The exhausted playbook: How the US and its Zionist ally have failed to destabilize Iran

By Mohd Azmi Abdul Hamid

For more than four decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been subjected to one of the most sustained and comprehensive campaigns of external pressure in modern history.

Economic warfare, military intimidation, covert operations, information manipulation, diplomatic isolation, and political delegitimisation have all been deployed with a single strategic objective: to weaken Iran internally and ultimately dismantle its sovereign political order.

That this objective has not been achieved is not a matter of chance. It is evidence that the destabilization playbook itself has reached its limits.

The US and its Zionist allies have exhausted nearly every known tool short of full scale invasion. What remains today is not strategy, but escalation driven by frustration and imperial decline.

The cornerstone of this all-out pressure campaign has been economic warfare. Sanctions imposed on Iran go far beyond targeted measures against state institutions or officials.

They are designed to suffocate the entire economy. By restricting oil exports, cutting access to global banking systems, penalising third parties, and obstructing trade, these sanctions aim to raise living costs, devalue currency, and erode public confidence.

Civilians are not collateral damage in this strategy. They are the leverage.

This approach constitutes collective punishment, prohibited under international law. Yet it has been normalised through euphemisms such as “maximum pressure” and “economic leverage.”

The intent has never been concealed. Sanctions were explicitly framed as tools to provoke internal unrest and force political collapse.

When hardship followed, it was cynically cited as evidence of state failure rather than the predictable result of external coercion. Alongside economic pressure, Iran has faced relentless military intimidation.

The country is encircled by foreign military bases. Its airspace and maritime routes are constantly tested. Sabotage operations, cyberattacks, and assassinations of scientific and military personnel have occurred repeatedly.

These acts constitute undeclared warfare, justified under the language of security and deterrence.

Unlike states previously subjected to “regime change” operations, Iran has not fractured under this pressure. Military intimidation has not produced submission. Instead, it has reinforced deterrence, strategic adaptation, and national cohesion.

This outcome contradicts the assumptions underlying coercive doctrine and explains the growing impatience in Western rhetoric.

Covert operations have been another pillar of the destabilization effort. Cyber warfare targeting infrastructure, industrial sabotage, espionage, and intelligence penetration have been pursued with persistence.

These actions are meant to erode capacity quietly, undermine confidence, and avoid direct confrontation. Yet even here, the results have been limited.

Iran has absorbed losses, rebuilt capabilities, and adjusted systems. The covert war has inflicted damage, but not collapse.

Information warfare has played an equally central role. Iran is subjected to a continuous narrative assault. Media framing emphasises unrest while erasing the impact of sanctions.

Protests are amplified without context. External pressure disappears from the story. Political grievances are internationalised and reframed as “regime illegitimacy” rather than social challenges aggravated by foreign interference and decades of unjust and crippling sanctions.

This narrative strategy seeks to delegitimise sovereignty itself. The state is portrayed as inherently dysfunctional, regardless of reality on the ground. Any sign of dissent is framed as an imminent collapse of the system. Any assertion of independence is labelled aggression.

Information warfare does not aim to inform. It aims to condition perception. Political delegitimisation has extended to the promotion of exile figures and nostalgic alternatives. External actors have repeatedly attempted to manufacture leadership options disconnected from Iranian society. Monarchist fantasies and foreign-backed opposition are presented as viable futures.

These actors lack domestic legitimacy and function primarily as instruments of external pressure rather than authentic political forces.

Regionally, Iran has been targeted through proxy wars and containment strategies. Allies and partners are pressured. Diplomatic isolation is pursued. The objective is to stretch resources and generate perpetual insecurity.

Rather than isolating Iran, this strategy has destabilised entire regions and entrenched cycles of conflict. Containment has produced chaos, not control.

Despite the intensity of this multi-layered campaign, the core objective has failed. Iran has not collapsed. Its political system remains intact. Its strategic posture endures. Its sovereignty remains a unifying principle across internal differences.

This resilience is rooted in several factors: strong institutions, historical memory of foreign intervention, a deeply embedded sense of independence, and a political culture that views resistance not as extremism, but as dignity.

External threats have consistently reinforced internal cohesion rather than eroding it. Pressure intended to fragment society has instead clarified red lines. Sovereignty, once challenged, becomes a rallying point.

What remains today is a dangerous phase. With traditional tools exhausted, rhetoric has grown more reckless. Open endorsement of unrest, public threats of force, and abandonment of diplomatic restraint signal a shift from calculated coercion to impulsive escalation.

This is not the behaviour of a confident power. It is the behaviour of an empire struggling to arrest decline.

The destabilisation of Iran must be understood within a broader global pattern. As the United States loses economic primacy, moral authority, and strategic monopoly, it increasingly relies on disruption to prevent alternatives from consolidating. Chaos becomes preferable to independence.

Destabilisation becomes a substitute for adaptation. This strategy, however, carries immense risk. It accelerates global polarisation, erodes trust in international law, and pushes more states toward alternative systems of cooperation. What is intended as dominance hastens isolation.

We assess that “regime change” in Iran through external coercion is unachievable. Continued destabilisation will not produce compliance. It will produce escalation, regional instability, and deeper fractures in the international system. The abandonment of legal consistency in pursuit of geopolitical objectives undermines the very order that powerful states claim to defend.

Iran’s future must be determined by its own people, free from sanctions, threats, and foreign manipulation. Dialogue cannot be coerced. Sovereignty cannot be negotiated under pressure. Destabilisation is not diplomacy.

The failure of the US-Zionist playbook against Iran exposes a deeper truth. Imperial power can inflict suffering, but it cannot indefinitely subdue a society that anchors its legitimacy in independence and dignity.

What is collapsing today is not Iran, but the credibility of a global order that privileges power over law.

History has shown repeatedly that empires do not fall because they are resisted. They fall because they refuse to change.

Mohd Azmi Abdul Hamid is the head of Malaysian Consultative Council of Islamic Organisation.