A second US/Israeli attempt, in 6 months, aimed at regime change in Iran has failed.

The last attempt, made during June 2025, involved an Israeli sneak attack followed by a 12 day war on Iran. Iran responded with a defensive war that hurt Israel so much that Trump was forced to intervene on its behalf. And Trump launched a piece of theatrics that drew a line under the conflict and enabled a swift US exit before things became very serious.

But the unfinished business of the US/Israel in Iran resulted in a renewed attempt at regime change through a different means this month.

The US had fomented the economic situation in Iran through its punishing sanctions regime, which produced the protests. Trump was particularly responsible for the economic state of affairs in Iran by ripping up Obama’s nuclear deal in 2016 and imposing tough sanctions. The US President ratcheted them up last year to unprecedented levels. Europe, despite knowing better, has kow-towed to Trump in its present slavish state.

As a result of the US sanction regime Iranian oil sales revenue declined by two-thirds and the dollar shortage produced inflation of around 50 per cent in the country. On the 28th December, as Trump met Netanyahu at Mar-a-lago, the Iranian currency suddenly suffered a 30 per cent drop in value on the international markets from a concerted attack on the rial by Western traders short-selling.

This caused consternation in Iran and started the bazaari protests, lighting the fuse.

The bazaari had always been a strong supporter of the existing regime – pictures of the original Ayatollah Khomeini always adorn the shops there. But historically when the Bazaar went on strike it was seen as serious for any administration.

A deal would surely have been done to quell the discontent if it had not been for the activation of the US/Zionist part of the plan. The plan was to turn a protest into a violent insurrection that just could not be left without response, and would get a sufficient number of people killed to justify US intervention and “regime change” in the classic way.

There is ample evidence that both the US and Israel began stoking insurrection in Iran out of the protests. Israel, in particular, is known to have plans and agents in place for events to suddenly take place in other states. 40,000 Starlink terminals were found to have been imported into Iran. Their capture and the Iranian neutralisation of Musk’s Starlink through Chinese technology, disrupted the planned insurrection and the internet was immediately shut down by Tehran for security reasons.

Netanyahu and Trump had evidently given the plan the go ahead on New Year’s Night at Mar-a-lago. Israel wanted US military power to destroy Iran’s air defences and ballistic missiles to leave it defenceless. Israel had learnt last year that it could not attack Iran with impunity. It needed Iran’s defences removed someway or another.

The Israeli press has admitted that Mossad and its agents were involved in this project. When the protests begun earlier this month, the former US Secretary of State and Directer of the CIA, Mike Pompeo tweeted on X: “The Iranian regime is in trouble… Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them…”

Alistair Crooke, former British diplomat, also revealed that a large force of Iraqi-based Kurds, trained by the US, crossed the border to foment trouble in north east Iran. Turkish intelligence monitoring their movements informed the Iranians who destroyed them, killing over 200.

The US/Israeli manufactured insurrection then took the form of the provocative burning of private property, bazaars, hospitals, schools and 25 mosques. It was the paid activists of the US/Israel who killed over 200 police and shot civilians with Israeli supplied small arms and who proceeded to provoke the clampdown by the authorities, as the Iranians attempted to calm protests and ameliorate the situation.

The wide casualty figures for the disturbances in Iran were provided to the Western media by the Centre for Human Rights in Iran. The Centre is not based in Iran – it is based in New York and financed by the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington with a chairwoman, Minky Worden, who usually runs anti-China disinformation in the West. Another prominent spokeswoman, used by Western media, is Masih Alinejad, who has received nearly 1 million dollars from the NED over the last decade.

The BBC fact-checkers have not been employed to challenge the widely varying figures given of deaths, ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands. It was shown again that their job of work is only Russia and Trump.

A vast disinformation campaign about the situation in Iran was launched in the West to establish a narrative that “this time is different” I.e. that the “regime” was under dire threat and would imminently collapse. This was aimed at generating momentum in Iran and instilling confidence that the government could be overthrown. Many news agencies suggested that the Supreme Leader would be shortly getting on a plane to Moscow, like Assad had done. Just one more push…

The Pahlavi Shah’s son was put forward as an alternative government. That was a ridiculous proposition.

A far more likely scenario for “regime change” in Iran than the return of the Shah, if the US had succeeded, would have been a replacement of the Iranian clerical rulers by the military – the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Perhaps, in the end, someone told Trump this.

The idea presented by the Western media was that the situation in Iran was 1979 in reverse. But the Shah could not depend upon his army in 1979, which surrendered to the Revolution, whereas the current government have security forces who are very willing to both kill and die for it. They will not melt away in favour of some foreign imposed figurehead. There was also no general strike in Iran, paralysing the state, as there was in 1979. There was, therefore, no internal force which could force state collapse, despite any internal discontent.

The 1979 Revolution was a true internal Iranian event. It caught Washington by surprise and determined that Iran’s subsequent development would be Islamic. And no alternative functional opposition has ever emerged.

