Weakening Permanently and Maintaining the Hardliner Iranian Regime?

ANGLO AMERICA, 27 Apr 2026

Sakai Tanaka - TRANSCEND Media Service

21 April 2026 — I have begun to think that Israel’s strategy for Iran war was initially to weaken and permanently maintain the current hardliner Iranian regime (Revolutionary Guard), manipulating Trump with misinformation and initiating the war against Iran at the end of February. While Israel has attacked Iran by involving Trump’s US, its specific objective isn’t the “dismantling of the Iranian state” (which could lead Iran to a permanent civil war = the “Libyan model”, or the division into multiple parts by Kurds, etc.) or the “regime change” (which could lead Iran to the pro-Americanization; a soft overthrow strategy preserving the current Islamic Republic system, or a complete overthrow), but rather to weaken the current system and leave it as a formal, permanent conflict (which is the “Gaza model”).

• [Analysis: What does Israel want from the Iran war? Is it different from what the US wants?]
• [The history behind the Israel-Iran Conflict – History Skills]
• [Iran–Israel relations]

Israel has already completely destroyed the urban areas of Gaza in the Gaza War, and weakened the ruling Hamas regime but has maintained that state ever since. Ending the Gaza War would force Israel to undertake the post-war reconstruction of Gaza, but this won’t happen as long as Hamas remains. While Iran is a state, Hamas is a militia less than a state. Despite this difference, the overall structure is the same. As long as the defense regime remains in place, Israel can force the US and the world to continue its war against Iran. If the war with Iran ends, regardless of which pro-American regime takes over, Iran will recover, resume trade with the world, restock weapons, and eventually resume hostility towards Israel. Israel may intend to weaken not only Iran but also Hezbollah in Lebanon and keep them as adversaries.

• [How Iran and Israel became enemies]

Israel intentionally committed a massive humanitarian crime during the Gaza War, killing over a million Gazan civilians, yet it hasn’t received much condemnation from the world. While people and the media are outraged, only a small fraction of the world’s nations condemn and sanction Israel; the rest remain silent. If the Gaza War was merely a “rehearsal” for Israel, then the world (at the national level, not the individual level) will keep silence regarding further humanitarian crimes committed by Israel in the war against Iran. They will only express concern. The existing British-backed hegemonic system, which has crushed its enemies under the guise of humanitarianism, will crumble.

While the Iranian belligerent regime has been weakened by this war to the point where it no longer poses a direct threat to Israel, the regime will survive, maintaining a situation where Saudi Arabia and other Arab oil-producing countries in the Persian Gulf will find it difficult to extract oil and gas, including the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. US President Trump, who has been forbidden from reconciling with Iran, and who is heavily influenced by Israel which is also affecting the US Intelligence Community. Negotiations between the US and Iran will not reach any agreement. The US and Israel will force the world, including China and Russia, to continue sanctions against Iran, preventing Iran from recovering. Meanwhile, Arab oil-producing countries, unable to extract oil and gas, will also be weakened. And, then, the hegemony in the Middle East will concentrate in Israel’s hands.

• (Turkey ,Erdogan intensifies rhetoric against Israel, MK calls him a “megalomaniacal dictator”）
• [Israel’s secret intelligence operations in Iran: Hacked phones, deep-cover agents and covert warehouses]

Trump is in a difficult position domestically, but the Likud faction (i.e. the US Intelligence Community) is adept at altering and distorting the US political system and situation. A reversal of fortune is possible. Since Israel politically and/or informally controls the US intelligence, even if Trump loses [his presidency] and a Democratic administration takes power, it will still be subservient to Israel. As the result of this war, the damage inflicted on the Arab world has led to a surge in US oil and gas exports. Japan and other countries are buying oil and gas from the US. The energy industry, which is close to Trump, is overjoyed. Trump is surprisingly strong.

While the US and Israel appear to have destroyed much of Iran’s large-scale weaponry in this war, smaller weapons such as drones and short-range missiles are easy to conceal in large quantities. Iran can continue to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz and facilities in Arab oil-producing countries across the strait with these small arms. The US intelligence community (informally and unofficially controlled by Israel and the Likud faction) knew this beforehand and launched this war to corner Iran. Iran has not surrendered and continues to threaten to blockade the Strait of Hormuz with its remaining small arms and destroy facilities in Arab oil-producing countries. It is possible to speculate that Likud factions did not inform Trump of this before he started the war.

• （Kamala Harris accuses Netanyahu of pulling Trump into Iran war）

Trump believed that the soft overthrow (pro-Americanization) that had worked in Venezuela would also work in Iran, and proceeded with the assassination of Khamenei, as Israel had desired. However, the soft overthrow failed. Within Iran’s leadership, the hardliners, hawkish Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has seized power, pushing aside their former superiors, the clerics and other realists, and has adopted a hostile stance, the opposite of the pro-Americanization of the soft overthrow, instead declaring a willingness to fight the US and Israel to the end. The Iran War is widely considered a military and political failure. Trump’s Republican Party has lost support both domestically and internationally, and is said to be on a path to downfall, as evidenced by a possible crushing defeat in the fall midterm elections.

