With President Donald Trump’s extraordinary decision to attack three of the key/critical Iranian nuclear sites, two questions emerge: First, how will the Iranian populace react to the decision? Second, will this hurt or help the chances for regime change?
Of course, we will not get answers to these questions immediately. But I think it’s fair to say that history, in the not-so-distant past, offers an instructive guide to what could well happen.
While it is challenging at this point to answer these questions with a high degree of certainty, there is one historical analogy which I was deeply involved in that may provide insights.
More than 24 years ago, while working in the Bill Clinton administration, I was one of the principal actors advising the State Department on the situation in Serbia. There, I led on-the-ground efforts to demonstrate to the Serbian opposition that President Slobodan Milosevic could be beaten.
