The United States and Israel are continuing their attack on Iran that killed its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, over the weekend. Tehran and its allies are hitting back against Israel and neighboring nations.
The airstrikes began days after negotiations to halt Tehran's nuclear program ended without a deal. With Khamenei's death, the Islamic Republic now has to choose a supreme leader for the first time since 1989. Across the world, some protested while others cheered.
President Donald Trump said U.S. forces were determined to destroy Iran’s missile capabilities, wipe out its naval capacity, stop the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon and ensure that Iran cannot continue to support allied groups like Lebanon's Hezbollah, which fired missiles at Israel, drawing retaliatory airstrikes.
Trump also said the U.S. expects the operation to take four to five weeks but that they have "the capacity to go far longer than that," the Associated Press reports. The death toll has grown on all sides. But for America, there have been at least four service members who've died in action as of Monday — with more casualties anticipated.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared, "This is not Iraq. This is not endless."
On "Florida Matters Live & Local," Arman Mahmoudian with the University of South Florida's Global and National Security Institute gave insight into how this unfolded, different objectives being discussed, mixed opinions about America's involvement and more.
The interview below was lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
I'm thinking of the old adage from a U.S. president, "Speak softly, but carry a big stick." It sounds like those two things are happening, but it's all at once.
It seems like that.
If you listen to the reality of President Trump and other officials of the White House, they don't reject or close the doors to negotiation.
President Trump has stated at least more than three times since the beginning of the war that he's interested in Iran being a practical partner or friend of the United States.
However, there are preconditions that the Iranians need to accept. But so far, it doesn't seem that Iranians are there yet.
Ali Larijani, the general secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, who seems to be the man who runs the show, made a tweet denying the Wall Street Journal that Iran wants to negotiate, and stated that we will not negotiate.
What do you think the objective is here?
We are hearing different objectives. Initially, it was the regime change, and before that, President Trump said that it would be a good thing to happen. Pete Hegseth, the war secretary, has mentioned that democracy is not the agenda. Actually, Lindsey Graham, who was one of the advocates of the application of military pressure against Iran, also on Sunday — I believe, in an interview — he mentioned that the regime change is not the goal.
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I think what the United States at this point is aiming for is not necessarily enforcing a regime change in Iran by itself. I think the goal is that, and if you look at the way that the U.S. is targeting Iran.
Yesterday, they targeted basically the police officers and stations across the country, and also internal intelligence services and Basij bases.
Basij is — for the audience that they don't know — a paramilitary in Iran tied with the IRGC, what is mostly formed by voluntary or part-time forces. Their job, basically, is oppression. They are coercive apparatus. They are extremely loyal.
But if you look at these places that have been targeted by the U.S., we can get an assessment that maybe the United States is not necessarily interested in changing the regime by itself, but would like to paralyze the entire security forces in Iran, which would provide the Iranian people who just went on the street in January and been suppressed through bloodshed, with the window of the opportunity, basically a security vacuum, to take advantage of it, go on the streets, seize the institutions and assume power for themselves.
And then they topple the regime rather than the American forces.
Do you get the sense that there's kind of a unified front from U.S. forces, in terms of what they're trying to achieve?
I want to emphasize that this war's nature is different from the Iraq and Afghanistan war so far.
There were boots on the ground, about half a million of the American troops been deployed to the Iraq in the first strike. And then at some point, there were thousands and thousands of the U.S. troops across the region. And naturally, when you have a presence on the ground, you do have much higher casualties.
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The current war with Iran, if it stays limited to an aerial campaign, wouldn't get there — wouldn't get to the point of that level of casualty, in terms of human loss.
Economically speaking, that's a different story. Iranians are actively targeting the energy market and the flow of oil from the region.
We did see that uprising earlier in Iran that was put down pretty brutally by the Iranian regime. What's your response to that?
The Iranian regime been quite an oppressive regime for the last 47 years. From the very beginning, it oppressed the rights of the people. The total population of Iran — politically, socially, economically.
We have seen the Iranian people since 1997 have been actively trying to stand against stuff and defend their own lives through civic matters. It began with the student protests in 1997. They attacked the college campuses. They actually threw students off the roof. And then from there it continued. There was the Green Movement in 2006 and 2007, and then there was a presidential election. Apparently, they cheated in that election. At least a good chunk of Iranians believe that. They went through the streets. They killed people.
And then later on, the news came up that many of people who also been on the streets, captured by the security forces, they've been sexually harassed in the prisons.
Then we have continuously up until now in January, we have a protest in Iran in a span of five days in the famous Bloody Friday, specifically speaking toward late January, the government killed thousands of people. The Islamic Republic, who has a tendency to always reduce or understate the number of casualties and civilian protests. Significant extent. Mentioned that 3,200 people being killed. Human Rights Organization says 8,000. President Trump says 32,000 people.
So all together, the Iranian coercive apparatus has the blood of many Iranians and non-Iranians across the region. And internationals, American soldiers in Beirut and other places in Iraq, the Syrian people, the Lebanese, Iraqis, Israelis across the world on their hands.
Where does this end?
Briefly, the angle for the United States would be destroying the Iranians' command and control system — the high command — its retaliatory and offensive capability, and paralyzing, largely, Iran's internal law enforcement and security forces, hoping that will provide the protesters and opposition with the chance to topple the regime.
But who comes after that? This is a $1 million question. So many candidates, but neither of them right now have the upper hand in the field inside the country.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report. You can listen to the full interview in the media player above. This article was compiled from an interview for "Florida Matters Live & Local." You can listen to the full episode here.
