The Dictatorship
An air power expert explains why Iran is more powerful now than before the war
President Donald Trump’s war with Iran is not going well. He began the conflict with a promise to use an air campaign to initiate regime change in as little as “two or three days.” But about three weeks in, Iran’s government, military and security forces remain highly functional. No popular uprising has emerged. And Iran’s government has seized control of the Strait of Hormuz, sending global oil prices surging and Trump into a panic.
Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, is one of the analysts who saw this situation coming a long way off. An expert on air power and regime change who has also taught at the U.S. Air Force’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Pape is exceptionally well suited to address the core dynamics underlying how the war on Iran is unfolding. His scholarship and his newsletter, “The Escalation Trap,” all point in one direction: Trump’s goal of toppling Iran’s regime from the air alone is doomed, because fighting a war only with air power is by its very nature ill suited to win hearts and minds.
I spoke with Pape on the phone this week, and he explained why this kind of intervention has such a poor track record, what isn’t working strategically, why Iran isn’t losing the war, and what this all means for the possibility of Trump sending in ground troops.
Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows.
Zeeshan Aleem: When you heard in Trump’s initial announcement that he’s going to use air power alongside Israel to clear the way for protesters to take over the government, what did you think?
Robert Pape: What I thought is that President Trump was up against the weight of history. I’ve studied every air campaign since World War I, and in all that time, over 100 years, air power alone — without ground forces — has never toppled a regime. There have been times when there have been pro-democracy movements in combination with the air power; it has never worked. It has not worked in the dumb-bomb age, the smart-bomb age. We’ve tried so many different combinations, so much intelligence, and it has never worked.
You’re ending up with leaders from the second generation who are more anti-American, more dangerous, more willing to take costs.”
ROBERT PAPE
Aleem: Could you expand on how air campaigns haven’t succeeded even when coordinated with pro-democracy movements?
Pape: There’s no case where air power alone has coordinated with a civilian unarmed pro-democracy movement to topple a regime. The closest you get to this is in 1991, after the 39-day American air war and after the four-day ground war against Iraq to kick the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. The view inside of the George H.W. Bush administration was Iraq was so weakened and Saddam’s regime was so battered that Bush called publicly for the Shia to rise up and topple the Saddam Hussein regime. If you just looked at it on a piece of paper, it would seem like “Goodness. Well, of course, the Saddam regime would crack and it would fall.”
What happened instead? The Saddam regime had plenty of residual capability and butchered and killed tens of thousands of those Shia who rose up, and the bodies piled in the streets.
Aleem: What is it about air campaigns that makes them so ineffective at achieving regime change?
Pape: It’s ineffective not because the bombs are technically ineffective. It’s ineffective because the bombing triggers politics in the target government and in the target society that work against us. It’s a politically self-defeating strategy.
Before the bombing starts, you typically have a gap between the society and the government. What the bombing does is it changes from an internal game inside of Iran to now the foreign military attacker dictating the government that Iran should have.
And in this case, it’s not just any old third party doing the bombing. It’s the Godzilla of the American precision military. It’s the Americans who historically have done regime change in Iran before. In 1953 we controlled parts of the Iranian military and we fostered a military coup that put in the shah of Iran, a dictatorship, along with the SAVAK, which was one of the most brutal security agencies in history.
Notice President Trump did not say, “Well, we’re just simply going to ask the pro-democracy movement who they want.” Instead we — Americans — are going to decide who the government of Iran will be. Whether we call it a dictatorship or a puppet regime or not, that’s exactly the way this is going to be interpreted, and injects the politics of nationalism into the equation. Once you have nationalism, you have a fundamentally new political dynamic.
The new politics that have been triggered by the bombing work to the disadvantage of regime change, in the positive sense that you would get a generation of leaders who would be more likely to do Washington’s bidding. What you’re getting instead is negative regime change: You’re ending up with leaders from the second generation who are more anti-American, more dangerous, more willing to take costs in order to punish America, and allies of America.
Aleem: I think when people see the incredible power and precision of American strikes to take out targets, they think it might just work anyway.
Pape: The incredible power of precision attacks produces incredible fear and anger in the target country, both in its leadership and in its society. And that incredible fear and anger morphs into lashing back, right? The fear and anger causes fight-or-flight, and the fight aspect becomes much more dominant in this situation. And precisely because there’s not a ground force there, there are opportunities to lash back.
