Champions of Regime Change May Soon Face Regime Change at Home

Prof. Engr. Zamir Ahmed Awan,

For most of the last eighty years, few states have been more closely associated with regime change than the United States and Israel. In the American case, the pattern is heavily documented: Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Congo in 1960, persistent intervention in Cuba, deep manipulation in Chile before the 1973 coup, support for anti-government operations in Nicaragua, and a long record of covert pressure on governments judged unfriendly to Washington. Israel’s record has often been different in method but similar in intent. Rather than classical coups, its intelligence doctrine has more often relied on sabotage, assassinations, covert penetration, decapitation strikes, political destabilization, and the weakening of hostile states from within. Between them, the CIA and Mossad helped define the modern grammar of covert political warfare.

Now history may be turning inward.

After the Israeli-American war with Iran, the two governments that once treated regime change as a strategic instrument abroad are facing a rising prospect of regime change at home, not through coups or conspiracies, but through democratic backlash, public exhaustion, economic pain, and declining trust. That is the central irony of this moment. The old exporters of instability may now become victims of their own political overreach.

The phrase “regime change” should be used carefully here. America and Israel are democracies, and what they now face is not a putsch, but the possibility that voters, parliaments, courts, and constitutional mechanisms may decide that enough is enough. Yet the comparison remains powerful. For decades, Washington and Tel Aviv justified intervention abroad in the language of security, freedom, deterrence, and strategic necessity. Today, many citizens in both countries are asking a simpler question: after all the destruction, all the escalations, all the rhetoric of strength, what exactly has been achieved?

The answer, increasingly, is not victory but fatigue.

In the United States, the political mood has shifted sharply. Recent polling shows that a clear majority of Americans disapprove of the strikes on Iran. Around two-thirds want a quick end to U.S. involvement, even if the administration’s original goals are not fully achieved. Public support for sending ground troops is extremely low. Even among many who remain skeptical of Iran, there is little appetite for an open-ended war, rising fuel prices, strategic drift, and another Middle Eastern entanglement sold in the language of necessity. Americans have heard that script before. They know how it begins. They also know how it usually ends.

This is where President Donald Trump’s position becomes politically dangerous. He did not inherit this crisis as a passive bystander. He escalated it. He personalized it. He sold it as strength. But wars do not remain slogans for long. They arrive at the gas pump, in grocery bills, in market anxiety, in military casualties, in diplomatic isolation, and in growing public doubt about whether the commander-in-chief is acting from strategy or impulse. Once a war begins to erode daily life, it stops being a foreign policy question and becomes a domestic political referendum.

That referendum is already taking shape.

Trump’s approval rating has fallen sharply, and his numbers on the cost of living and economic management are especially weak. This matters because presidents rarely survive foreign-policy overreach when it combines with inflation and household stress. In the American political tradition, the public will tolerate many things, but not expensive wars without clear purpose, and not foreign adventures that make ordinary life harder at home. When fuel prices jump and confidence falls, voters stop asking whether a war sounded tough. They start asking who made them pay for it.

The midterm elections in November 2026 therefore loom as more than a routine electoral contest. They may become the first organized democratic verdict on the Iran war. Republicans hold narrow congressional margins, and that makes the danger to Trump very real. If his party loses control of the House, impeachment pressure will return immediately. Trump himself has already admitted as much. That does not mean impeachment is certain. But it does mean that the president understands the stakes. The war has not strengthened his domestic standing. It has exposed it.

The broader political lesson is unmistakable: foreign escalation is no substitute for domestic legitimacy.

The same pattern, with local variations, is visible in Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu has long built his political identity around one promise above all others: that only he can guarantee Israeli security. But after years of crisis, war, polarization, and institutional strain, that promise no longer carries the same force it once did. Even where there is public support for military action against Iran, that support is no longer translating into political recovery for Netanyahu himself. Polling indicates that while many Jewish Israelis backed the war, strong support weakened over the course of March, and Netanyahu’s coalition did not enjoy the political boost many in his camp hoped it would gain.

That is a profound development. In Israeli politics, wartime leaders often hope that military confrontation will rebuild national unity and quiet criticism. Netanyahu appears to have counted on precisely that effect. Yet the evidence suggests the opposite. The war may have bought him time, but it has not restored trust. It postponed the reckoning; it did not prevent it.

