The Tag Team Fails in Iran

 

John J. Mearsheimer, John's Substack, Jan 20, 2026

The mainstream media in the West is committed to portraying the protests in Iran as strictly an internal affair. The people of Iran, so the argument goes, spontaneously rose up against their government because they were in desperate straits due to their leaders’ corruption and mismanagement of the economy, as well as their oppressive policies. Virtually all the protestors in this story were peaceful, but their protests were met with government violence. Outside forces had little to do with causing the protests.

This interpretation of what happened in Iran is wrong and contradicted by an abundance of evidence. None of this is to deny that there were many peaceful protestors who had legitimate grievances against the government, but that is only part of the story.

If fact, what happened in Iran is an attempt by the Israeli & American tag team to overthrow the government in Tehran and break apart Iran, much the way the US, Turkey, and Israel fractured Syria. The playbook in Iran is one we have seen before. It has four elements.

First, the US has long been working to wreck the Iranian economy with sanctions. Indeed, President Trump redoubled those efforts after moving into the White House last January (2025). His aim was to bring “maximum pressure” to bear on Iran’s economy and he did just that. There is no question that Iran’s leaders mismanaged their economy in certain ways, but Western sanctions did far more damage than government ineptitude. The ultimate goal of the sanctions, of course, is to inflict so much pain and punishment on the Iranian people that they rise up and overthrow their government.

Second, the tag team went to work in late December 2025 to foment and support violent protests that would precipitate a violent government response, which would hopefully set off a spiral of violence that the government could not control. To be more specific, there is clear evidence that Mossad agents were on the ground in Iran and surely there were CIA operatives working alongside them. They worked closely with local agitators — the rioters who were bent on destruction and assassination — to turn the peaceful protests into violent protests, which would then lead the government to turn to violence. There is abundant video footage of the agitators at work.

Moreover, the tag team sent many thousands of Starlink terminals into Iran before the protests began. Should the government shut down the internet and the phone system – as expected – the Starlink terminals would allow the protestors to communicate among themselves and with the outside forces helping them.

Unsurprisingly, Trump was cheering on the protestors, saying on 13 January 2026: “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING - TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!... HELP IS ON ITS WAY.” Trump’s first CIA director, Mike Pompeo, said on 2 January 2026: “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also, to every Mossad agent walking beside them.” And just as the protests were beginning in late December 2025, Mossad sent a message in Farsi to Iranians saying: “Go out together into the streets. The time has come. We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”

Third, the Western media played along with the tag team and purveyed the story that the protests were principally a response to the policies of an evil government in Tehran, not because of outside interference. Moreover, the protests were peaceful and it was the government that initiated the violence. Naturally, Israel and the US were portrayed as the good guys. This propaganda was not only designed to win over support for the protests in the West, but also to influence events inside Iran by fostering the narrative that the regime was brutal in the extreme, yet the protestors were destined to topple the government.

Fourth, the US military (and maybe the Israeli military) was primed to attack Iran once the protests had reached critical mass, finishing off the regime and creating chaos in Iran that would hopefully break the country apart.

But the strategy failed, mainly because the Iranian government was able to shut down the protests quickly and decisively. A key element in the government’s success was shutting down Starlink, which made it extremely difficult for the protestors to communicate with each other and the outside world. Once that happened, the protests were doomed and both Prime Minister Netanyahu and Trump understood that the tag team could not use military force to deliver the coup de grâce. The Iranian regime had survived.

In short, the tag team’s regime change campaign failed. Israel and the US lost this round to Iran. Of course, the results are unlikely to be portrayed this way in the Israeli or Western media.

These recent events have relevance for the 12-Day war between Iran and the tag team that took place 13-24 June 2025. That conflict is usually portrayed in the West as a great victory for Israel and the US. However, that is not an accurate description of the outcome of that earlier conflict. It was Israel more than Iran that wanted to end the 12-Day war, because Israel was burning through its inventory of defensive missiles while Iran was becoming increasingly adept at using its large inventory of ballistic and cruise missiles to pound Israel. In fact, some argued at the time that Iran should not have agreed to a ceasefire, because it was gaining the upper hand over Israel. That outcome does not look like an Israeli victory to me.

Relatedly, it is apparent from news stories in the West and from Israel itself that Netanyahu asked Trump not to bomb Iran last week (14 January 2026) because he feared that Israel did not have sufficient forces to defend itself from an Iranian counterattack. In other words, Israel is as exposed today to Iran’s missiles as it was when the fighting stopped on 24 June 2025. This is more evidence that Israel did not triumph over Iran in the 12-Day war or in the recent attempt at regime change.

A final point on the 12-Day war. One might argue that although Israel got the short end of the stick in its direct engagement with Iran, the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on 22 June 2025 was a resounding success, which carried the day for both members of the tag team. Trump, after all, claimed that the US military had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) disagreed shortly after the attack, assessing that that it had not obliterated Iran’s nuclear program, but instead had set it back by only a few months. Trump and his allies trashed the DIA’s assessment and that was the last we heard from that intelligence organization about the effects of the US strike.

I find it curious that there is virtually no meaningful information in the public record about what the US attack on 22 June 2025 did to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure – especially its installations that enrich uranium – as well as the 400 kilograms of uranium that Iran had enriched to 60 percent. One would think that if everything had been destroyed, as the president claims, the tag team would be advertising that fact and backing up its claims with at least some data. Moreover, one wonders why the tag team is so anxious to attack Iran again if a stunning victory was achieved in the 12-Day war. One also ponders what Iran is doing these days in terms of developing or repairing its nuclear enrichment facilities. These are especially important matters because what the tag team has done to Iran – and is likely to continue doing – gives Iranian leaders a powerful incentive to acquire a nuclear deterrent.

The bottom line is two-fold: 1) the tag team failed to overthrow the regime in Iran, although it surely has not given up on that goal; and 2) there is good reason to think that Israel and the US did not win the12-Day war.