As the world grapples with the death of Iran’s supreme leader, and as airstrikes continue, the trajectory of the war and, most importantly, whether Iran will survive the fall of its leader are questions of the hour. Iran’s endurance is worth scrutiny as they remain exposed, but it is also worth asking what exactly the US can achieve. If regime change is the goal, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei alone doesn’t achieve it. US President Donald Trump, however, seems to be pursuing it. In a brief telephone interview with The New York Times on Sunday, Trump offered three contradicting visions of the outcomes he hoped for in the war he launched on Iran.

One of the options he reportedly suggested was a blueprint of what he did in Venezuela, where the top leader was removed but the rest of the government remained intact, and more willing to work with the US administration. But that is difficult to emulate in Iran. The governance structure is far more complicated. The office of the supreme leader is heavily monitored, controlled by a complex network of institutions, created with the intention of preserving the resilience of the Islamic republic, rather than one person in power. The whole regime is built deliberately to remain in power, even if the leader falls.

Iran’s constitution explicitly anticipates sudden leadership loss. It is a regime of strongmen, not an authoritarian regime dependent on one strongman. Article 111 stipulates that if the supreme leader dies or is unable to perform the duties, authority transfers immediately to an interim council composed of the president. On Sunday, Iran formed a provisional leadership council with President Masoud Pezeshkian and Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, head of the judiciary, as key members. There exists no deadline for picking a successor to Khamenei. During war, an interim leadership council can lead the nation for a long period.

The government is also protected by the army, Artesh, and the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) which constitutionally exist to serve the regime. Arguably, both are weakened after the strikes, but the IRGC’s main goal has always been to fortress the structure of the regime, rather than certain leaders and commanders. Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have to infiltrate the entire system of the IRGC for the regime to change. Only in the case that the US killed the current assembly members including the president, the top branch of the IRGC, and infiltrated the middle would it be possible to find a form of an Iranian government that would be willing to work with the US, like in Venezuela.

Trump also told The New York Times that he had “three very good choices” for new leadership in Iran. “I won’t be revealing them now. Let’s get the job done first,” he said. Trump also told The Atlantic that he was open to talking to Iranian leaders. There is a possibility that Trump may have made deals with leaders like the US-backed Reza Pahlavi, or infiltrated other leaders in the Iranian regime. What can be gauged from his vision, though, is that the US does want a puppet government in Iran—one that it can control. The airstrikes should be viewed with a clear US aim for regime change.

But till now, the Iranian president and national security officials have only shared hostile language towards the US, and vowed to avenge Khamenei’s death. It is especially hard to imagine a candidate who would be willing to make concessions to Israel, if that is a goal for Trump. But Trump dangled a carrot of lifting sanctions on Iran if the new leadership would pragmatically work with him.

During the 12-Day War last year, Khamenei went into hiding where he named three possible successors: Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i; Ali Asghar Hejazi, Khamenei’s chief of staff; and Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. It is unlikely that Khamenei’s choice aligns with Trump’s, and it is likely that the Islamic republic jurists’ picks would align with Khamenei, especially after his death.

The concept of Trump picking three leaders is again predicated on the collapse of the entire regime itself, so he has to achieve parts of his first vision to achieve the second. But the unthinkable is not impossible, especially as the Gulf states have also pledged to defend themselves against Iranian attacks and essentially form an anti-Iran coalition.

Trump’s final hope for Iran is to see the elite military forces, including officers of the IRGC, turn over their weapons to the Iranian populace. As in the 2000 Serbian Bulldozer Revolution, the US president’s hope hinges on the idea that Iran’s security forces would stand back—the same security forces that have murdered citizens during protests.

Since Khamenei’s death, analysts have warned of the opposite of Trump’s vision: the creation of a “garrison state,” where the military would be more emboldened to dominate social, political and economic life. That sort of military rule in Iran would prove even more ruthless for the public, who already live in a nation where security forces know fewer red lines than they know bloodshed.

The two-tiered military structure of Iran, along with the Basij, a volunteer militia, supporting their efforts to crush protests, makes it harder for the whole system to execute a US-backed coup of sorts. So far, the regime has reacted promptly with full support of the IRGC, so on a surface level, Khamenei’s death has not hurt the regime enough to surrender to public protesters. The public itself remains divided; foreign intervention often gives rise to widespread nationalist sentiments. And foreign intervention in internal politics, where the US president already has picks for Iranian leaders, is not exactly the sign of a democratic revolution.

But a long war, with casualties rising in Tehran, could mount public pressure against the regime. The outcome of that would likely be a civil war, in which case the US or Israel would have to provide assistance to the dissenters against the Iranian local strongmen, their forces, and maybe even their proxies. Is the Pentagon and US prepared to deal with the geopolitical engineering that is required to pull off an Iranian regime change?