Jonny Gannon, a former CIA operative who spent over two decades running covert action programs across the Middle East, contends that Washington risks repeating old mistakes in Iran. The US and Israel have killed senior Iranian commanders, degraded military infrastructure and shaken the regime's sense of impunity. But the Islamic republic's core instruments of coercion remain intact enough to ensure its survival, Gannon argues.

Writing for the Financial Times, Gannon warned of a familiar dilemma: how to exploit battlefield gains without sliding into an open-ended campaign for regime change. Washington keeps falling into what he called "the familiar illusion that pressure alone can produce regime change," "Hvylya" reports.

Gannon drew on history to illustrate the limits of covert operations. The 1953 CIA-British coup that removed Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and the 1954 US-backed overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala both succeeded in toppling leaders, yet neither operation built lasting legitimacy, stable institutions, or a durable political order. The backlash from the 1953 operation still shapes Iranian politics decades later.

For more than a generation, Gannon wrote, some US policymakers have believed the Middle East could be reordered through force and political engineering. That assumption has failed repeatedly. The risk now is not just mission creep but a truly regional war that pulls in multiple actors across the Gulf and beyond.

Gannon called for "strategic patience" - continuing to degrade Iran's lethal capabilities while dialing down bombing at the earliest opportunity to avoid hardening civilian sentiment. He urged Washington to coordinate with Gulf partners before scaling back operations, warning that the region's governments will bear the burden of any aftermath. Iran may yet change, he acknowledged, but the US will find it far easier to weaken the regime than to shape what follows.

"Hvylya" earlier reported on why retired General Stanley McChrystal dismantles the case for air power supremacy as a path to victory in Iran.