The Duran Podcast - Engineer regime collapse, US on brink of Iran attack

Episode Date: January 31, 2026

Engineer regime collapse, US on brink of Iran attack

All right, Alexander, it looks like we are going to be getting some sort of a military operation in the Middle East against Iran. The United States has moved a lot of military power into the region, including the aircraft carrier strike group, the Lincoln, which is pretty much the foundation of the strike package that is now facing a, Iran, there were talks, there were reports about talks that were taking place between the Trump administration and Iran. The terms are pretty much the same terms that the Trump administration has been demanding of Iran for the better part of a year. Actually, I would say they're probably even harsher, harsher terms because they're asking for Iran to pretty much limit their ballistic missiles as well.

The talks have broken down, obviously. And so here we are with the Trump administration talking about a strike against Iran. We've had Israeli officials in D.C. We have Saudi officials in D.C. and they're talking about strike options. Iran is warning the United States in Israel not to strike at Iran because Iran is ready, they claim. What are your thoughts on this? First of all, I should say I agree. I think we're on. on the brink of some kind of American attack. And even as we are making these programs, there are reports that the Americans are also considering using special forces to conduct attacks

against facilities in Iran and that kind of thing. What is extraordinary about all of this is that apparently the administration has been advised by its own intelligence agencies and by the intelligence agencies of Israel and other intelligence agencies, that these attacks, whatever it is that is being planned, they will not be sufficient to cause regime change in Iran. They will not lead to the collapse of the regime there. That the regime is still in firm control. It still has enough critical mass of support within Iran, despite the price. protests, that the military and security services continue to be loyal to the regime and will

continue to remain so. So that this operation, again, if you believe these reports, I mean, they've appeared in places like Reuters, this operation cannot achieve its intended purpose. And again, going back to Reuters, Reuters said that the purpose is regime change. It said it quite straightforwardly that the idea is to try to engineer a collapse, to try to create space for the protesters so that they can storm buildings and take over control of buildings. This is perhaps where special forces can play a role if that's indeed the plan. Anyway, to try to do a very complicated operation of that kind. And apparently all

of these intelligence and security agencies are saying, look, Iran is not like Venezuela. It's not going to implode or collapse in the same way that, well, I'm not sure that the regime in Venezuela has collapsed, but you can't do in Iran, they're very much more complicated, very, very much different society. You can't do the same there that you did in Caracas. Come in, take out Maduro, proclaim that you've won, it isn't going to play out like that in Iran. Now, that's what we are being told the intelligence agencies are advising the administration. It seems, however, that the president himself is determined to go ahead. We have lots of reports that there are still negotiations. The Saudis apparently are trying to dissuade him. Arachi, the Iranian

foreign ministers go to Turkey, he's meeting with Erdogan, or Erdogan is trying to set up some kind of tripartite meeting between, virtual meeting between Trump himself and Pezishkan. There's rumors that there's a flight of some kind of Iranian government jet that's arrived in Moscow and that the Iranians are now talking to the Russians. There's all of this, but all of this diplomatic activity, it seems to me, I don't get the sense that the administration itself is really interested. I think that Trump has decided to do this to the extent that he says that there's still time to do a deal. The Iranians are not going to agree to the kind of deal that he is offering. So I think that, again, this is the usual thing with Trump pretending that he's interested in a deal.

even as he's actually planning and intending to conduct a strike. So given it a strike, an attack, a very big attack on Iran, is coming. The big question is, it's the same question that we asked in June, how strong ultimately is the government there? Will it buckle and break in the face of this attack? Will it collapse within the first couple of days? Will these operations that we're hearing about? Will they succeed?

Because if they don't, if, say, after a week, the government is still in control and is still able to hit back and start launching strikes against Israel, then it will be exactly the same thing as what happened during the 12-day war, the balance of advantage will start to shift gradually back towards Iran because it's there, it's huge, it's mountainous, it's got a depth of resources in terms of the missiles it can launch. And even though obviously the United States and Israel have militaries that operate at an entirely different technological level, These are realities that Israel and the United States, as we saw in June, cannot overcome. So ultimately, it depends on the resilience and stability of the regime or the government.

