TFA argues that the Iranian regime works "bottom up", and there's no "select few" group of leaders that can be removed or changed that would topple the regime or make it change course. TFA argues that the US fundamentally misread the situation (it also argues that Israel didn't misread it but also doesn't care what happens in Iran, they just want to destabilize it for short-term gains, mainly benefiting Netanyahu; but that this war is also a mistake for Israel longer term).
> The Islamic Republic of Iran is not a personalist regime where the death of a single leader or even a group of leaders is likely to cause collapse: it is an institutional regime where the core centers of power (like the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or IRGC) are ‘bought in’ from the bottom to the top because the regime allows them access to disproportionate resources and power. Consequently if you blow up the leader, they will simply pick another one [...]
> But power in the Iranian regime isn’t wielded by the Supreme Leader alone either: the guardian council has power, the council of experts that select the Supreme Leader have power, the IRGC has power, the regular military has some power (but less than the IRGC), the elected government has some power (but less than the IRGC or the guardian council) and on and on.
And this bunch of people cannot easily change course, TFA convincingly argues, because:
> And so that is the trap. While the United States can exchange tit-for-tat strikes with Iran without triggering an escalation spiral, once you try to collapse the regime, the members of the regime (who are making the decisions, not, alas, the Iranian people) have no reason to back down and indeed must try to reestablish deterrence. These are men who are almost certainly dead or poor-in-exile if the regime collapses. Moreover the entire raison d’être of this regime is resistance to Israel and the United States: passively accepting a massive decapitation attack and not responding would fatally undermine the regime’s legitimacy with its own supporters, leading right back to the ‘dead-or-poor-and-exiled’ problem.
So they cannot yield power and they cannot stand down because their whole legitimacy (of sorts) rests on being belligerent towards Israel and the US. If they flinch, the worst case scenario for them is to lose power and get killed.
TFA calls this a "trap" for both the US and Iran. It's a situation they are locked in now, both sides forced to escalate because backing down spells political doom for whoever does it, but escalating is still bad for both of them.