Based on various interviews Professor Robert Pape, University of Chicago, and Ian Bremmer have given in the last 10 days. Pape founded the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, and Bremmer is the founder of of Eurasia Group, the world’s leading political risk consultancy.
The question sounds provocative. But follow the logic and it becomes less absurd — and more uncomfortable — than it first appears.
The United States launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28, 2026 — a joint US-Israeli military offensive against Iran. The first hours demonstrated the extraordinary reach of modern precision warfare. US and Israeli strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and key intelligence officials. Washington and Jerusalem described it as a decisive blow. It was not.
The Escalation Trap — Pape
Robert Pape has been an adviser to every White House since 9/11 — and has spent his career studying what bombing actually achieves. His conclusion, stated carefully and repeatedly: “For over a century, states have been trying to topple regimes with air power alone and — I’m choosing my words carefully — it has never worked.”
His framework for understanding what is unfolding is what he calls the escalation trap. The core finding is that US military actions have failed to weaken Iran, instead strengthening the regime’s political resolve and regional influence. The logic runs in three stages.
Stage one: the US bombs, kills leaders, hits targets. The bombing injects nationalism. The usual result is a more hard-line leader. The regime does not collapse — it hardens.
Stage two: the stronger regime lashes back with horizontal escalation — seizing the Strait of Hormuz. Iran now controls the passage through which 20% of the world’s oil flows.
Stage three: the US faces a choice between a ground invasion to retake the strait or accepting Iran as a permanent regional hegemon. There is currently a 70% probability of a full-scale ground operation, driven by the need to secure the Strait of Hormuz and physically seize enriched uranium, as air power has failed to resolve these issues.
Losing Control — Bremmer
Ian Bremmer has seen this coming. In his Top Risks report published in January 2026, before a single bomb had fallen, he identified the US Political Revolution as the top geopolitical risk of the year, warning that “the United States is itself unwinding its own global order.” The biggest source of global instability in 2026, he argued, would not be China, Russia, or Iran. It would be the United States.
That forecast now reads as prophecy. Massive strikes on Iran, initially designed to curb Tehran’s regional influence, have escalated into a broader conflict in the Gulf that threatens global energy markets and deepens the US’s political isolation.
Bremmer’s diagnosis of Trump’s strategic problem is precise. Trump appears to be trying something different from Bush in Iraq: wage war without clearly defining its purpose, and then deny responsibility for whatever follows. That may work politically for a while, especially if the administration can claim tactical success. But wars do not always cooperate with political messaging. Once the missiles fly, troops are exposed, energy markets react, and adversaries retaliate, the consequences become harder to control.
The core of Bremmer’s argument: Trump is already looking for an off-ramp. The administration talked about regime change in Iran and influencing who might lead the country next. Those outcomes are highly unlikely. That means the Iranian regime will remain in place and capable of continuing to cause problems for the United States in the future.
Iran can’t defeat the US and Israel, but it played its ultimate trump card by closing the Strait of Hormuz, holding the global economy hostage and building political costs for the US. The resulting optics are damaging. When the White House cited Iran allowing 20 additional tankers through the Strait as a diplomatic win, Bremmer noted the absurdity: the US, as the greater power, should not be in the position of negotiating concessions to undo the consequences of its own war. “That’s very far from an off-ramp. That looks like almost certainly like a period of escalation is coming,” he said.
And with the 2026 midterms approaching, the political clock is ticking. With no clear exit strategy from the escalating conflict, Trump faces the political cost of his aggressive policies.
The Inversion — Where Pape and Bremmer Converge
Here is where the question in the title becomes serious — and where both analysts point toward the same conclusion from different directions.
The United States went into this conflict aiming for regime change in Tehran. But look at what has actually been produced. Iran is far stronger than it was just 40 days ago. It is in control of 20% of the world’s oil. It is now an emerging fourth center of power. Russia controls 11%. Why exactly are they not going to work together at some point in the near future to cut that — to deny 30% of the world’s oil to Europe, to the West?
Meanwhile the US is burning through resources, credibility, and alliance relationships simultaneously. A US defeat and withdrawal from Iran would destabilise the globe more than Iraq or Afghanistan. Losing its 13 regional bases would expose NATO’s weakness and fragment Western alliances. European allies are already preparing for US disengagement.
Bremmer had already identified this dynamic before the war began. Trump’s foreign policy doesn’t run on traditional axes — allies versus adversaries, democracies versus autocracies. It runs on a simpler calculus: can you hit back hard enough to hurt him? If the answer is no, and you have something he wants, you’re a target. If it’s yes, he’ll cut a deal. Iran answered yes — and the deal has not been cut.
And at home? A president who promised a three-day campaign is now facing the prospect of a ground war with no exit strategy and midterm elections on the horizon. “Doubling down, talking tough in front of your publics — that is the way democracies often get into these long wars. And then those leaders basically look like embarrassments years later.”
The Fourth Power
Over the next months and year, there will be $75-100 billion of oil revenues going into Iran in Chinese banks that can be used to transform nuclear-enriched material into working nuclear weapons. Iran will become a nuclear weapons-oil hegemon. That means it will be the fourth center of world power.
Iran has already submitted a proposal that validates its status as a regional hegemon — including permanent ceasefire conditions and toll collection in the Strait of Hormuz at $2 million per ship.
That is not the proposal of a regime being bombed into submission. That is the proposal of a regime that believes it is winning.
Bremmer had warned of exactly this structural shift in January — before a single bomb fell. “2026 is a tipping point year. The biggest source of global instability won’t be China, Russia, Iran, or the 60 conflicts burning across the planet. It will be the United States.” The United States, he argued, is not being destabilised by its enemies. It is destabilising itself.
The Deeper Question
The question — what if Iran is aiming for regime change in the United States? — is not literally about a military operation. It is about a strategic logic.
Iran does not need to invade. It does not need to win a war. It needs the United States to lose one — or to be seen to lose one — at sufficient cost, over sufficient time, that the domestic political consequences become unmanageable. A president discredited. A military overstretched. An economy destabilised by oil prices and strained alliances. A superpower that went in confident and came out diminished.
That is regime change through exhaustion. Through the escalation trap. Through making your opponent’s confidence the instrument of their own defeat.
Pape: “We don’t have a strategy to win.”
Bremmer: “The real question is not just what Trump is trying to achieve in Iran. It is whether he believes the United States can break part of the Middle East this time without owning the consequences.”
The question that follows — and that no one in Washington appears to be asking clearly — is whether Iran already has its answer.
Here is an TED interview with Ian Bremmer and Robert Pape appeared twice in the last 4 weeks in the world’s second largest podcast show. Here is what he had to say: