The War to End the Iranian Regime Has Begun

By Noah Rothman

Saturday, February 28, 2026

 

The war began a little after 1 a.m. on the East Coast. It is a war designed to put a definitive end to the Iranian nuclear program. It is also a war to neutralize Iran’s long-range ballistic missile program, and to finally sever Iran’s operational and financial links to its network of terrorist proxies that have killed so many Americans and their allies over the last 47 years. And it will achieve all those aims by toppling the Islamic Republic of Iran.

 

At least, that is what America and its Israeli partners hope. As both nations embarked on a historic and unprecedented joint mission over Iran, their officials made it clear that the goal of what will be a sustained campaign of strikes on regime targets is nothing less than regime change.

 

“The goal is to create all the conditions for the downfall of the Iranian regime,” Axios reporter Barak Ravid wrote, relating remarks from senior Israeli officials. “We are targeting the entire Iranian leadership — political and military — past, present, and future. Developments will also depend on the extent to which the Iranian people rise up.”

 

In a video message, Donald Trump confirmed that imploding the Iranian regime is the operation’s objective. “The hour of your freedom is at hand,” the president said.

 

While Trump asked the Iranian people to “stay sheltered” at the outset of this campaign — and timing the strikes to coincide with Saturday morning in Iran is likely designed to ensure that as many Iranian civilians as possible would be unexposed to U.S.-Israeli action — he encouraged the Iranian people to rise up:

 

For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want, so let’s see how you respond. America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny, and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.

 

Okay . . . tentative encouragement, at least.

 

But there are indications that the Iranian people will heed the president’s call. “An Iranian doctor in northern Iran said he was ‘cautiously hopeful’ about the strikes,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

 

“‘There was no other way,’ said the doctor, who treated protesters who were injured during January’s rallies . . . ‘People on the street smile at each other: Can you believe it? They show how excited they are,’ he said.”

 

At this hour, the fog of war prevails. There are, however, early indications that U.S. and Israeli strikes have executed overwhelming, near-simultaneous strikes on Iranian military, command and control, and political targets:

 

 

 

Those targets include the senior clerical leadership in Iran, up to and including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself:

 

 

For the Iranian regime, this is an existential war. All deterrence has failed. The ordnance it does not use, it will lose. The regime will hold nothing in reserve, and it has retaliated against American bases across the Middle East. While U.S. interceptors have been deployed against the worst of the barrage, there are unconfirmed reports of ballistic missile impacts at U.S.-operated bases and ports and drone swarms targeting American assets and those of its partners.

 

The president did not mince words about the threat the Iranian regime poses to the lives of U.S. service personnel. He warned that “the lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties.” But he added that “we are doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.”

 

Indeed. The Iranian regime has been at war with the United States from its inception. It has taken the lives of hundreds of Americans, including civilians, in a campaign of terrorism the likes of which no other nation on earth has ever pursued. Its nuclear and ballistic missile programs were expressions of the immutable character of this regime — not the threat itself but instruments of a regime structurally and ideologically committed to the West’s retreat and collapse. We have merely joined a fight that has been ongoing for most of our adult lives.

 

This will not be a quick series of pinprick strikes. It will be a long and possibly fraught campaign. The president will need to do more to enlist the American people’s participation in this national project. But if the mission succeeds and, on the other end of it, a world without the Islamic Republic awaits, it will be epochal.