Originally published via Armageddon Prose:

As anyone who understands how these things unfold could have foreseen, the president over the weekend shifted the goalposts from knocking out Iranian nuclear facilities to explicitly calling for regime change:

"It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!"

The neoconservative theory of the case is that, now that the Iranian regime is up against the wall, either external or internal pressure or some combination thereof will finish the job, the regime will be replaced by some Western-friendly alternative (like the delusional belief that the Shah's failson could get reinstalled) or the country will be balkanized and befell by factional internal conflict (a la Syria), and utlimately regional peace will be secured.

None of this is likely to come to fruition without major, probably kinetic, pushback from both Russia and China.

For one thing, Iran is an indispensable stepping stone along the highly ambitious Belt and Road initiative designed to turn China from a major into a dominant commercial player on the world stage.