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Israel’s military campaign reminds some of America’s ill-fated Middle East interventions, which President Trump has long denounced.
June 17, 2025Updated 2:08 p.m. ET
In the years since America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of “regime change,” or military action to topple hostile foreign governments, has become politically radioactive in Washington.
Few political leaders have criticized the concept as much as President Trump, who has spent years attacking both Democrats and Republicans for supporting foreign interventions. In a typical campaign trail riff last summer, he told supporters that President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had “sent our blood and treasure to back regime change in Iraq, regime change in Libya, regime change in Syria and every other globalist disaster for half a century.”
But as Israel pounds Iran with airstrikes that it says are aimed at the country’s nuclear and missile programs, analysts say the assault increasingly threatens the survival of Iran’s government and may in effect be turning into a regime change operation.
That could leave Mr. Trump trying to avoid entanglement in the sort of conflict he has spent years portraying as the definition of insanity.
Israeli officials say their attacks are an urgent response to Iran’s advances in its nuclear program. But there are growing signs that their aims are expanding.
During an interview on Fox News on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was asked whether regime change was an explicit goal.
