Regime change in Iran? Israel should go for it, but not count on it.

Israel has expanded the scope of its strikes against Iran. Reportedly, they now encompass energy production plants, aviation targets, and local security forces.

This development prompted Richard Nephew, a former White House official in the Obama administration who specializes in Iran, to say Israel may have decided that the best way to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is to topple the Iranian regime. He added that this is a “high risk maneuver.'“

In theory, regime change is the best of three possible ways to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The other two are (1) the destruction or continuous degradation of Iran’s weapons program and (2) negotiations that result in a dismantling of the nuclear weapons program.

A negotiated dismantling is a theoretical path only, unless it’s the byproduct of war or regime change. Given the mullahs relentless quest to dominate the Middle East and to destroy Israel, neither Obama nor Trump could bring about dismantling through talks.

As for continuous bombardment, it can, at a minimum, set Iran’s nuclear program back. However, it’s not clear that military pounding can bring the program to an end or, more to the point, guarantee that Iran won’t produce a few nuclear weapons.

But military pounding has this key advantage — Israel can make it happen by itself. Regime change is outside of Israeli control.

Therein lies the problem with the regime change option. Israel can’t count on it.

Almost since the day the mullahs took control of Iran, optimists have been predicting that the regime would fall. It hasn’t happened.

And as bad as the Iranian economy is — after recently spending several months in her native country, the Iranian wife of a friend said that day-to-day life in Tehran is quite desperate — there was no sign that the regime was in danger of falling. With the support of its religious base and, more importantly, its repressive machinery, the regime has withstood war, hardship, setbacks, and protests for more than 45 years.

This doesn’t mean that regime change shouldn’t be a goal of the strikes. It should be. The primary purpose should be to destroy or significantly degrade Iran’s program. A secondary purpose should be to precipitate the fall of the regime.

And this, clearly, is how Israel is approaching the war. The nuclear program is the primary target. The expansion of the attacks to include electronics, aviation, and aerospace targets furthers Israel’s war on that program by creating, it is hoped, bottlenecks in key industries that support Iran’s nuclear industry.

But regime change is also a goal. That’s why Netanyahu told Iranians:

The time has come for you to unite around your flag and your historic legacy by standing up for your freedom from an evil and oppressive regime. It has never been weaker.

Will they take this opportunity to overthrow their unpopular regime? In the early 1980s, a former senior French diplomat who grew up in Iran, served in that country, and eventually became the head of a Franco-Iranian friendship organization in Teheran, predicted that, contrary to the expectations of some, the regime would long endure.

The Iranians, he said, are not a rebellious people. Only their religious fervor and the Shah’s affronts to the Muslim faith could have produced the revolution of the late 1970s.

This seemed like a condescending view of the Iranian people. But his prediction has held up for 40 years. (He also said he had counseled the Shah’s son to get rid of his advisers and hangers-on because they were scoundrels who couldn’t be trusted. This was a very good call.)

Maybe the dire economic situation made even worse by war, coupled with the near-destruction of the program the regime placed so far ahead of the population’s economic well being, will finally bring an end to the mullah’s atrocious run. It’s certainly in Israel’s interest to make this an objective of the war.

But only a secondary one.