American experts think the regime in Tehran is teetering
Seymour Hersh Dec 10, 2025
I’ve been writing about Iran for decades. I’ve focused on its efforts to become a nuclear power, which the United States and Israel have found worrisome, to say the least. I was always aware that something bizarre was going on because every time I wrote about Iran for the New Yorker experts at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency invariably depicted the country as being no more than five years away from the bomb.
Last June a group of American B-2 bombers flew around the globe and struck the major nuclear-enrichment plant at Fordow, Iran’s most important weapons facility, with deep-penetrating bunker-buster bombs while other aircraft and Tomahawk missiles, launched from sea, hit other vital nuclear-related facilities throughout the nation. In a televised address, President Donald Trump told the nation that Iran’s nuclear sites were “completely and fully obliterated” and warned Iran not to carry out any retaliatory strikes: the leadership in Tehran had a choice between “peace or tragedy.”
There has been no significant Iranian retaliation since then, but the old cliché that you are where you sit is very much at play in US-Iranian relations today. The joint US-Israeli attacks went far beyond merely targeting known nuclear sites and caused enormous damage to military bases, government facilities, and military and civilian housing. There were numerous successful and attempted assassinations of key government officials as well as scientists linked to nuclear activity and other vital military and intelligence specialists. Some of the killings were carried out by Israeli agents who, I was told by an Israeli source, had been planted on the ground months or years earlier or smuggled across the border at the last minute.
I was told that one major Israeli plan—to bomb the Iranian parliament building and kill or injure all or most of the religious leaders at work there—was stopped due to US fears of unforeseen consequences.
In recent months Iranian opposition groups have reported an ongoing water-supply crisis throughout the nation as well as increasing inflation and diminishing air quality in Tehran and other major cities. Iran is still a major producer of oil, and international sanctions have led the government to offer heavy discounts. The religious government headed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei remains in control, but there have been published reports that many women, especially young women in Tehran and other major cities, are increasingly going out in public without head coverings, in direct violation of the regime’s dicta.
Some well-informed officials in Washington believe the Iranian leadership is confronted right now with an existential crisis.
- “Iran is about to have a revolution,” one experienced intelligence expert on the Middle East told me. He then listed the reasons:
- “Not enough water.
- Nothing to eat.
- No money.
- No public services, no buses . . . in the major cities.
- No organization—no one is in charge and the key military leadership is dead,”
- a reference to the success of Israel’s assassination program last summer...
