was obliterated. The whole thing is incoherent. The the quest for regime change is a particularly far-fetched one, as there is no no example that I'm aware of in human history of an autocratic regime or any other regime falling because of things like aerial bombardment or economic sanctions. It simply has not and does not happen.
So you are saying there that America would need troops on the ground to bring down this regime.
Yes, you would need American boots on the ground to ensure the fall of the regime and to determine who would be the alternative. None of that is going to happen. I think Trump is very clear he's not going to put US boots on the ground. The Israelis are not able or willing to do that either. So the theory of the case according to Netanyahu and Trump implicitly is that there were so many people on the streets of Iran recently demanding a change that all that's necessary is to push on the regime a bit with external pressure and bombing and and that the public internally Iranians you know fill in the blank who can step in and do fill in the blank whatever it is to replace the current regime with another fill in the blank. And and when you say fill in the blank, really, we don't know what does fill in the blank do we if the regime was actually to for...
Well, that's the problem, right? So, I mean, I think from Trump's point of view, the ideal situation is a Venezuela-style scenario where you have, you know, the the the titular leader of the regime killed, in case of Venezuela, captured and taken away or something like that, and then people from within the regime step forward and take over and but sort of say they're willing to cooperate with the basic American demands. Now, I don't know that there's much chance of that in Iran. The problem is that there is no coherent opposition. The only figure that anyone can point to is the son of the former Shah, but it's not clear that he has a lot of support inside of Iran. And more to the point, it's not clear at all that he heads a movement that has any kind of a, you know, the ability to create a coherent alternative system.
All right. Who saying the supreme leader is dead, but the regime is still there. It's still in place and a new leadership has has been put in place. How quickly do they choose a new leader? Donald Trump has already said that he's willing to talk to them. So, what's in place now?
Well, well, they certainly were preparing for this in advance. They I don't think they they were surprised to lose a lot of their leadership. They're probably bracing for more of that. So, yeah, they are they're able to replace leaders. This is an institutionalized system. This is not a personalized system like frankly like the Trump administration. It will take probably um, you know, a week or two before anything is announced about the new supreme leader because they have to meet and and make a formal decision and stuff like that. It's done by a guardian council that, you know, again, will be reticent to get together physically inside Iran under current circumstances, but but they'll be able to figure it out. But would they be interested in talking to him at this stage? I there's no evidence of it.
Well, Hussein, I really want to get a better idea from you about what this might mean for the region for stability in the Middle East. Now, Iran is bombing its Gulf neighbors and not just military targets, its airports in Dubai, in Abu Dhabi.
Seeing civilian buildings being hit, hotels in Bahrain and in Dubai. Among those, Dubai's main airport also being hit. Officials in Abu Dhabi say one person's being killed and seven injured in an Iranian attack on the city's international airport. What's the strategy there? Why is it doing that?
They're lashing out because, you know, Gulf countries, especially UAE and and a few others are are very vulnerable. And I think the idea with the UAE is that, you know, they have no strategic depth and they're very vulnerable to missile and drone attacks. And, you know, you can swarm targets with drones and get through, which is what's been happening. And few missile strikes threatens the reputation of a place like Dubai as a safe haven.
For people, for money, for international travel, for commerce. It it wants to be a hub and it has become a hub, Dubai in particular, of of commerce and travel and so so on. Well, if if they're getting bombed, they can rebuild, but the reputational damage globally, the damage to the business model, if you if you allow me to put it that way, is severe. So that's why they're attacking it. It's it's vengeance.
All right. Well, Hussein, Donald Trump thinks this war will obliterate Iran's nuclear threat and destroy a government that's been in place for almost four decades. So, what do you think? Is that possible? And how quickly could that be done?
So, he said already that Iran's nuclear program has been obliterated, but now it has to be stopped.
So, it it it's obliterated, but it must stop. Is is the kind of coherence you get from Donald Trump and or rather incoherence, I should say. The the idea of regime change being affected from the air. Again, it's it's got no precedent in human history. Could it happen? Sure it could. It it's possible that Netanyahu and Trump's theory that Iranians will see the weakness of the regime because of these bombing attacks and and, you know, rush to replace it as soon as the war is over or as as the war continues or what have you. That the military will stage a coup or that the elite inside the regime will say, "Let's sue for peace." All of those scenarios are probably okay for Trump, but there isn't any sign of any of them. I'm skeptical of all of that. I really am. The way in which this is going to produce a good result has not been clearly explained or articulated by Trump or anybody else. What you have is a mishmash of goals that are, you know, is in many ways sort of absurd and in many ways even self-contradictory.
You know, again, uh I just find it hard to imagine a lot of this happening just because of bombardment.
All right. But there is certainly a scenario where Donald Trump has simply made the world a much more dangerous place.
Oh, in several ways. One is if the war concludes with the regime intact, wounded, badly, enraged and plotting and preparing revenge over the coming years and, you know, is more repressive at home and feels justified in that. The other, you know, nightmare scenario is that the regime collapses either fully or to some extent and that Iran becomes destabilized and that fighting in Iran in the peripheries and things like that, you know, becomes a source of instability regionally and that Iran starts to spew out refugees and and violence and chaos into neighboring states and that's definitely a possibility. So, this is a very big gamble. This could go badly. Clearly, the Iranian regime is suffering a tremendous series of blows, but it might not fall. And if it survives, then it can regroup over time. And at that point, you'd have to ask yourself, what the hell did this accomplish anyway?
Husse is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute. This episode was produced by Sydney Pete. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Cody. I'm Sam Hol. Thanks for listening.