BOAO (China), March 24. /TASS/. The US-Israeli military operation against Iran is incapable of overthrowing the ruling regime in the Islamic Republic, Italian economist, ex-Undersecretary of State at the Italian Ministry of Economic Development Michele Geraci told TASS.

"The US will not be able to bring about regime change in Iran, where the majority are Shia; it is impossible. The regime there cannot be changed, because if a man dies, his son becomes the leader, as we have already seen, and if he dies too, another will appear - that is the whole point," he explained during the Boao Forum for Asia, which opened in the southern Chinese province of Hainan. "The United States will not succeed, because Iran has a system of power distribution and control that is very difficult to dismantle," the expert added.

Geraci noted that many Americans oppose military action by the US and Israel against Iran. He recalled that Joe Kent, the head of the Counterterrorism Center within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, recently resigned due to disagreements with the White House’s policy toward Tehran. "Because he believes that the United States is intervening under false pretenses. After all, Iran does not possess any nuclear weapons, which means Washington has nothing to worry about," the expert specified.

The professor explained that, instead of pursuing a nuclear program, Tehran could fund projects aimed at national development, which would help improve the well-being of the Islamic Republic’s population. "However, this would be completely unacceptable to the US, which is not actually concerned about nuclear bombs, as it knows that Iran does not have any," he emphasized. "The United States is concerned that Iran will be internally stable, that Iranian citizens will not fight against their own government because it is stronger [than the US authorities]," he continued. Geraci noted that the prosperity of this Middle Eastern country would represent the "worst-case scenario" for Israel.

The United States and Israel launched a military operation against Iran on February 28. Major Iranian cities, including Tehran, were struck. The White House justified the attack by citing alleged missile and nuclear threats from Iran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced a retaliatory operation, targeting sites in Israel. US military bases in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were also hit. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and some other key Iranian leaders were killed in the joint US-Israeli attack.