Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote the following in an November 26, 2002 opinion piece in the New York Times entitled “An Iraq War Won’t Destabilize the Mideast.”

Arguments against a war in Iraq often revolve around the belief that an American invasion would destabilize the Middle East. According to this critique, the region is a powder keg of instability that a war, with all its inevitable unintended consequences, could well ignite. The Arab street would rise, radical Islamist recruiters would benefit from yet another grievance and Iraq’s fractious citizens — Arab Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds — would possibly crack their country apart. Those cracks would spread throughout the region.

But a war with Iraq might not shake up the Middle East much at all. Most regimes in the area are too stable, strong and clever. For example, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt appears to be vastly more adept than was Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, the shah of Iran.

Down at the bottom of that piece, readers learned that Gerecht was a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Despite being so spectacularly wrong in 2002, the Times still publishes him on a regular basis. They do not consistently divulge that he actually served as a case officer in the CIA, which is his actual form of expertise. He also served as a fellow at the Project for a New American Century, the organization that famously began calling for regime change in Iraq long before 9/11.

Almost all of Gerecht recent pieces for the Times are on the subject of Iran, and he’s got the same old idea for Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, as he had for Saddam Hussein.

Today he expands on that idea with co-authors Eric Edelman and Ray Takeyh for Foreign Affairs in a piece entitled “The Right Path for Regime Change in Iran.”

Now, I just wrote about My Thoughts on the Future of Iran yesterday, and I wasn’t planning on doing it again so soon. But I think it’s important to compare what these gentlemen wrote to what I wrote. I am going to begin with an obvious similarity. Gerecht, Edelman and Takeyh wrote:

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been comprehensively humbled. He once stalked the Middle East as the leader who helped defeat the United States in Iraq and surrounded Israel with lethal proxies. He had defied the international community and expanded Iran’s nuclear program, bringing the theocracy within reach of the bomb. His success abroad reinforced his authority at home. But the collapse of Iran’s “axis of resistance” in the Levant and Gaza and Israel’s current pummeling of the Islamic Republic inevitably raise the question of whether such a reversal can uproot the dictatorship. It could, but Israel will have to do a lot more to shatter the coercive powers of the theocracy’s police state—and do so without military actions that kill large numbers of civilians, especially women and children.

I wrote:

Today, Khamenei is 86 years-old and widely despised. He is correctly derided as a dictator. His determined and decades-long efforts to export the revolution have failed in spectacular fashion. His ally in Syria, Bashir al-Assad, is in exile in Russia. Hezbollah has been routed in Lebanon. Even his efforts to prop up the Sunni-led Hamas in Gaza is in literal ruins.

There’s little reason to believe he has a firm grip on power, and even less to believe there is a successor who can hold things together. And this was true before Israel began attacking the county and assassinating top generals and leaders…

…I believe the focus should be on what is best for the Iranian people, and that means their country should not be reduced to rubble and they shouldn’t suffer under hated foreign occupation.

What we all see is the vulnerability of the Iranian regime and their revolution.

We also see the same strand of hope for the regime, although we describe it in different ways and reach different conclusions. I wrote:

[Khamenei] has had three decades to seed Iranian society with loyalists and people whose personal status and prosperity are dependent on the continuation of his system. The same was true in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and we saw how that led to a furious insurrection once he was deposed.

Gerecht, Edelman and Takeyh wrote:

The military campaign that has focused on disarming Iran needs to focus on the regime’s enforcers. The Revolutionary Guards’ leadership has been decimated but its many military bases remain intact and should be targeted. The regime’s first line of defense in times of internal crisis is its goon squad, the Basij, which is under the control of the Guards. The Basij have committed enormous crimes against the Iranian people. Its installations, including police facilities and military bases, should be on target lists. So, too, the intelligence ministry, with its many offices throughout the country. Such bombings won’t permanently destroy these forces; it will, however, inject a measure of doubt in the regime’s upper echelons about the availability and reliability of its foot soldiers and inquisitors.