This matters because Netanyahu enters the coming election cycle deeply burdened. He still faces corruption proceedings. He still carries the political shadow of the catastrophic security failures of recent years. He still presides over a divided society, a strained economy, and a coalition dependent on bargains that alienate large sections of the public. His allies may still keep him in office for a while. But keeping a coalition alive is not the same thing as winning back moral authority.

And moral authority is precisely what both Washington and Tel Aviv have been losing.

For years, the United States and Israel claimed to act as guardians of order in a dangerous region. Yet their latest war has instead underscored disorder: soaring energy prices, fragile shipping routes, nervous markets, divided allies, humanitarian suffering, and open disagreement even among supposed partners. The international response has been telling. Several European governments refused to support American military operations against Iran. This was not a minor diplomatic inconvenience. It was a signal that Washington’s ability to command automatic deference has weakened. When allies begin to say, in effect, “this is your war, not ours,” credibility is already in decline.

Israel faces a related problem. Even where governments remain cautious in public, the cumulative damage to Israel’s international standing is severe. A country that once framed itself as a democratic exception in a difficult region now appears, to many critics and even some former sympathizers, as a state increasingly governed by permanent emergency, maximal force, and political impunity. Netanyahu’s government may still rely on military arguments, but a growing number of observers no longer see strategic clarity behind them. They see survival politics.

That is why the word “regime” now matters so much.

The current regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv are not simply governments with controversial policies. They are increasingly seen by critics at home and abroad as political systems centered on personalization of power, constant emergency, and the use of fear as a substitute for persuasion. Trump and Netanyahu thrive on crisis. They convert every challenge into a loyalty test. They equate dissent with weakness. They prefer confrontation because confrontation allows them to present themselves as indispensable. But there is a built-in limit to this method. If crisis becomes permanent, then the leader who promises stability through force eventually becomes the main source of instability.

That is where both men now stand.

Trump’s political brand was built on disruption, but disruption loses its glamour when it turns into higher prices, international friction, and the possibility of another endless war. Netanyahu’s brand was built on security, but security loses its credibility when citizens feel they are living through permanent danger without a clear political horizon. In both countries, the central promise has failed. Order was promised; chaos expanded. Strength was promised; isolation deepened. Strategic clarity was promised; instead, the public sees drift, anger, and mounting costs.

This is why democratic regime change is no longer a dramatic slogan. It is becoming a plausible political outcome.

In America, voters may decide in November that the administration has exhausted its mandate. If Congress changes hands, investigations, impeachment efforts, and legislative paralysis will follow. In Israel, voters may conclude that Netanyahu has outlived the public trust required to lead a country under such extraordinary strain. In both cases, the mechanism will be constitutional. But the meaning will be profound: citizens reclaiming power from leaders who mistook militarized politics for durable legitimacy.

There is also a larger historical justice in this. The states that most confidently interfered in the political destinies of others are now being reminded of a principle they often preached but did not always respect: governments ultimately derive authority from public consent, not from covert power, not from military reach, and not from the mythology of indispensability. A government may overthrow others abroad for a season. It cannot permanently suppress accountability at home.

The champions of regime change once believed they could shape the world without being morally shaped by their own methods. That illusion is fading. The political culture of permanent intervention eventually corrodes the intervening power itself. It narrows debate. It centralizes fear. It inflates executive authority. It drains public trust. And sooner or later, citizens begin to ask whether the system has become captive to the very habits it once projected outward.

That question is now hanging over Washington and Tel Aviv alike.

The final irony is almost poetic. For decades, regime change was something done to other nations, usually weaker ones, often under the banner of civilization, security, or liberation. In 2026, regime change may come instead to the very capitals that claimed mastery over it. Not through secret operations. Not through foreign manipulation. But through public disillusionment, electoral reckoning, and the constitutional force of democratic correction.

If that happens, it will be more than a political upset. It will be history’s verdict on a dangerous era of arrogance. And it may be the healthiest thing both countries can do for themselves.

Author:

Prof. Engr. Zamir Ahmed Awan,

Founding Chair, Global Silk Route Research Alliance (GSRRA),

Sinologist, Diplomat, Editor, Analyst, Advisor, Consultant,

(E-mail: awanzamir@yahoo.com).