Aleem: If you had to say someone was winning this war or losing this war, what would you say?
Pape: I would say that this war has been tactically brilliant by the United States — the U.S. military has done everything we’ve asked it to do. But Iran is not losing the war.
The core reason is that by controlling and disrupting passage through the Strait of Hormuz, it has already gained enormous leverage. It has gained leverage in [raising] world energy prices. That leverage also works to its financial advantage, because Iran can shift its own oil through the strait; if we blow up those tankers — which we could easily do — this will only drive oil prices up even further.
Iran is not losing. It’s more powerful today than before the war.
Robert Pape
And if we have [to use] ground efforts in order to open the strait, I call this the limited territorial control option on my Substack. … This will only deepen the escalation trap even more, and a big reason for that is because, as my work on terrorism that I’ve done for over 25 years shows, 95% of all the suicide attacks around the world are in response to foreign ground presence.
Iran is not losing. It’s more powerful today than before the war.
Aleem: The Washington Post reported this week, according to a State Department cable that it reviewed, that Israeli officials believe Iranian protesters will get “slaughtered” by Iranian security forces if they mobilize, but Israel is still publicly calling for an uprising. What do you make of that?
Pape: I think this is an example of victory narrative meets escalation reality. There are domestic political incentives for the Israeli government and the U.S. government to articulate the victory narrative, which is this illusion that there is this quick and decisive victory just around the corner. But this is meeting escalation reality inside of their own administrations, inside of their own intelligence units, inside of their own militaries, that this victory narrative is not real.
Aleem: The Financial Times recently reported that many Iranians who initially supported the U.S. bombing have now switched their opinion and oppose it. Do we have any evidence to believe that that’s a widespread thing?
Pape: There’s a powerful indicator that the media is not using. But the actual indicator here is whether or not you are seeing a rise in targeting intelligence by those pro-democracy movements to help the Israelis and the Americans kill and target inside of Iran, and what you’re seeing is probably the opposite of that.
If we could kill 300 leaders in Iran on a single day, we would definitely do that right now. The reason that’s not happening is because we don’t know where they are. The fact that that’s not happening is a strong indicator that a true alliance between the pro-democracy movement and the American bombing campaign is not building.
Aleem: What does the killing of Ali Larijani — the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and considered by many to be the country’s de facto leader after Ali Khamenei’s death — say about the strategy at play right now?
Pape: It’s pennies on the dollar. Iran had a “mosaic” plan, fully expecting that America and Israel were going to do leadership decapitation. That mosaic plan was essentially decentralizing all of the decisions that had to happen so you could still fight the war, even though you lose leaders along the way. I think this is just part and parcel of what Iran has been expecting.
You don’t see a single loss of a beat in their behavior. It’s not like we finally found the one leader who, once we kill that leader, the whole house of cards comes apart, because it’s not a house of cards. This is more of a matrix — a flexible matrix.
Aleem: Because of chains of succession?
Pape: No. 1, change of succession, and No. 2, the amount of high-volume real-time communication you need between the midlevels of the government and the very senior leadership is very thin. If you go down to, say, the brigade level in Iran, and you kill the brigade leader, you will paralyze the entire brigade of 4,000 or 5,000 men for probably weeks. But you take out a leader, and you might think, well, I’m going to have a much bigger effect. No, it’s the opposite, and the reason is because the volume and real-time connectivity that you need between the top echelons of the leader and the midlevels of the organization is different. It’s thinner.
Aleem: What are the off-ramps here? And what do you think are the chances that there’s a possibility of boots on the ground?
Pape: There’s no golden off-ramp where President Trump now will come out of this politically stronger than he was before. If there was, he would have taken it, because obviously he’s very sensitive to that.
The real choice here: Does President Trump cut his losses now, have some variant of declared victory? The political losses will be pretty severe, because if he tries to leave the conflict now, then this will likely leave Iran in control of the Strait of Hormuz, which they were not in control of before. And they will likely have uranium to make a bomb, and that will not change. So the political costs that President Trump would have to make to cut his losses — and he would have to move all of his forces out of the region to do this, otherwise it woul dn’t be credible — would be severe, but his presidency might be recoverable from that point on.
But if he goes deeper, if we go to stage three in the escalation trap, we actually cross the threshold to even limited ground operations in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, this will likely lead to a much longer set of consequences, and the political costs will go up rather dramatically. And he may still decide, say, in July or August to pull back or cut a deal with Iran in some way, but that then may well be his presidency. He can’t recover. He will be in Lyndon Johnson territory, to use a Vietnam analogy, and Lyndon Johnson was never able to recover once it was clear that escalation could not defeat the North Vietnamese.
What we’re learning is, the more escalation with Iran, the more escalation is favoring Iran, and that is what I see going into the future. To me, the best option for President Trump is to cut his losses now. Yes, the political costs will be high. He won’t be able to get the same deal he could have gotten from Iran even before the bombing started, and he didn’t like that deal. This will be a deal he doesn’t like even more. But the alternatives here are politically worse for him, and also worse for the country and the world.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.
Friday’s splashdown of the Artemis II crew, the first to travel to the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972, is a moment of celebration for all of us on Earth.
But it’s also an important reminder that, despite this success, the current administration’s Office of Management and Budget is proposing budget cuts that will all but dismantle much of NASA. It’s surprising, illogical and very troubling.
The proposed cuts would terminate 53 NASA Science missions, throwing away more than $13 billion in taxpayer investment.
The proposed cuts would terminate 53 NASA Science missions, throwing away more than $13 billion in taxpayer investment and halting the development of nearly every future NASA Science mission.
These cuts would be an insult to our astronauts and entire NASA workforce. Astronauts and their colleagues are civil servants who work hard, accomplish nearly impossible things and represent our country to the world.
It’s an odd choice from an administration that has pledged to put America first, to be sure. But stranger still, and quite personal to me, is the OMB’s proposal to completely end NASA’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) outreach program, which supports students and teachers nationwide. Programs like this have helped the United States be a world leader in science and technology.
We cannot allow this.
The U.S. has many great institutions, but NASA is a unique part of the American story. NASA is the best brand our nation has. When people around the world think of the U.S. at its best, they think of astronauts exploring the moon, telescopes opening new windows on the cosmos and spacecraft making profound discoveries on other worlds. NASA is who we are when we’re curious, bold and united.
There is also a growing consensus in Washington that we are in a new space race, this time, with the China National Space Administration, which, by the way, is planning to have taikonauts walk on the Moon in 2030. If the race is on, why abandon so much? Why cede the lead? The U.S. cannot be first in space if it is second in science and technology.
The administration proposed almost the same draconian cuts to NASA last year. When it did, we the people fought back. The Planetary Society, along with more than 300 advocates and 19 other partner organizations, went to Washington and organized the largest grassroots advocacy outreach for space science in history. Tens of thousands of citizens from every state and congressional district wrote, called and made their case to their elected officials. Together, we successfully saved NASA.
Now, this year, we have no choice but to fight back. On April 20, we will return to Washington, where people can join in person or join our Save NASA Science campaign online.
Science is not a luxury. It is a responsibility. Our founders knew it; you will find “Science” cited in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Only a public space agency can sustain decades-long investments in the kind of science that tells us whether life ever existed on Mars, that tracks the asteroids that could threaten every living thing on Earth and that reveals the story of our origin.
NASA’s science program is a bargain for Americans. It accounted for one-tenth of 1% of the nation’s expenditures last year, a tenth of a penny of every tax dollar.
Cutting science would not just delay discovery; it would destroy it. It would shatter our STEM talent pipeline. It would abandon our international partners. And, it would cede U.S. leadership in space science to China and other nations.
NASA’s science program is a bargain for Americans. It accounted for one-tenth of 1% of the nation’s expenditures last year, a tenth of a penny of every tax dollar. And for every dollar spent, three come back into the economy. Every year, NASA generates $75 billion of economic growth and supports over 300,000 jobs in all 50 states.
Members of Congress and the Senate agree: NASA is a remarkable investment. I’ve met with both Republicans and Democrats, all of whom support space science. And last year, an overwhelming bipartisan majority rejected these same cuts.
