Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Brian Kilmeade, and Jesse Watters have suggested flooding Iran with small arms to incite regime change, a reckless proposal that even some of their guests have rejected.

The United States and Israel last week launched an unprovoked war on Iran with shifting stated goals, one of which is regime change — or, perhaps more accurately, regime collapse. That could take several forms, including a mass uprising of the population in Iran or possibly the introduction of proxy forces, such as Kurdish militias, whom the CIA is reportedly working to arm. (The United States has a decadeslong history of encouraging Kurds across several countries to rise up and then betraying them.)

The risks of such a development are numerous, the most obvious being the threat of sending Iran into a spiral of violence that could turn into a civil war like in Syria after the Arab Spring or Iraq during the U.S. occupation. The United States poured weapons into both of those countries, helping to fuel the violence and worsen the internal conflicts.

Although such an outcome would appear disastrous on its face, there is ample evidence that the United States and Israel want to turn Iran from a regional power into a failed state incapable of countering their influence. Flooding the country with weapons could do that, and Fox News personalities are leading the charge.

Host Sean Hannity is the network’s most vocal supporter of the idea, both on his Fox prime-time show and on his radio program, which airs on Premiere Radio Networks.

“I already know” that arming Iranians is “part of the plan,” Hannity said on his March 2 radio show, telling a caller that “if you have millions of Iranians that, in fact, do have weapons and they rise up against the remnants of this regime — and there's not a lot — or for those Revolutionary Guard forces that will not put their weapons down, there's only one way to get rid of them.” (Whether Hannity’s claim to “already know” President Donald Trump’s war plans was bluster or not, the administration has been leaking insider information to its allies in right-wing media.)

Hannity returned to the topic several times during that show. “The Iranian people need to have elections, and they need to get armed, and they need to be able to fight back” against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, he said. Later, he added, “I’m hoping that the students, the people in Iran, I’m hoping that they get the arms for any remaining Revolutionary Guard forces that won't lay down their weaponry.”

“You can't win a revolution with a slingshot — at some point they are going to need to be armed to take out the remaining loyalists,” he said the following day.

That evening, Hannity broached the idea on his Fox show during an interview with network contributor and retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, one of the war’s most vocal cheerleaders outside the Trump administration.

“Do we need to arm the civilians that had taken to the streets, that were being mowed down by the tens of thousands?” Hannity asked.

“In terms of arming the people themselves, I would pause on doing that,” Keane said. “I wouldn’t rush into that.” He added, “I don’t think just arming them and creating that — upgunning that level of violence is what we need.”

Seemingly unsatisfied with that answer, Hannity later in the same show asked retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, who oversaw the arming of U.S.-backed “death squads” in Iraq during the so-called surge, what he thought of the idea.

“Should part of the plan be to arm the people that have been slaughtered on the streets that were looking for freedom and change, so that it won’t take any American or Israeli forces?” Hannity asked. “I’ve got to believe there is going to be holdovers that are loyal to the former regime.”

“Well, I agree with my old boss and mentor and friend, Gen. Jack Keane, who earlier said that he’s not certain about that given there’s no organization there.”

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade has floated the idea too.

“I just wonder at some point is the CIA or Mossad going to be able to arm the people?” Kilmeade said on March 3. “If you arm the people so they're not slaughtered in the streets, that would begin to get the IRGC’s attention.”

“We've got to find a way to arm that population and open up these prisons,” Kilmeade said on March 4, referring to Kurds in Iran.

His colleague Jesse Watters made a similar suggestion.

“Trump has even been on the phone with the Kurds," Watters said on March 3. “We might be able to arm them and use them as boots on the ground.” (Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, formerly a co-host of Fox & Friends’ weekend edition, said on March 4 that “none of our objectives are premised on the support of the arming of any particular force.”)

The Trump administration has done such a poor job explaining its war on Iran that even right-wing media allies are having a hard time articulating the conflict’s larger strategy and goals. Predicting the direction any war will take is a fool’s errand, but it doesn’t take a crystal ball to know that flooding Iran with weapons is a recipe for disaster and potentially state collapse. For Fox News hosts, that appears to be an acceptable outcome.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters