Foro Policy Forum Series, 02.03.2026 The Washington Institute
On March 2, The Washington Institute held a virtual Policy Forum with Holly Dagres, Dennis Ross, Dana Stroul, and Robert Satloff. Ross is the Institute’s William Davidson Distinguished Fellow and a former senior U.S. government official on Iran issues. The following is a rapporteurs’ summary of their remarks.
Dennis B. Ross (embajador ® y académico norteamericano)
President Trump’s vague objectives in this war have maximized his freedom of choice and ability to define what success looks like—and left others in the dark. Representatives of his administration have not made themselves available on talk shows and the like, while Trump’s own comments about giving the Iranian people a chance to pursue their own future have left observers wondering: is the United States pursuing regime change?
Conventional wisdom says it is impossible to execute regime change with just an air campaign and no boots on the ground. The United States and Israel have been targeting the Islamic Republic’s command and control through strikes on IRGC and Basij sites across the country, aiming in part to weaken the military and produce defections. Yet questions persist about the endpoint of a “regime change” campaign and the feasibility of being able to achieve that goal any time soon.
Hence, an alternative objective for the war may be “regime weakening.” Making the Islamic Republic vulnerable and incapable of threatening the region could force senior regime officials to change their behavior, along the lines of recent developments in Venezuela. After the June 2025 war, some Iranian elites began to raise questions about the Supreme Leader’s failed strategy of making huge investments in foreign terrorist proxies and nuclear infrastructure. A campaign focused on weakening the regime could help widen those internal fractures, creating the potential to change Tehran’s posture by cutting a deal with any emerging new leaders who express a willingness to make concessions acceptable to Trump.
A “regime weakening” strategy could also enable the White House to end the war unilaterally and claim broad success, both for imposing a price on the regime after its mass killing of protesters and for profoundly decreasing its ability to threaten the region. In this scenario, Trump could threaten to impose a much more severe price if Tehran tries to continue hostilities after he orders U.S. forces to stop. The biggest risk of this approach isn’t Iran continuing the war, but another mass killing campaign against the Iranian people if they rise up to take advantage of the regime’s weakness.
Tehran has also seemingly miscalculated by attacking the Gulf states. Launched in the hope of convincing Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and others to pressure Trump on stopping the war, these attacks have produced the opposite effect: isolation of Iran and Gulf coalescence against the regime. The net result has been to increase the potential for postwar regional integration and illustrate the value of security partnerships with the United States.
Trump’s willingness to deploy hard power also leaves Russia and China looking largely irrelevant in the Middle East. Should Iran look for a way out of the war, it might turn to Moscow as a mediator. Vladimir Putin may indeed have an interest in reasserting his regional relevance, trying to rescue a partner regime, and offering Washington an off-ramp. But he would have to deliver concessions that Trump deems meaningful.