Chief among the people I described as relying on the present system for their status and prosperity are the Revolutionary Guards and their civilian muscle, the Basij. They are all pledged to protect not only Iran but the Islamic Revolution of 1979. And, at this point, after decades of development in this system, the Revolutionary Guards control major industries and have everything to lose in a regime change. Gerecht, Edelman and Takeyh recognize this and advise Israel to destroy them. I see the situation as much more of a cautionary tale about believing there can be a clean transition to a non-revolutionary democracy.

Now I want to focus a bit more on where we really diverge. I was reading along, when I got to this segment of their argument for regime change:

Now, after days of Israeli bombings, both the regime and the Iranian public appear traumatized. When things calm down, scores surely will be settled, perhaps even within the ruling elite as power brokers in the security, clerical, and political establishments get their knives out.

My problem arose the second I saw “when things calm down.” I believe there will be regime change in Iran, but mainly because I don’t anticipate Israel and the U.S. will relent until there is regime change. I see little prospect of things calming down, although at least President Donald Trump has carved out a little two week window where some negotiations to end the hostilities can take place.

As I explained in my “Donald Trump Has Been Played Just Like JFK With the Bay of Pigs” piece, Israel began this war with the concrete expectation that the United States will step in and finish the job. And, by that, I don’t mean destroying Iran’s nuclear program but destroying the regime. I will be very surprised if they don’t get what they want.

So, no, I do not believe that things will “calm down.” And, for this reason, I don’t think it makes sense to make a plan to create regime change after things calm down.

Gerecht, Edelman and Takeyh’s idea is that if the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij and the intelligence agencies suffer enough damage, the regime will get spooked at run for the hills. What is far more realistic is that the people will rise up and for once they won’t be imprisoned, tortured and slaughtered. What is more realistic is that the regular army will feel itself strong enough to take on the Revolutionary Guards and wipe away the regime on behalf of the people’s demands.

So, in that sense, weakening the Revolutionary Guards might bring about a collapse, but not for the reason they envision.

In fairness, I want to emphasize that they argue that “strikes be surgical and limit civilian casualties as much as possible.” But they want those strikes to expand to “cripple Iran’s economy.” I specifically argued that “their country should not be reduced to rubble.”

But the biggest difference between their analysis and mine is about legitimacy and risk. Nowhere do they touch on how toxic it is to have Israel and the U.S., and Netanyahu and Trump in particular, on the side imposing political change on Iran. It’s true that they wrote, “Iran belongs to the Iranians. They are the only ones who can in the end determine the direction of their country.” But that’s not what is happening or what will happen. It’s not even what they’re actually advocating as a strategy.

Given how weak the Iranian government may be after the current Israeli assault concludes, it might not take much to keep the Islamic Republic politically unstable. And an intense American propaganda campaign through social media and other channels should continuously highlight the calamitous and corrupt rule of the mullahs. The Iranian elite stashes a lot of money abroad. At a minimum, the U.S. Treasury should track and expose those funds. And whatever and wherever opposition forces emerge inside Iran, the United States should aid them with financial backing and technological assistance to the extent possible, as long as these forces aren’t politically extreme.

Again, they have a big plan for how to effect regime change “after the current Israeli assault concludes.” It is far more likely for a coup to work during an assault, especially if the United States adds its firepower. But, for that to work, even minimally, it will require regular army forces to take on the Guards. Identifying generals who might be willing to take on that task is the kind of thing CIA case officers have done in the past, sometimes with success. Of course, most of the examples I can think of backfired in the end. But I don’t really want to provide coup advice. I only offer it at all because I think the train has probably left the station and this conflict is not going to simmer down and end with some negotiated settlement.

Do I want the Iranians to be free of this regime? Yes, I’ve wanted that for them since 1979. But it’s crazy to think that Trump and Netanyahu care about the Iranian people or will competently oversee a change in their government. For starters, we have once again started a war over WMD when the evidence just isn’t there to justify it. And then there’s the idea of following advice from people like Gerecht who could not have been more wrong about the consequences of invading Iraq if he tried.

Maybe Trump will surprise me and put a stop to this war. Even if he does, though, the situation is not going to stabilize. Netanyahu made sure of that.