• (断続的に続くイラン戦争/The intermittent war in Iran)
• [‘Mr. Trump has failed’: Conservative icon hits president with scathing]
• [Opinion | ‘An Operational Success and a Huge Strategic Failure’]
• [Midterm elections loom as GOP grapples with Trump’s wartime presidency]

Trump (and foolish me) may have thought a soft overthrow of Iran would succeed, but Israel (the Likud-affiliated US intelligence network) which has long monitored Iran, sees things differently. The Likud-affiliated network accurately knows the locations of Iranian and Hezbollah leaders, and in this war, they have pinpointed and killed more than 50 high-ranking Iranian officials. In contrast, Iran has not killed a single Israeli official.

• (イランは許されるのか/Is Iran to be forgiven?)

Thus, the Likud-affiliated network has used the power of the US intelligence network it has taken over to understand the situation in Iran. It can be inferred that most of Iran’s heavy weapons have been destroyed. The Likud-affiliated network knew that a soft overthrow of Iran would not succeed, and that even if their heavy weapons (which could reach distant Israel) were destroyed, Iran would continue to attack and suppress the nearby Persian Gulf with smaller weapons. Despite this, the Likud-affiliated network (i.e. the US intelligence network) did not inform Trump of these facts, leading him into the war in Iran.

• (Deep State Knives Out For Tulsi Gabbard: What We Know）
• [ISRAEL USES SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP TO GET SECRETS]
• [Israel accused of planting mysterious spy devices near the White House]

Even under the Trump administration, Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard seemed to have sensed this situation and opposed the war with Iran, but remained silent for fear of being dismissed if he spoke out. Intelligence experts like Tucker Carlson, John Mearsheimer, and Jeffrey Sachs blame Israel, claiming that Israel manipulated Trump into this war that was not in the US’s best interest. While their accusations are valid, Israel, which controls the US Intelligence Community, holds more political power than they do.

• (‘Stupid people’: Trump attacks Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones, Megyn Kelly over Iran）
• [Intelligence questions as the war with Iran enters a more uncertain phase]

The Trump administration negotiated a ceasefire with Iran, but the ceasefire proposal presented by Iran differed slightly between the English and Persian versions, with the Persian version allowing Iran to continue uranium enrichment. Even holding a second ceasefire negotiation is uncertain. The war with Iran will continue intermittently. While there’s talk of the end of the petrodollar and the collapse of the dollar, the Likud-affiliated intelligence community has the power to take over the Federal Reserve and maintain the expansion of the US financial bubble through covert quantitative easing (QE). The US Intelligence Community, the king of spies, is the ultimate insider trader. The dollar is becoming increasingly fraudulent, but that’s precisely why it continues to expand without collapsing. It will surely collapse someday. However, that probably won’t happen this year.

• (Lost in translation: the most important line in Iran’s ceasefire proposal）
• (Has Iran’s 10-point plan changed, as JD Vance claims?）
• [The United States Intelligence Community: A Deep Dive]
• [US Dollar Index (DXY) holds gains near 99.00 as geopolitical tensions grow]

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Notes:

1. Those hyperlinks in some of the paragraphs and those with brackets [ ], with the italic letters under some of the paragraphs were added by the translator for the convenience and references for the reader.
2. The views and/or opinions in those hyperlinks added by the translator do not necessarily reflect those of his. In addition, it is either impossible or unavailable for him to verify the genuineness of the information in those links. He does not take any responsibility for the contents in those relevant links at all.
3. Some sentences in the article, deemed important and/or emphasized in terms of the context, are expressed in the Italic letters, by the translator for the convenience of the reader.
4. The views and/or opinions expressed in the above-mentioned article are those of Sakai Tanaka, the original author. His views and/or opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the Transcend Media Service (TMS) or those of the translator. Therefore, the reader is kindly requested to understand, interpret or judge those views and/or opinions at his or her own responsibility.
5. The original article in Japanese was published more than a few days or a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, the situations and/or conditions mentioned in the article might have been changed. This also means that the author’s argument expressed and/or the information provided in the article might have become inadequate or less or least adequate, obsolete, out of date or no longer valid by the time the TMS reader reads the same article in English.

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Original author: After graduating from university, Sakai Tanaka started working at the Kyodo News Agency in 1986. From 1997 he joined Microsoft Network (MSN) and in 1999, due to change of policy at Microsoft, he became an independent journalist. Tanaka has published more than twenty books on international affairs, some translated and published in China, South Korea and Taiwan. He studied at Harvard University from 2000 to 2001 and in 2005 was invited to serve as a senior researcher at the Royal Faisal Institute in Saudi Arabia. Website: tanakanews.com 

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Translation:  Satoshi Ashikaga — Google Translate (with some corrections and/or modifications)

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Original in Japanese: イラン強硬派政権を弱めた上で永続させる？

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 27 Apr 2026.

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