US Military Mobilization Seeks to Reshape the Islamic Republic, Not Overthrow It!

Abbas Goya

As Donald Trump stated, the United States has moved a “huge fleet” toward Iran. The reason for this escalation is not, as often claimed, a response to the killing of protesters by the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) or to promote regime change. Rather, it is a response to a far more dangerous threat for both Washington and Tehran: the uncontrollable uprising of the hungry and the dispossessed.

 

To understand the current confrontation, one must examine the political and social developments of the past few years.

Despite the brutal suppression of the 2022 protests—sparked by the killing of Mahsa Amini for allegedly violating mandatory hijab laws—the Islamic Republic was nonetheless forced into retreat. Through the sheer power of mass resistance, the enforcement of compulsory hijab effectively collapsed, and women’s freedom of clothing became a de facto reality in many public spaces.

This victory transformed the political climate. Over the past three years, Iran’s streets have been continuously occupied by protests from increasingly determined workers: retirees, teachers, industrial and service workers, truck drivers, nurses and alike. These movements entered the struggle against the Islamic Republic with greater confidence, coordination, and radicalism.

 

The January 2026 protests were not initiated by the bazaars; the bazaar unrest merely served as a pretext for the eruption of a broader uprising. Building on the experiences of the uprisings of 2017, 2019–20, and 2022, the January protests rapidly spread nationwide and took on an explicitly political character. Free of illusions about the Islamic Republic’s internal factions, the uprising directly targeted its wrath on the political power and its various ideological, and military institutions, burning them down. In this moment, the Islamic Republic and the United States played complementary roles, i.e. bad cop, good cop roles: the former as the brutal butcher slaughtering thousands, the latter as the “human rights” advocate—both working, in different ways, to contain the uprising.

 

Back in 2023: The regional balance further shifted following Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack on Israeli civilians. The following atrocities of Israel in Gaza, further triggered the gradual collapse of the so-called “Axis of Resistance”: the overthrow of Assad, the weakening and disarmament of Hezbollah, and the effective disintegration of Hamas. The decisive blow to Iran came during the so-called 12-day military confrontation in June 2025. Since then, the Islamic Republic has existed in a condition of neither war nor peace—strategically weakened but still intact.

Israel, now operating from an offensive position, has sought to shape Iran’s future by promoting Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah's son, as a potential proxy ruler. Multiple investigations by Haaretz, DeMarker, and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab have documented an Israeli covert digital influence campaign. Using fake social media accounts and AI-generated content, Persian-speaking operatives promoted Pahlavi following his 2023 visit to Israel, attempting to rehabilitate monarchy as a political alternative inside Iran.

However, the US's assessment of Reza Pahlavi’s actual influence in Iran is insignificant. Consequently, any regime-change strategy built around a weak Pahlavi alternative would be inevitably confronted by a deeply rooted socialist tendency within the working class. As a result, Washington seeks its long-standing strategy—unchanged for 47 years—of attempting to reshape the Islamic Republic into a more conventional and manageable state, while ultimately tolerating political Islam as a mechanism of social control and repression against the working class. Trump’s statement, “It is time to seek new leadership in Iran,” should be understood within this framework.

In this context, the ongoing US military mobilization is not intended to be a step toward regime change but a strategy to discipline, restructure, and stabilize the IRI by eliminating hardliners dominance so that consequence reforms can prevent emergence of an independent mass movement that could sweep away both domestic rulers and imperial management alike.

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