What needs to happen in Iran today is what happened in Cambodia: Those who wish for ideological reasons to fight to the death should have their wish granted.By Michael Rubin, Middle East ForumPresident Donald Trump has declared he has already achieved regime change in Iran. On March 29, 2026, he argued regime change occurred because many top leaders were killed, declaring Iran’s new leaders much more reasonable.In a way, he is right. Comatose or dead men like supposed Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei do not talk back.Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, a four-time presidential loser, meanwhile, has long been ambitious.He both plays a good cop to former Defense Minister Ali Vahidi’s bad cop and negotiates to preserve his financial interests; war is bad for his business.Trump exaggerates, but his critics also go too far. Many highlight that by killing so many senior leaders, Trump radicalized the regime since hardliners now dominate the top echelons of the Islamic Republic.Ali Vaez, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, explained, “When President Trump says he has changed the regime in Iran, he’s right in one sense—he’s changed it to a much more radicalized regime. … All of these individuals who are now in place—the new national security advisor, the new head of the IRGC, the speaker of the parliament, who himself was a former commander of Revolutionary Guards—they all have been involved in domestic repression extensively in their past lives.”Vaez ignores two points: First, those killed in U.S. and Israeli bombings were either complicit in repression or were apologists for it.Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was the ultimate hardliner, for example. So, too, were Mohammad Pakpour, the commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Minister of Intelligence Esmail Khatib; Majid Khademi, head of the Intelligence division within the Revolutionary Guard; and so on.Kamal Kharrazi, a former foreign minister, also died. While not directly involved in repression, his lies led to the deaths of hundreds at the hands of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.And, second, the so-called moderates neither had the power nor desire to transform Iran prior to the war.Indeed, it was their false promises, the wishful thinking of Vaez and the International Crisis Group crowd, and the naivete of Western diplomats that enabled Iran to make such nuclear progress in the first place and to further its domestic repression.The dirty little secret about Western diplomatic outreach is that Iranian repression increased alongside dialogue, largely because the regime’s security apparatus wanted to signal to its own population that airy promises of dialogue under Presidents Mohammad Khatami, Hassan Rouhani, and Masoud Pezeshkian were for export only.The silence of each, however, reflects their complicity.The reality is this: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has always been the problem. No amount of muddle-through reform or “dialogue of civilizations” addressed the problem that the Guard existed to protect the regime against not only external enemies but also Iran’s own people.Any strategy that did not fracture the Guard was doomed to fail. Regime change requires fracturing the Guard.This is not impossible because the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is not monolithic. Many Guardsmen are true believers, but more were just opportunists, in it for the money, access, or privilege.When the missiles and bombs began hitting, many of those Guardsmen who prioritized their own lives over the regime faded away.Both Israeli and American surveillance drones show Guardsmen refusing to launch drones and ballistic missiles, for example, because they know to do so would bring instant death.In such a situation, it is normal for the hardliners to be the last men standing. This was the case, for example, with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Pol Pot and his inner circle resisted far more than the rank-and-file.What needs to happen in Iran today is what happened in Cambodia: Those who wish for ideological reasons to fight to the death should have their wish granted.For Trump, this should mean not waiting for a unified proposal or falling victim to the regime’s usual good cop/bad cop games, but rather, targeting all the remaining hardliners without mercy.It is time to eradicate those who embrace the ideology of Ghalibaf, Vahidi, or Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr in Iran and Nouri al-Maliki and Hadi al-Ameri in Iraq.If the regime today is more radical than two months ago, then the conclusion is that everyone who remains in it should be a target.Germany had the Nuremberg Tribunal. Japan had the Tokyo trials. If Iranian regime leaders do not flee by a set deadline to a Russia exile, then it is time to start planning the Tehran Court, with Iran’s last public hangings being the Guardsmen who themselves sent so many to their gallows.The post Has the Iran war made its regime more radical? Yes, and easier to eliminate – opinion appeared first on World Israel News.