Right. It's going to be a regime change operation. So the strike is going to try and facilitate some sort of a regime change. Yes. The question is, what will that be? And we know that Trump likes to use a type of trickery, over-the-top kind of operations like what you saw in Venezuela. And it's not going to be able to do that with Iran. I mean, it's not going to be able to do what we saw in Venezuela, but there is talk about some sort of special operations forces being deployed into Iran or entering Iran and going after the nuclear facilities.

but it's not about the nuclear facilities. They want to do something that will push Iran to some sort of regime change. What is that going to be? I think that's the question that everyone is trying to figure out. Trump has, like in Venezuela, he has put himself in a position. He's decided to put himself in a position where he has all of this military power now in the region. And it's going to be difficult, if not impossible,

just like with Venezuela, to walk it back. So he's going to have to do something. Yes. He doesn't want boots on the ground. We know Trump over the past year. We've seen the way he is. He doesn't want boots on the ground. He doesn't want a long conflict.

He wants a knockout blow in the first to second round. That's what he's aiming for. If he doesn't get it, then I imagine, Alexander, if he can't get it, Imagine then he, I don't know, does he shelve it until after the midterms? Yeah. Yeah. These are all excellent questions.

And of course, we don't fully know the answers. Let's take them one by one. What is he trying to do? Well, Reuters said something very interesting. It suggests, it suggested that what Trump is trying to achieve in Iran is the same thing that he did in Venezuela. In other words, and this is actually there, it's in that article in Reuters, remove Hermannet and, you know, the sort of top leadership, and put, keep the actual government structures that exist in Iran, leave them in place, but get someone else in charge who will run Iran basically on America's behalf in the way that Delci Rodriguez in Venezuela is supposed to. to do. Now, the problem with that is twofold. Firstly, it's starting to look as if Delci Rodriguez is quite as compliant at the present time as the America's expected. Put that aside,

Iran is a completely different country. This is a political system that is based on, you know, religious ideas, which already makes it difficult to change in that kind of way. It has far more stakeholders, it's got a much, much more radical, you know, factions that are probably there in a position to take control. I don't think you can do that in the same way. And if you go after the person who is ultimately in charge in Iran, who is Hamanae, then, of course, you're not just attacking a political leader. You're attacking a religious leader as well. And that also has problems. But anyway, that seems to be the plan. And you can see even some resemblances. So just as they built up Machado ahead of the Venezuela operation, they've now built up the crown prince of the

former monarchy. They've built him up. Whereas in fact, they probably are hoping or thinking that they've got somebody within Iran. They might even have contacts for some people in Iran. It's not impossible. Iran is not watertight by any means, but they may think that they got someone who's able to come in and step in and take control in the same way, as I said, that Rodriguez did. It looks to me so difficult to achieve that in Iran. I wonder whether it can be done. And here's the other problem, because of course Trump, as you rightly say, he conducts, he likes things to be done quickly and cleanly. He doesn't want lots of Americans killed.

He certainly doesn't want American bases and American lives threatened in any big way. He doesn't want body bags coming back to the United States. That's the very last thing he wants. The trouble is that the Iranians are saying that if there is an attack on their country this time, and we now have absolute explicit confirmation of this, the Iranian Defence Minister gave a long discussion,

It's a big speech interview today, which you can, it's all over the Iranian media, if there is an attack, it's not going to, Iran is not going to respond in the same way as it did before. This time it will treat an attack as an all-out war because this is clearly all about regime change. And they will not exercise the same limits upon what they did as they did previously. They're not going to be taken by surprise. They will hit back. they will continue to hit back against American bases and against Israel. And he's even saying extraordinary things, like they're going to go after the American aircraft carriers.

Whether they really can or not, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I'm not going to speculate about this. I don't want to speculate about those kind of things. But that is what the Iranians are saying. So it may be that Iran is more complicated that he imagines. And it may be that the Iranians respond to his. attack in a way that he hasn't anticipated. And putting aside horrifying things like, I mean, horrifying to the Americans.

And by the way, incredibly dangerous to the world, horrifying things like American carriers being attacked and damaged, even destroyed. The real, the real weapon Iran has is closing. the Straits of Hormuz, cutting off around a third of the world's oil supply. I mean, it would not be able to exit. And, I mean, that would create very serious problems in the global energy system. And obviously, that's also not something that Donald Trump would want to see. So either he is right, the claims are right, the government.

the government there is very fragile. It's a house of cards. You push a little hard. It'll all come tumbling down. You use special forces. You do it in a bigger scale that you did in June, and it plays out as you expect. Or the alternative. If it doesn't work like that, there is a real possibility that it could go horribly and catastrophically wrong in ways that I don't think Trump has foreseen. Yeah, what I'm thinking about is, you know, along the lines of Venezuela that the Trump administration may have some sort of a clever operation planned out. Yes. But as you highlighted, Iran's completely different than Venezuela. I mean, and even Venezuela, did it really go the way they thought it was going to go, or at least did it turn out, the way they thought it was going to turn out with Delci Rodriguez being.

a compliant vassal puppet to the United States like the Europeans? No, it doesn't seem like she's that way. It seems like she's very determined to run Venezuela in Venezuela's best interests. And that means continuing relations with Russia and China and Iran, et cetera, bricks. So even the operation into Venezuela did not really give the United States, at least for the time being, the results that I thought it was going to get. My thinking is that Trump is cooking up something that no one is expecting, or at least his team has come up with some sort of an operation that no one is ready for. I don't know if it's going to be capture or trying to capture the Iranian government, a decapitation strike, something else, some discombobulator

weapon that he was talking about. I mean, you know what I mean? He does it. The one thing that Trump wants to avoid is a long, drawn-out conflict. Yes. So he's going to try to achieve his goals in the most cinematic, spectacular way as possible so he can talk it up while avoiding the long conflict. I mean, just to wrap up the video, what do you think of that? Well, that's exactly right. I mean, I agree.

I think that is the intention. I think there is intentions to send special forces in. I think probably they are in touch with some people within the Iranian political system. The problem is not whether these people exist. They almost certainly do. I mean, you know, we've seen repeatedly that Iran is unable to gain full control of its own internal security. I mean, they are hopeless, or at least they're not hopeless, but they're not very good at that. The problem is more whether such a person, if he exists, can actually retain control of Iran,

whether or the other vast apparatus that exists in Iran wouldn't very quickly and very speedily push that person aside. And whether that person anyway is in a position to take over in the way that, Trump imagines. Iran is a very complicated political system, which I don't fully understand, but there is the Supreme Leader, who is Haméé, who is a religious figure, and then there is the President, who is Pezestrian, and the Supreme Leader takes priority over the President. Now, given that the Supreme Leader is a religious figure, the people who will control replacing him, Presumably is Iran's religious establishment. I mean, I don't get the sense that these are the sort of people who the United States can comfortably work with.

If they remove Hermannet, it's quite plausible that all that they will do is replace Harmony with someone whose views are not very different from Harmonais. and perhaps even more hard line, just to say. As for Pezschkhan, I don't think he is that important in the political system in Iran. How do you remove Hamene, though? I mean, this is the thing. Once again, Venezuela and Iran are vastly different countries, different systems, obviously different geographies. I mean, it's a completely different thing. The one danger, just to wrap up the video that Trump has, the United States has,

is that once they go down this road, once they try this operation that they're putting together, however smart or clever or effective it may be, if it does not succeed, the neocons, Israel, Netanyahu are not going to let Trump just walk away from this. Even if it means, you know, plunging Iran or the whole region into chaos, they're going to continue to push fun. That's the Neo-Conway, though. I mean, you just push forward. So once Trump gives the green light for whatever he's cooking up, once he gives the green light to go ahead with it, I mean, that's it's it's stuck.

