Or so says a “senior U.S. intelligence official” to the Washington Post:

In addition to influencing Iranian leaders directly, the official said, “another option here is that [sanctions] will create hate and discontent at the street level so that the Iranian leaders realize that they need to change their ways.”

Later on in the same article other unnamed officials hedge slightly:

A senior administration official, speaking separately, acknowledged that public discontent was a likely result of more punitive sanctions against Iran’s already faltering economy, but said that is not the direct intent.

“We have a policy that is rooted in the notion that you need to supply sufficient pressure to compel [the government] to change behavior as it’s related to their nuclear program,” this official said.

“The question is whether people in the government feel pressure from the fact that there’s public discontent,” the official said, “versus whether the sanctions themselves are intended to collapse the regime.”

A Western diplomat familiar with the policy said that it was “introducing in the cost-benefit analysis a new parameter in the calculus” of the Iranian government. “To the extent we have done that, it is not because we want to collapse the government. It is because we want the Iranian government to understand that is a possible cost in continuing the way it is,” the diplomat said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the intent of the policy.

So regime change is not the goal, but it might be a consequence of the failure of the Iranian regime to change their alleged goal of acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Like many people with sense in their heads, you might be wondering whether the possibility exists that ratcheting up sanctions might push both Iran and the United States into hostilities with each other. After all, coerced regime change can be regarded as an overtly hostile act, and the Iranian government might take measures to defend itself. Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution has some concerns as well:

The Obama administration’s new sanctions signal the demise of the paradigm that had guided U.S. Iran policymaking since the 1979 revolution: the combination of pressure and persuasion. Moreover, the decision to outlaw contact with Iran’s central bank puts the United States’ tactics and its long-standing objective — a negotiated end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions — fundamentally at odds. Indeed, the United States cannot hope to bargain with a country whose economy it is trying to disrupt and destroy. As severe sanctions devastate Iran’s economy, Tehran will surely be encouraged to double down on its quest for the ultimate deterrent. So, the White House’s embrace of open-ended pressure means that it has backed itself into a policy of regime change, something Washington has little ability to influence.

She points out fundamental flaws in the tightening sanctions approach:

Skyrocketing income from oil sales over the last decade has been a welcome anomaly for Iran’s revolutionaries, but it is hardly certain that constricting that spigot will doom the regime, much less force it to capitulate on the nuclear issue. Tehran remains confident in its ability to adopt austerity as needed. In fact, blaming an international bogeyman will offer convenient cover for the regime’s own economic mismanagement.

The Obama administration has argued that “pressure works,” pointing to past reversals by the Islamic Republic, including the grudging and belated acceptance of a cease-fire to end its eight-year war with Iraq. Yet this formula disregards two critical points: first, Tehran has been under tremendous pressure to change its security policy throughout its entire post-revolutionary history, yet that policy has proved remarkably durable. Second, Iran’s major concessions have come not simply as a product of pressure but because of the declining utility of the original objective. In this instance, however, the tables are turned. The more Washington corners Tehran, the higher the value of a nuclear deterrent becomes in the eyes of the leadership.

She goes on to explain that the new approach does not necessarily mean that hostilities are inevitable; we are backing away from our military commitments in the Middle East, and Afghanistan is on the horizon (whatever the result of the seemingly unending negotiations with the Taliban turns out to be.) There is no real appetite for open conflict with Iran, certainly not in public opinion, and probably not anywhere else except among the most hawkish of our political elite.  This strategy however backs our government into a corner; we have effectively stated that Iran must abandon their nuclear weapons program for us to end our coercive efforts, and that’s a position that it’s very difficult to imagine our government stepping away from. Accepting for a moment that sanctions as an effort to coerce regime change or force Iran to abandon their nuclear weapon are doomed to fail (and they are) where does this leave us? What measure do we take when those sanctions fail, and we have demonstrable intelligence that Iran continues or is accelerating their nuclear weapons program? Worse yet, what if the Iranian government after time regards those sanctions as a threat to their survival? What measures might they be willing to take to punish us in return? What if Israel decides to take matters into their own hands, and we’re dragged into conflict as their allies?

Unfortunately, somewhere along the line our policy makers decided (without bothering to inform us of course) that a nuclear-armed Iran is completely unacceptable. Now they appear to have persuaded themselves that the most favorable outcome of a sanctions program is also the most likely outcome.  If this sounds like a familiar recipe disaster, it’s only because you’ve heard it all before.

Update: The Post has corrected the article to “clarify” the remarks of the unnamed official. Robert Wright explains why that’s probably a distinction without a difference. If you have adopted a policy of punitive sanctions for which there is no reprieve until the target nation abandons it’s unfavored behavior, and you admit that one of the goals of those sanctions is to direct public hostility toward the target nation’s government, you have implicitly adopted a goal of regime change (even if such change has almost zero chance of taking place.)