Center for Middle East Policy

In neither case was the ultimate, explicit goal ‘regime change,’...But there was a kind of theory of the case under Obama that engagement could lead to the sort of fundamental changes in Iranian policy, almost irrespective of the character of the regime, that the U.S. had been seeking since 1979.

[The strike targeting Abdul Reza Shahlai] suggests a mission with a longer planning horizon and a larger objective, and it really does call into question why there was an attempt to explain this publicly on the basis of an imminent threat.