Now entering its third day, the United States and Israel’s military strikes against Iran have begun a violent conflict that is raising concerns about new, prolonged U.S. military action in the Middle East.
On Saturday, Feb. 28, a joint U.S.-Israeli strike killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, marking the start of the latest conflict and throwing the future of the country into question. Khamenei, who had been Supreme Leader since 1989, amassed theocratic power in Iran and was known for his conservative policies and violent crushing of dissent, often with arrests and executions through a military force he expanded, according to the Associated Press.
The violent conflict also expanded to other regions of the Middle East on Saturday as Iran struck back against Israel and other countries including Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and several Gulf States, where the attacks targeted U.S. military facilities and tourism hubs, according to The New York Times. At least 555 people have been killed in Iran and at least four U.S. soldiers are confirmed dead, according to Al Jazeera.
Following the attacks, President Donald Trump urged Iranians to overthrow the government, calling this moment their best chance to “take back” their country, according to CNN. Speaking Monday at the White House during a Medal of Honor ceremony, Trump said the military operations were projected to continue for at least the next four to five weeks, but did not rule out the possibility of a longer operation or the use of ground troops, according to CBS News.
“Today, the United States military continues to carry out large-scale combat operations in Iran to eliminate the grave threats posed to America by this terrible terrorist regime,” he said at the beginning of the ceremony.
Anneberg Media spoke with three experts to better understand the stakes of the moment and what could come next.
Professor Ciruce Movahedi-Lankarani, Farhang Foundation Chair in Iranian Studies and an assistant professor of Middle East Studies, warned against considering the conflict a definitive replacement of the current regime.
“Regime change, in some ways, is a framing you could use to understand the United States’s intervention in Afghanistan. We’ve seen it in Libya. None of those went very well,” he said. “Regime change is a big thing, and it’s hard to implement from air power alone.”
He noted that while opposition inside Iran is “quite fierce and entrenched,” it remains fragmented.
“There’s no clear opposition leader,” he said. “So the prospects of regime change, I think, are very uncertain.”
Movahedi-Lankarani also pointed to the long history of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, including the 2015 agreement brokered during the Obama administration and the U.S. withdrawal during Trump’s first term. Parallel tensions over Iran’s support for militant groups in Lebanon and Iraq have compounded distrust on all sides, he said.
Professor Robert Scheer, a journalist and longtime foreign correspondent, framed the escalation as part of a broader pattern of intimidation and power-grabs in modern U.S. foreign policy.
“Where it is particularly apparent is in foreign policy. There you can lie with impunity. Everything’s secret, everything is patriotism, everything’s national defense,” Scheer said.
He criticized the explanations of the pursuit of democracy used to justify military action. Alongside damaged military bases and collapsed civilian buildings, hundreds of people have been killed across Iran, including at an elementary school close to an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps naval base, the Iranian Red Crescent Society reported.
“It makes a mockery of any of the notions of soft power, spreading democracy, American exceptionalism,” he said. “We’re in the midst of madness, absolute madness, and none of this is necessary.”
Diego Andrades, assistant director of the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future, said many people in the political community had seen signs of escalation building towards a military effort in Iran. He questioned the immediacy of the nuclear and missile threats cited by the administration.
“I do not think that there were any last-minute militaristic interventions that needed to happen,” he said, adding that Iran appeared to be in a similar position regarding nuclear capability as when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was first signed.
He warned that Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes across multiple countries signal broader instability.
“It’s giving this idea of, ‘If we burn, you burn with us,’” he said, describing the potential for prolonged destabilization.
A drawn-out conflict, he added, could drive up oil prices, strain U.S. weapons stockpiles and create refugee flows that would heavily affect Europe before reverberating back to the United States, he added.
“There’s no off-ramp here,” he said. “Diplomacy is really off the table,” Andrades said.
For students watching the events unfold from afar, Scheer said moments like this demand scrutiny rather than reflexive patriotism.
“Everything is wrapped in the language of democracy and freedom,” he said, reflecting past presidents he has interviewed. “They all did a big show saying this is for democracy, this is for universal rights. But what’s happening now is using military power to intimidate other people and grab what you think you can’t get peacefully.”
Scheer added that wars often concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few whole ordinary people who bear the cost.
“None of this is going to help most people in most societies,” he said. “It makes some small number of people very wealthy and very powerful, and it could end up with the end of the planet.”