Following the U.S. and Israeli missile strikes on Iran, President Donald Trump said the moment called for a shift in leadership, urging Iranians in a video message to act rather than “let it pass.” In the days after those strikes, the question of what “regime change” would mean on the ground has taken center stage, with analysts pointing to U.S. history that suggests such efforts often collide with realities inside tightly organized political systems.

Schanzer, executive director of the Washington think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said there needs to be more than damage to the leadership and the paralysis of opponents; Washington would also need to understand whether any part of the regime can be pushed toward practical engagement. He said there needs to be a “sense that there is no salvation for the regime as such,” alongside a belief that the regime would need “to work with the United States,” language reflecting a specific picture of how the post-strike political landscape might evolve.

Schanzer also focused on internal fault lines, arguing that the key issue is whether Washington can “penetrate the ranks of the regime” that he characterized as not “true believers” but more pragmatic actors. He said, “Because I don’t believe that the true believers will flip,” suggesting that even significant pressure may not translate into leadership decisions that align with U.S. goals.

Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said the limits of force are central to the debate. He said, “Air power can damage a leadership,” but added that “it can’t guarantee that you’ll bring in something new,” leaving open the possibility that successors could come from within the same ideological structure or could provoke new cycles of instability.

AP noted that it was “unclear” what regime change would mean in practice, pointing to Iran’s situation after a January crackdown on protests that, according to AP’s reporting, left thousands dead and tens of thousands arrested. The reporting also described an environment in which military allies and proxies referenced by AP—Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Assad government in Syria—had been weakened or eliminated, while Iran’s economy remained in shambles and dissent persisted despite the crackdown.

AP reported that early Sunday Iranian state media confirmed that Israel and the United States had killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but noted that the United States has not laid out a clear postwar vision. As a result, analysts said the pathway from leadership losses to a stable, more U.S.-aligned outcome is not automatic, especially in a system in which, AP said, the core leaders are bound by ideology and religion.

In the discussion of potential scenarios inside Iran, AP also pointed to the possibility that power struggles could emerge among officials willing to step into a vacuum, rather than a wholesale collapse into a Washington-preferred government. O’Brien’s warning about air power’s inability to guarantee what comes next underscored the uncertainty about whether any transition would reduce repression or instead reproduce it under new leaders.

The backdrop of U.S. policy history has loomed over the debate. AP described the CIA’s role in a 1953 coup that toppled Iran’s democratically elected leader and gave near-absolute power to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, contrasting that outcome with the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ultimately overthrew the shah after decades of unpopular rule. AP also recalled that regime change efforts can start with stated intentions—such as building democratic alternatives—but frequently spiral into political instability, where allied leaders become obstacles and soldiers return from conflicts with heavy losses.

The broader historical comparison in AP’s reporting extended to Latin America, where Washington’s involvement has often been described as a driver of long conflict. Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, said direct U.S. involvement “rarely ‘resulted in long-term democratic stability,’” citing Guatemala, where AP said U.S. intervention in the 1950s contributed to a civil war that lasted decades and left more than 200,000 people dead, and Nicaragua, where AP said backing the Contras in the 1980s contributed to a prolonged civil conflict.

AP also described how, even as overt U.S. involvement in Latin America eased after the Cold War, the Trump administration has rekindled parts of that legacy through Caribbean boat strikes, a naval blockade on Venezuelan oil exports, and involvement in electoral politics in Honduras and Argentina. The reporting added that on Jan. 3 U.S. forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and flew him to the United States to face drug and weapons charges, an outcome that observers said could shape what Washington hopes to achieve in Tehran.

In that comparison, Schanzer drew a parallel to the uncertainty around whether what happens after a decisive action is truly regime change or simply removal of a particular leader. AP reported him saying, “There are those who could claim that what we did in Venezuela is not regime change,” because the reporting said the regime remained in place with “just one person that’s missing,” leaving open how far any change extends beyond the figure at the top.

AP said the implications for Iran hinge on what happens next inside Tehran—whether elements of the regime begin moving against one another, and whether any reshuffling creates room for leaders who can sustain a new alignment. For now, AP’s reporting emphasized that it is “simply too early to know” whether the political winds are shifting, and said the leaders who follow could prove as repressive or viewed as illegitimate U.S. proxies by Iranians, depending on how the transition unfolds.