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Is this true? I thought most of their leadership has been completely wiped out, and that the state of Khamenei's son is dubious at best.
That does sound annoying, but a coast / strait seems easier to police than a bunch of caves on land. How long can Iran disrupt a very important shipping lane while the US navy is hanging around? France just sent an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean and the UK is sending an air defense warship. This play also seems like all that Iran has left. They aren't launching as many missiles anymore. I will concede that on the ground, I don't know how regime change will happen without ground forces. Unless there's some internal militia that can force IRGC out, someone is gunna have to go in.
If anything, this is good practice for the US military should China try anything in the near future. Weakening Iran not only strengthens America's and Israel's position in the Middle East, it also disrupts China's and Russia's. This joint-operation between the US and Israel seems like a huge power-play set to benefit both. In the last year, the US and Israel have showed that with intelligence and airstrikes, they can basically swoop in and smoke air-defenses and dissident leaders within a week of operation (albeit, not against a major power yet). The only question I have is, who is set to benefit from this more, the US or Israel?
Between Operation Prosperity Guardian and Operation Rough Rider it's pretty clear that the answer is "basically indefinitely".
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The most viable options that don't involve American boots on the ground are either Artesh (the Iranian army, distinct from the Republican Guard) staging a coup and/or the Kurds invading.
Kurds don't really invade. It's not their thing. Kurds are basically hillbillies, they hold onto Kurdish majority areas easily enough, but there's no amount of weapons you can give them to get them to march on Tehran.
That might be all that's needed, though. Declaring separation could, in theory, fracture a fragile country.
I wouldn't bet my life on it working out, but what cost Liberty, I suppose.
Yeah, and then Turkey gets drawn into the fray because it will be a cold day in hell before they accept an independent Kurdistan on their doorstep. It would be darkly hilarious if Turkey ended up propping up the Iranian regime against the Kurds (“the devil you know” and all that). But more likely, given that Turkey is a NATO member and US client, it would just devolve into a 3-way quagmire. At least us Americans could wash our hands of it and leave Turkey to deal with the dirty work.
Zooming out, though, it really is a minor diplomatic miracle for the US/Israel that the IRI has alienated so many of its neighbors for so long that we were able to swoop in and win over any potential allies of theirs within just the past few years. The recent flailing around and randomly shooting up the whole neighborhood is just the tip of the iceberg; for decades prior to the Abraham Accords, the Iranians passed up basically every opportunity to set aside ethnic/sectarian differences and unite with their Sunni Arab neighbors, indeed the entirety of the global Ummah, against the hated Little Satan whose existence it is allegedly their foremost goal to eradicate. But they weren’t content to play second fiddle in the Islamic orchestra, nor would their purity-spiral mindset permit them to break bread with anyone less than maximally anti-Israel, so now all their Arab neighbors are functionally allied with Israel instead. How the turns have tabled.
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