With all the discussion about Iranian regime change, the former Middle East peace envoy to President Barack Obama has some words of caution.
“In the unlikely event the regime falls, history shows that when the dust clears the Iranian military will still be calling the shots,” Frank Lowenstein, Obama’s special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, tells NBC News. “Ultimately, it’s the guys with guns who decide who is in charge.”
Israel has denied its official policy is overthrowing the Iranian government — although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly mused on the idea. Lowenstein believes Israel does not want regime change but that “it’s more about regime collapse, and hoping something better emerges from the chaos.”
He said that in the past regime change was only possible in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq “when there was a significant ground force” and that he wasn’t “aware of any instances where air power alone was able to topple a regime.”
Even then, for the U.S. and other Western countries “the cost simply becomes too high over time,” he added. So “even when we are willing to devote the resources necessary to overthrow a hostile regime, we are not willing to pay the price to sustain the alternative.”
