March 13-15: U.S. & Israel Retreat From Immediate Iran Regime-Change Goal

Great-power war planners have hit this wall before. In 1991 the U.S. stopped short of marching on Baghdad, betting Iraqis would oust Saddam; in 2011 NATO airpower toppled Qaddafi only to watch Libya fracture. The 2026 Iran climb-down fits that pattern of external actors discovering that precision bombs rarely deliver political outcomes without ground forces or legitimate local leadership. Structurally, it reflects a 30-year U.S. trend toward coercive "regime weakening" rather than occupation, and Israel’s long strategy of keeping adversaries off-balance rather than assuming the costs of rebuilding them. Over a 100-year horizon this moment may matter less for what it changes in Tehran than for how it signals the limits of air-centric intervention and the rising risk that state collapse—not orderly transition—becomes the default result when outside powers pursue maximalist goals on the cheap.