The West presents the 1979 events as a hardline Islamic Revolution but it was nothing of the sort. Much of the revolution was inspired by ideas from the French Enlightenment, like the Constitutional Revolution suppressed in the first few years of the 20th Century. In 1970, a large part of the urban population were motivated against the Shah by a desire for individual rights. The left was a strong component in the situation. But this part of the Revolution became submerged in the Islamic Republic because the most substantial opposition to the Shah came from the clerics, who he feared to silence, and rural poor – and through various subsequent events, including Saddam Hussein’s invasion at the behest of the West.

The 1979 Revolution then developed some of the characteristics of the French Revolution, organising its own kind of Islamic Thermidor.

It is this urban part of Iranian society which has been struggling to free itself of the clegy’s straightjacket ever since, through a desire for internal reform. This is the basis of internal Iranian politics, left to its own devices. But the West is not content to leave Iran to its own devices. And the West has largely outsourced its Iranian policy to Israel, which is intent on disabling or destroying the Iranian state.

I don’t think it is worthwhile spending any more time on the internal politics of Iran because what is happening is being determined by two external forces – that infamous double act of Israel/US. It is only a question of who is in the driving seat at any one time.

President Trump himself was certainly inciting insurrection in Iran by promising a military operation like Venezuela and urging people to stay on the streets (to be killed). When Trump made his statement that the US was “cocked and loaded” no one had been reported killed. Now they say thousands have died since – despite, or because of, Trump’s threat. It can only be Trump who was responsible for these deaths for the encouragement he gave.

And as the insurrection began to wane Trump tweeted “keep protesting, help is on its way” just to give it a boost.

At that point the Trump was asked by a US journalist: “Do you see any checks on your power, on the world stage? Is there anything that could stop you, if it wanted to?” The US President replied: “Yeah, there’s one thing, my own morality, my own mind. Its the only thing that can stop me.”

The manufactured situation created by the West is likely to make the Iranian government desperate and volatile. It has made many attempts to make peace with the US and resisted serious Israeli provocations. But it has been boxed into a corner so that it’s only 2 options will be to go down fighting by closing the straits of Hormuz and/or launching a massive response to Israeli aggression in the form of hyper-sonic ballistic missiles. Russia has evacuated all its people from Israel over the past week and it knows the Iranian capability one presumes.

The US/Israeli manufactured insurrection in Iran was, however, defeated by 14 January. And this appears to have happened not just through the efforts of the state repressive apparatus but by the people themselves, who did not like the alternative to a functional state.

Trump seems to have had the plan of finishing off the “regime” through the concentrated use of its US military power, perhaps in conjunction with Israel, after Iran was in full insurrection. However, the insurrection was put down before US forces were prepared to strike.

Trump’s advisors told him, reportedly, that US strikes would probably fail to finish off the “regime.”

Trump is probably also aware that Israel’s objective in Iran is not to turn it into a functional, democratic state. Israel needs an Iranian enemy to justify its aggressive actions in the region and the tax dollars the US provides. A nice, Western-friendly Iran is not in its interest. A democratic Iran would be a rival for Western favours.

What Israel would prefer is another Iraq, Libya or Syria, a chaotic, dismantled state with millions fleeing toward Europe, Azerbaijan or Armenia, and militant jihadis assembling and organising in neighbouring countries. This would provide Israel with future justification for destabilising the territory of Iran, and prevent a functional alternative state from emerging. It does this in Syria, despite US and Turkish attempts to rebuild the shattered state.

Trump, an opponent of the US shambles in Iraq, surely understood this. If the madcap plan involving an attempted US deathblow to the Iranian state had succeeded that surely would have been the result. But the insurrection had failed anyway.

Later reports have suggested that Israel was also against going ahead with the final part of the plan. CNN, reporting an Israeli source, saying that

“PM Netanyahu urged US President Trump to delay any attack on Iran, warning that the Iranian regime would not collapse without a prolonged campaign and raised concerns over Israel’s missile defense systems, damaged during the Iran-Israel conflict.”

This confirms what was said in a previous piece that Iran had given as good as it got in the 12-Day War and its stout resistance to Israeli aggression had forced Israel to call up Trump to produce a bit of theatrics to draw a halt to a conflict in which the Israeli public was buckling and heading abroad to their second homes.

It is interesting that the Democrat jibe of “TACO” (“Trump Always Chickens Out”) has not been aired in America about the President’s backing down, just when it is most appropriate. What could that mean? Is it realised that this was a serious conflict in which the US lost prestige and such a cutting jibe would not serve the national interest?

Trump, himself, is in a bind because the traditional Republican Party is attempting to reassert itself against his MAGA base. They see an opportunity with Trump’s inability to run for a third term because of the Constitution.

They need to sideline Vance also though. Israel is reportedly assisting this process because much of the MAGA base is America First and not Israel First. Israel prefers warhawk Republicans like Pompeo and Rubio for its interest. The division in Trump’s support base began to appear in the 12-Day War last year and Trump knows he needs to heal it before the US mid-terms in November.

Is that, also, what is at the bottom of the US retreat from the brink in Iran?

Trump has now changed the agenda to threatening tariffs against those states who oppose a US taking of Greenland. Classic bully behaviour as the Europeans will roll over, rather than fight like Iran. Pivot to Greenland…