DONALD Trump’s cabinet choices have led Iran opposition groups to believe that regime change is now inevitable for the Islamic regime.
The President-elect pursued a maximum pressure strategy on Iran when he last occupied the Oval Office between 2016-20. This included robust sanctions, scrapping US involvement with the controversial JCPOA nuclear deal and the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, Qasem Soleimani.
And recent cabinet nominations are a clear indicator, experts say, that he will double down on non-military options to economically strangle Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s problematic theocracy.
Key nominations include Florida Senator Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, who has advocated for Israel to ramp up attacks on Iran.
National security advisor Michael Waltz has previously encouraged Israel to “finish the job” against Iran-backed Hamas and helped to pass legislation that would impose secondary sanctions on Chinese purchases of Iranian crude oil.
“Just four years ago Iran’s currency was tanking – they were truly on the back foot . We need to get back to that posture,” he said in October.
Trump’s choice of UN ambassador, Elise Stefanik, is Jewish – significant in an Israel -sceptic assembly – and he is retaining his son-in-law Jared Kushner, architect of the Abraham Accords which saw Muslim states formally recognise Israel for the first time, as his unofficial linchpin to his middle east strategy,
The President-elect retains close ties with Saudi Arabia, Iran’s key rival, and Riyadh may finally normalise relations with Israel if it is put front and centre of plans to transform the middle eastern landscape .
It is unlikely that Trump, who campaigned on a platform of ending wars, will want to directly involve the US military against Iran.
But revelations that he deployed stalwart ally and billionaire Elon Musk to speak to Iran’s UN ambassador Amir Saeid in his New York residence shows that Trump is keen to rein Iran in and, particularly, to neutralise its nuclear capabilities.
These have already been dealt a sharp blow during Israel’s last round of airstrikes on October 24 which, apart from neutralising Iran’s ability to manufacture new ballistic missiles and drones for Russia , also destroyed an active top secret nuclear weapons research facility in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex.
“Direct intervention with boots on the ground remains highly unlikely,” said regional expert Megan Sutcliffe of Sibylline strategic risk group.
“That being said, if we see proxies continue to attack US bases and personnel as we have this past week in Syria, we may see Trump ordering retaliatory strikes, possibly expanding to targeting weapons transfers to proxies over time.” (Continues…)
Trump’s first action will be to introduce secondary sanctions on Iranian oil to limit its ability to export to China, which accounts for 90 per cent of all Iranian oil sales.
Though the Biden administration maintained Trump sanctions it stopped enforcing them, and Iran’s oil exports stand at 1.7 million barrels per day, three times higher than in 2019 when Trump was in office.
Today, his transition team is drawing up plans to possibly limit this to just a few hundred thousand barrels per day.
Following its successful airstrikes, which neutralised even the most sophisticated Russian S-300 air defence systems protecting Iran’s oil refineries and plants, Israel still retains the option to knock out Iran’s oil production ability altogether.
And with US President Joe Biden’s red lines no longer in play, Trump may well “unleash” Israel, said Prof Gwythian Prins, a former advisor to Nato and the UK’s chiefs of staff.
“Trump’s appointments make it clear that the policy will unleash Israel. It will be allowed to complete the job.
“And now that Benjamin Netanyahu has been given a declaration of unity across the coalition, it’s clear the Israel won’t stop until it achieves all his aims. -especially if Iran continues to deploy low flying drones which can avoid Israel‘s Iron Dome.”
He added: “There is every possibility now that the curtain will fall on the theocracy in the not-too-distant-future, and Iranians will be given back their country in the way that should have happeend during the green movement when the West let them down. “
Despite boasting the world’s third-largest oil reserves, the regime is currently imposing rolling power blackouts across the country, including Tehran.
Economic hardship for Iran’s young population, which is already straining at the leash of religious strictures, could once more provide the powder keg for internal revolt.
Opposition groups were already anticipating regime change.
“The situation in Iran is explosive, and regime change is within reach,’ said Shahin Gobadi from the foreign affairs committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
“But it can only be achieved by the Iranian people and the organised resistance. The nationwide resistance network, with resistance units led by women at its forefront, serves as the driving force for regime change with Iran.”