That is the danger. It's a danger he's not alive to. And I wouldn't just say that it's a danger. I mean, it's as it seems today, unless there's things going on inside Iran, which we simply don't know. but to all appearances, that is the probability. There is no figure in Iran like a vice president. Maduro was a president, and he had a vice president who was Rodriguez. So when Maduro was captured and brought to the United States,

the next person in line clearly, constitutionally, legally, was Rodriguez, and she stepped in and took over. Maduro's role. Hamine is not like that. There is no vice leader number two who is constitutionally ready to simply take Harmanet's place. If you remove Hamon, and I don't even know what that means, capture him, kill him, let's say you capture him and you bring him to the United States. The person who's likely to take over in Iran until, you know, Hamer is also a very old man now, but let's say, let's say you remove him. The people who will take over, as I said, most probably and plausibly, are going to come from within the clerical establishment.

And they are not sympathetic to the United States. And I can't really see how anybody who might be from that group sympathetic to the United States is going to be able to win over the others. That's the problem. And beyond that, there's all the other stakeholders, the IRGC, there's the military, there's the various militia groups. It's a very complex. It's a very, very complex set up in Iran. So I don't think you can reproduce in Iran what worked in Venezuela. If that's the idea, then at this moment in time, unless I'm missing something, I can't see how it can work, in which case you could very easily,

easily find yourself in a prolonged war with Iran, which is exactly what the Trump doesn't want. The Iranians say they will fight this as a long war. And going back to your point, we know that with the neocons, they have no reverse gear. If they are faced with a long war in which the balance of advantage seems to be tilting to Iran's favor, they're going to demand escalation. Well, they already lost a 12-day war, though. Exactly.

I mean, the United States in Israel lasted for 12 days. Exactly. And that was it. And they had to find the off ramp. And can Trump afford a long war, once again, going into the midterms? Is that something that he can afford? I mean, his ratings are already way down. He's not even paying attention to what's going on in the United States.

I think the last thing that people in the United States want to see is a war in Iran, some sort of a long war shaping up in Iran. Is Trump ready for that? Does he really want to go down that road? I don't think he does. I remain convinced that he's trying to figure out him and his team. They're trying to figure out some sort of clever, over-the-top operation to achieve this goal of regime change in a matter of minutes or days or something like that. They don't want to go two weeks or three weeks or months into this. Absolutely. You're completely right. Well, just to say, if there's a long war and one which has the ability to go on escalating, it is a political catastrophe.

I mean, it will sink his administration. It will sink his presidency. So this is a very, very high risk gamble that he's taking. And, well, at the moment, based on what we know, which is, as I said, probably very incomplete, I can't see obvious ways how it could turn out right. But again, to repeat, it depends critically on how strong and stable and resilient the government in Iran actually is. And this is something which I know a lot of people in Iran, both inside Iran and outside Iran are not really sure about. My sense is that there is a critical mass of support still for the government in Iran, despite the economic crisis, despite all of these things.

Remember, it's a religiously based government. So people who are committed to their religion, which many people in Iran are, are going to support it for that reason, if only for that reason. So I don't know how stable and how strong this government is. If it proved stronger than Trump and the people around him, you know, Mike Wals and Radcliffe and people like that, imagine, then I can certainly see how this could go catastrophically wrong. Catastrophically wrong for him. Well, you know, just to wrap up the video, Alexander, you know, they've been wanting this since his first term. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Trump pulled out of EJCPOA.

That's just the bottom line. That says it all. the first term he pulled out of the JCPOA and he's been on this path for a war with Iran for many, for many years. And he's going to get it. Yes. He's going to get it because, you know, that's the decision he made in his first term. Yes.

Yes. We didn't have to be here. I mean, when you think about it, when you take it, When you take a step back, why did Trump have to even bring up Iran in the second term? Why? No, quite. Absolutely. No reason.

Anyway, there we are. We are where we are. And you're absolutely right. I mean, he has this thing with Iran, as many people within his administration do. And by the way, many people in the United States also do, just to say. I mean, this is, and, you know, there are historic reasons for it and their geopolitical reasons for it. But to repeat again, a point we've made on our programs many times. Obsessions are very dangerous things.

If you are thinking obsessively, then you're more likely to, far more likely to make mistakes than to get things right. And there is a quality of obsession about this one. All right. Well, end the video there. The durand.com. We're on X in Telegram and Rumble. Go to the Durand shop. Pickups of merch, 26% off.

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