The United States is betting it can bring down the Islamic Republic from the air - no ground troops, no occupation, no repeat of Iraq. Historian Niall Ferguson argued this gamble has a better chance of succeeding than most people realize, thanks to a revolution in precision weaponry.
As "Hvylya" reports, Ferguson told The Free Press that the goal of Operation Epic Fury and its Israeli counterpart Roaring Lion is straightforward: "to decapitate the Islamic Republic" and hope that "out of that decapitation can come a revolution in Iran."
Ferguson drew a sharp contrast with the 2003 Iraq invasion. Back then, the US tried to force democracy on Iraq by deposing Saddam Hussein and directly running the country. The result, he acknowledged, "was not ideal" - expensive, deadly for American soldiers, and ultimately inconclusive. This time, Washington is using air power to "give the Iranian people a chance to take their own freedom" without specifying what the new regime should look like. The operation was launched jointly with Israel on February 28.
Critics argue that air campaigns have never succeeded in toppling a government. Ferguson countered that the comparison is flawed: "We've never had the kind of precision in air power that we now have." He called the accuracy of the strikes "the most impressive thing" about the operation. "You couldn't do that to, say, Berlin in 1944," he said, referring to the ability to target specific regime figures rather than carpet-bombing cities. Weeks earlier, Washington had issued tough demands to Tehran in Geneva - demands Iran flatly rejected.
Early reports suggested the strikes hit both military infrastructure and private residences of senior regime officials. Unconfirmed rumors circulated that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself had been targeted. Ferguson acknowledged the risks - civil war, chaos, a failed revolution - but argued that at some point the regime "simply runs out of capacity to sustain its repressive system." Especially after it massacred tens of thousands of its own people in January, losing "what little shreds of legitimacy they had left."
Also read: McMaster and Sullivan Both See Strikes on Iran as Likely - But Can't Name the Goal