NASA is what makes America great. It represents our best values: curiosity, determination, tenacity, and global cooperation. It proves that we are capable of extraordinary things. When we invest in scientific exploration, we invest in ourselves — in our economy, security and future.
If we concede and retreat from the frontier of space after a half century of leadership, it would be an unworthy choice. If Artemis II has showed us anything, it’s that the public, across the political spectrum, strongly supports space exploration, scientific discovery and a deeper understanding of the universe and our place within it.
Bill Nye is the chief ambassador at The Planetary Society, the world’s largest space interest organization.
After making history as the farthest journey into space humans have ever made, NASA’s Artemis II mission returned to Earth on Friday, splashing down off the coast southwest of San Diego.
The Artemis II crew splashed down successfully at 5:07:47 p.m. PT. The Orion spacecraft launched last weekfrom the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the first crewed flight to the moon in more than 50 years. The entire mission from liftoff took a total of nine days, one hour, 31 minutes and 35 seconds, which NASA rounds up, to call it a 10-day mission.
In the buildup to the mission, questions about the craft’s heat shield led to concerns among some experts about whether Orion would hold up on reentry to the Earth’s atmosphere, the most perilous part of any crewed mission. A NASA-commissioned panel ultimately deemed the ship safewith the astronauts themselves endorsing it ahead of time.
The four-member crew — NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — embarked on the 10-day mission to fly around the moon, setting the stage for future missions aimed at establishing a permanent lunar base.
After splashdown, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman praised the crew, calling them “wonderful communicators, almost poets,” during an interview Friday evening.
“These were the ambassadors from humanity to the starts that we sent out there,” Isaacman said.
He also emphasized that this mission set the stage for a future moon landing — and base.
“This is not a once in a lifetime … This is just the beginning,” he said during the interview. “We are going to get back into doing this with frequency, sending missions to the moon, until we land on it in 2028 and start building our base.”
On April 6, the spacecraft reached 252,756 miles from Earth, the farthest distance traveled by humans. Artemis II broke the Apollo 13crew’s record of 248,655 miles, set in 1970.
The crew conducted a seven-hour lunar flyby, coming within about 4,000 miles of the moon’s surface and seeing areas of the moon never before seen by the naked eye. In addition to testing the spacecraft, the astronauts studied the far side of the moon during a solar eclipse and observed lunar geological features and color variations.
Now back on Earth, the astronauts will undergo medical evaluations before heading to shore and traveling to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The next such mission, Artemis IIIis expected to launch next year.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
A former staffer has accused Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, a current candidate for California governor, of reportedly sexually assaulting her.
The allegations were first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
The woman, who has not been publicly identified and worked for Swalwell for nearly two years, alleged she had sexual encounters while he was her boss, and he sexually assaulted her on two occasions when she was too intoxicated to consent, the Chronicle reported. The woman told the paper Swalwell began pursuing her weeks after she was hired at age 21 to work in the Democrat’s district in 2019.
The woman claimed Swalwell invited her for drinks in 2019, and during that encounter, she became too intoxicated to remember what happened. She alleged she woke up naked in his hotel bed, and following the incident, he distanced himself and their relationship eventually dissolved.
Five years later, in 2024, the woman alleged she attended a charity gala where Swalwell was honored. After the event, she said they met for drinks and she became intoxicated, but remembers only fragments of the night, including pushing him away and saying “no” as he allegedly forced himself on her. She texted a friend three days later, according to the Chronicle, saying she had been sexually assaulted by Swalwell.
In text messages, independently review by the Chronicle, the woman told her friend she “blacked out” but “woke up once during it and even told him to stop at one point.”
The Chronicle spoke with the woman’s friend and the woman’s ex-boyfriend, who she said she told about the alleged 2024 assault the following day. Both corroborated her story and described her as appearing disoriented.
Medical records, according to the Chronicle, also show she sought pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease tests about a week after the incident.
The woman told the Chronicle she did not immediately tell authorities because she feared people wouldn’t believe she was telling the truth.
Swalwell, who has represented California’s 14th Congressional District since 2013 and launched his gubernatorial campaign earlier this year, strongly denied the claims in a statement Friday.
“These allegations are false and come on the eve of an election against the frontrunner for governor. For nearly 20 years, I have served the public — as a prosecutor and a congressman and have always protected women,” Swalwell said. “I will defend myself with the facts and where necessary bring legal action. My focus in the coming days is to be with my wife and children and defend our decades of service against these lies.”
