Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose name has been increasingly chanted in Iranian protests, similarly urged Iranians in the early hours of Feb. 28 after the attack began to shelter during the strikes, then emerge into the streets to overthrow the Islamic Republic.
With a regime apparatus well entrenched and enriched by oil money after 47 years in power, that would seem to be a formidable feat for unarmed Iranians.
But New York-based Iran analyst Arya Kangarlu, who predicted the imminence of the U.S.–Israel strike, says that by the end of the war, Iran’s nuclear, missile, and regional proxy capabilities will be obliterated. That, combined with the targeted killing of the Islamic Republic’s leadership by the United States and Israel, will effectively cripple the regime, paving the way for people to topple it, he said.
“Once it lacks these capabilities, then it’s no longer the Islamic Republic as we know it,” he said in an interview with the Persian Epoch Times.
Among them are regional pressures, sources of funds for the regime, how well high-ranking officials can dodge the targeted attacks, and broader geopolitical factors including the resolve Trump wants to show to adversaries like China and Russia, he said.
‘Operation Epic Fury’
The U.S. Central Command says targets of the joint strike, dubbed Operation Epic Fury, include the IRGC command centers, Iran’s air defense capabilities and military airfields, as well as missile and drone launch sites.Ahead of the strike, which was launched after talks about Iran’s nuclear program failed, the United States had brought in a large fleet of fighter jets and more than 10,000 troops to the region. Washington had also dispatched the USS Abraham Lincoln and three guided-missile destroyers to the region in January, along with the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, and four accompanying destroyers from the Caribbean closer to Iran.
The strike against Iran comes after the Twelve-Day War in June 2025 in which Israel bombed military and nuclear facilities and high-ranking officials in Iran, with the United States providing assistance and bombing three key Iranian nuclear sites. Iran responded by targeting a U.S. base in Qatar and Israel with missiles and drones.
Toppling the Regime
Kangarlu says Washington’s plan is to keep hitting the Islamic Republic to the point that “there would be no one left to command” the security forces to crack down on people, making it safe for Iranians to come out and take over governmental buildings.He says that’s similar to how Israel targeted terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack, eliminating multiple layers of the leadership to incapacitate the organization.
“What [the Islamic Republic’s] security forces will face in the coming days will be terrifying. They will witness the deaths of all the regime’s leaders,” he said. This, he added, would sap the forces’ will and ability to continue, and, combined with the collapse of the chain of command, render them incapable of suppressing the people.
“They weren’t synchronized before, but now they are,” he said.
Kangarlu says the duration of the war will depend on the extent of Iran’s response. If it continues to barrage civilian areas in neighboring countries hosting American bases, then the United States will escalate its strike, but if Iran shows more restraint, the war could take longer, he said.
Key Factors
Kholdi says the Islamic Republic has made a strategic mistake in agitating its neighbors hosting U.S. military bases, hitting targets within their territory rather than American aircraft carriers. This issue is among the factors weighing on the course of the war, he says.
“The president of the United States, in fact, has effectively goaded the Islamic Republic into committing this big mistake of attacking the Arab states in the region, because now they can prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this regime presents an existential threat to the whole region’s stability and peace,” he told The Epoch Times.
Kholdi says seeing whether senior officials of the regime defect as the military operation continues is another factor to watch. He says regime officials use different leverages to prevent defection.
“We sometimes forget that members of the armed forces have families and extended families too, and repressive forces of any regime have on file where all these people live,” he said.
“The first thing that anybody, and any member of the armed forces who wants to defect, would like to ensure is the safety of their own family or extended family.”
Another factor, Kholdi said, is that many among the top brass of the regime have amassed great wealth over the years, while the IRGC has morphed into a business mafia with immense resources, and this becomes another channel to continue funding operations of the repressive forces.
Kholdi noted that survival will be top of mind for the regime’s leadership, making how well they can hide from U.S. and Israeli targeted attacks crucial.
“They have, I would say, mastered the art of hide-and-seek,” he said. “So the job of eliminating them may require more intelligence-gathering on the ground, and, of course, the involvement of special forces such as the Navy SEALs, for instance, if we come to that point.”
He adds that many people in the tribal areas of Central Iran, whom regime figures likely hope to use as a refuge, actually despise the Islamic Republic—a factor that would work against the regime as well.
In the case of Iran, Arab states that are being targeted by the Islamic Republic’s missiles are looking to Trump to finish the job, Kholdi says.
And then there is China, which has “effectively put the South China Sea under siege,” and Russia, which has been “extremely intransigent with respect to making peace with Ukraine,” adding to Trump’s motivation to not let the Islamic Republic off, Kholdi said, lest he lose credibility.
“So Trump has to finish off this job,” he said.