Strike Paused. Iran’s Fate Turns on Surviving Trump's Demand for Knockout Blow Guaranteeing Regime Change

Drug fuelled, violence; failed objective: Western backed agent provocateurs thwarted. Follow-up US-Israel regime-change strike paused.

The attack on the Iranian currency, likely shorted in Dubai, fired the starting gun on the Israel-US-UK security-military trifecta’s latest regime change attempt. No doubt as intended, Iranian merchants began peaceful protests against the 30-40 per cent crash in the value of the rial.

This was the cue for Western-directed agent provocateurs to hijack the peaceful merchant protests, and unleash savage violence — killing ordinary citizens, destroying hundreds of ambulances and fire engines and burning or ransacking banks, hospitals and mosques.

Guns, machetes, long knives and daggers were used to slaughter ordinary citizens; others burnt alive. These were not normal protesters, making Trump’s call to ‘keep protesting take over your institutions’ profoundly misplaced, to say the least.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi described the riots as ‘day 13’ of Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in June. And the defence minister, Aziz Nasirzadeh, stated that ‘most victims were killed with knives, by suffocation, or by blows to the head…some of the terrorists consumed such large quantities of synthetic drugs that they died’.

What saved Iran this time was a rapid shutdown of internet access and international calls — but more crucially, the jamming of the majority of the estimated 50,000 starlink terminals smuggled into the country, prior to this latest regime-change operation, used to direct the agent-provocateurs. Once the starlink terminals were jammed, the co-ordinated violence quickly petered-out.

It is suspected, Russian hardware — mobile electronic warfare units like the Krasukha or Zhitel — married to Chinese electronic warfare software was decisive in cutting the starlink communications between violent instigators and their foreign handlers.

As the Grayzone noted, even with external communications cut, the Anglosphere media had no problem ‘relying on US govt-funded regime change NGOs’ based in Washington for data.

Yet the bigger tell is their failure to mention that ‘millions of Iranian citizens are pouring into the streets of cities from Tehran to Mashhad to express their indignation at the riots, to denounce the foreign elements that helped spur the regime change rampage, and to proclaim their support for the government,’ whilst in newsrooms across the West, ‘giving voice to these masses of Iranian demonstrators seems forbidden’.

With the violent riots brought under control and Iran’s leadership demonstrating they were on top of the threat, it became clear that any overwhelming decapitation strike to force regime change would not have the ‘guaranteed’ success that Trump demanded.

Which is why Netanyahu asked Trump to delay the Iran strike, painfully aware that Iran’s capacity to retaliate against Israel had not been eroded by the riots, as planned.

For Iran’s leadership, this is the second time in 6 months — see my essay’s on the 12-day war last June here and here — that they have come perilously close to being ousted. Tehran surely knows that Washington, London and West Jerusalem, need only to be lucky once with their regime change operations; Tehran must be lucky every time.

Which is why the Supreme Leaders political advisor, Ali Shamkhani asserted ‘Iran’s defence doctrine now allows responses before threats materialise’. Read: pre-emptive strikes.

No surprise then, that Netanyahu reportedly rushed to reassure Tehran — via Moscow — that Israel would not strike preemptively, with Tehran apparently reciprocating.

Still, it is axiomatic that Netanyahu’s assurance will be seen as worthless; Iran’s National Security Council can but only conclude from the latest Anglo-Israeli orchestrated riots, that regime change remains a permanent project until success is achieved.

For now twenty-five per cent tariffs have been announced on any country trading with Iran, but of more import is that Washington is diverting more assets to the region; the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its strike group are now en route. And although the Navy’s top admiral said he would seek alternatives to deploying the USS Gerald R Ford Carrier strike group to the region, this sounds more like denial.

Can the Pentagon and the Kirya deliver a wham, bam, thank you, ma’am kinetic strike that guarantees regime change? As it is now clear, Trump is not so much anti-war per se, rather he will not countenance a protracted conflict — only quick wars, cloaked in duplicity, that deliver good optics, control and dollars.

As I wrote after the first strike on Iran — ‘the greater geopolitical stakes lie with Beijing and Moscow. Positioned at the heart of Eurasia, Iran plays a central role in the global shift toward multipolarity. Moves targeting Iran for regime change are interpreted as Western expansionism in action, directly challenging Chinese and Russian strategic interests’.

In sum, this is another tactical pause in a now half-century campaign to regain control of Iran.