An attorney for Swalwell sent the woman a cease-and-desist letter on Thursday, according to the Chronicle, accusing her of making false claims of sexual assault and nonconsensual encounters, and warning that legal action would follow if she did not retract the allegations.
In a separate report, three other women spoke with CNNabout alleged various kinds of sexual misconduct, including Swalwell sending them unsolicited inappropriate messages or photos. The messages, the women said, were often sent through Snapchat, which is a social media platform that allows messages to delete automatically and notifies users of screenshots.
“Some of the allegations I’ve seen, which is that we’ve had NDAs in the office — never. There’s never been an allegation, and there’s never been a settlement,” Swalwell told reporters Tuesday.
Political fallout
Swalwell’s campaign initially showed signs of strong momentum in the crowded California governor’s race to replace current Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has called the allegations “deeply troubling.”
“As we continue to learn more, these allegations from multiple sources are deeply troubling and must be taken seriously,” Newsom’s spokesperson said in a statement to MS NOW.
Swalwell’s campaign also benefited from backing from key Democratic allies, positioning him as a viable contender in a fragmented field with no clear front-runner.
But the reports of the allegations, along with separate unverified claimscirculating online, have sparked backlash and prompted some political fallout, including campaign disruptions and heightened attention from rivals. Multiple people resigned from Swalwell’s orbit ahead of Friday’s scathing report of sexual assault, including Courtni Pugh, who served as a strategic adviser.
Rep. Jimmy GomezD-Calif., resignedas co-chair of Swalwell’s campaign, saying in part “he cannot in good conscience remain” in the role and suggesting that Swalell “should leave the race now.” Rep. Adam Gray, D-Calif., also resigned as campaign co-chair and called for Swalwell to suspend the campaign.
Other prominent Democrats also quickly began distancing themselves.
House Democrats issued a joint statement calling for a “swift investigation” and for Swalwell to end his bid.
“All perpetrators of sexual assault and harassment must be held accountable,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-NY wrote.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared this an “extremely sensitive matter” and said she discussed with Swalwell that the investigation would be “best done outside of a gubernatorial campaign.”
Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said he is “deeply distressed” about the allegations surrounding Swalwell and immediately withdrew his endorsement.
“This woman was brave to come forward, and we should take her story seriously,” Schiff said on X. “I am withdrawing my endorsement immediately, and believe that he should withdraw from the race.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., called the allegations “indefensible” and also immediately withdrew his endorsement of his longtime ally.
“Women who come forward with accounts like this deserve to be heard with respect, not questioned or dismissed. I regret having come to his defense on social media prior to knowing all the information. I am equally as shocked and upset about what has transpired,” Gallego wroteon X.
Two of Swalwell’s key labor allies, Service Employees International Union of California withdrew and California Teachers Association, retracted their support Friday, marking a significant blow to his campaign.
“The allegations are incredibly disturbing and unacceptable against Rep. Swalwell. We are immediately suspending our support. Our elected board will be meeting as soon as possible to follow our union’s democratic process to determine next steps,” the CTA said in a statement.
Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer said he commends“the brave former staffer who came forward with her story” about Swalwell.
“Speaking out is never easy, and her account must be taken seriously. At a moment like this, we must make sure that women are heard, and justice is pursued,” Steyer added.
Former Rep. Katie Porter called the allegation “horrifying,” adding she is thinking of the courageous women who have come forward to share their stories.”
The California Democratic Party labeled the allegations “deeply disturbing.”
“Any person engaged in misconduct must take responsibility and be held accountable for their actions — including a Member and candidate for Governor,” CADEM Chair Rusty Hicks said.
Swalwell’s Republican gubernatorial opponent, former Fox News host Steve Hilton, blasted Swalwell over the allegations in a statement to MS NOW.
“It’s incredible to me that Eric Swalwell thought he could run for Governor of California while all this was going on,” Hilton said in the statement. “It shows the complete contempt these career politicians have for the public.”
As of Friday evening, Swalwell’s fundraising page on ActBlue appeared to no longer be accepting donations.
Jillian Frankel and Syedah Asghar contributed to this report.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at BLN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.
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