Posted on 06/23/2025 10:02:32 AM PDT by Kazan
Escalating our war with Iran by pursuing regime change and nation-building would be a colossal mistake.
Now that President Donald Trump has decided to bring the United State into the Iran-Israel war by striking Tehran’s major nuclear facilities, our goal should be to ensure Iran remains a non-nuclear power that’s unable to threaten the United States or its allies anywhere in the world.
What that goal doesn’t require, however, is a regime-change war with the aim of toppling the ayatollahs and imposing democracy in Iran. The American interest is not served by toppling regimes and nation-building — especially not in the Middle East. Whatever the wisdom of striking Iran’s nuclear facilities at this particular time, on the heels of Israeli strikes on Iran, President Trump’s aim now should be to limit escalation and avoid plunging the U.S. into a years-long quagmire in Iran.
Unfortunately, many people in Washington were hoping that Trump would strike Iran precisely because it might make room for the kind of escalation that would lead to a regime-change war. We still don’t know what Iran’s response will be to these strikes, and it might well lead to unavoidable escalation on our part. But that escalation should serve the purpose of rendering Iran harmless — not free, or democratic, or even stable. The internal politics of Iran are of no concern to us.
One hopes the president understands that, even as he acts to ensure that Iran cannot acquire nuclear weapons or carry out a major retaliatory attack on the U.S. Initially, there was reason to think he did understand. “Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror,” Trump said Saturday night from the White House.
But on Sunday, Trump posted a disturbing comment about how it’s not politically correct to use the term “regime change,” “but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”
This is precisely the wrong view to take on Iran. The American interest in Iran is straightforward and strictly limited: that it should not be hostile to the United States. It can remain a repressive autocracy ruled by Islamic radicals — so long as they represent no threat to America. Whether the current Iranian regime is able to “make Iran great again” (whatever that means) is of no consequence to Americans. We don’t care whether Iran is great, middling, or riven by internal strife. All that matters for us is that Iran is not a threat. Here’s hoping President Trump has people close to him right now emphasizing that point.
Of course, that’s not to say Trump can completely stand down at this point. Having entered the war, the U.S. has changed it. Trump’s long-stated, legitimate goal is to prevent Tehran from acquiring nukes. Even the most isolationist MAGA supporters should embrace that goal. Indeed, the mountain facility at Fordow should have been destroyed by the U.S. when it was first discovered in 2009 (instead, Obama cooked up a deal that ensured Iran would eventually have nukes).
But the reality now is that these strikes are probably not the beginning and end of U.S. involvement in the Iran conflict. Trump said Saturday night that now Iran “must make peace,” and, “If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.” Whether future attacks will be easier remains to be seen, but in the near term there are practical and strategic matters that the president and his advisors will have to address.
Chief among them is to ensure the Strait of Hormuz remains open. About a third of the world’s LNG and a quarter of global oil consumption passes through the strait, which makes it a ripe target for possible retaliation by Tehran. Iran has previously threatened to close the strait in response to a U.S. or Israeli attack, and indeed Iran’s parliament reportedly voted to close the strait on Sunday, although the final decision lies with the Supreme National Security Council. If Tehran does move to close the strait, it will require American air and naval power to keep it open.
Even then, however, U.S. military action to keep the Strait of Hormuz open need not escalate to the regime-change war. The historical model — to the extent there’s a good one for the current scenario — is Operation Praying Mantis in April 1988, when the United States destroyed much of Iran’s navy in a series of limited engagements by U.S. warships and aircraft from the carrier USS Enterprise.
The operation was retaliation for Iran mining the Persian Gulf and nearly sinking a U.S. guided missile frigate, which had been escorting oil tankers as part of Operation Earnest Will, protecting them from Iranian attacks during the Iran-Iraq War. What ensued was the largest U.S. naval engagement since World War Two. The operation destroyed an Iranian oil platform, badly damaged another, sunk or crippled three warships and several gunboats.
After U.S. forces sank an Iranian frigate and badly crippled another, they were ordered to assume a de-escalatory posture to give Iran an off-ramp — which it took. Later that summer, thanks in part to the losses it suffered in Operation Praying Mantis, Iran agreed to a ceasefire with Iraq, ending the eight-year war.
The engagement stands as an example of how to deal with a hostile Iran without escalating into a wider regional war or toppling the Iranian regime. The idea that every war or military engagement has to end with the creation of a democratic regime friendly to the U.S. is a dangerous fantasy that has gripped Washington for a generation.
Iran hawks will reply by insisting that every war isn’t Iraq in 2003, which is true in a narrow sense. But Trump’s approach to American arms has been the exception, not the rule, over the past quarter-century. When he ordered a drone strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, without pursuing any further escalation, it represented a departure from how American military force had been used abroad since 9/11 and the Global War on Terror.
By taking out Solemani and leaving it at that, Trump was practicing a form of Jacksonian foreign policy that prioritizes and aggressively defends American interests, rather than the ideological priorities of neoconservative nation-building that had dominated American foreign affairs for nearly two decades.
That’s the approach we need now in the Middle East. The pressure on Trump to escalate from the intelligence agencies in particular will be intense. And there’s good reason not to trust those agencies. As Rachel Campos Duffy noted Sunday, the intelligence apparatus in place now is the same one that insisted there were WMDs in Iraq, that cooked up the Russia collusion hoax, that lied about Hunter Biden’s laptop. And we know from the first Trump administration that these agencies are willing to withhold or distort information to undermine Trump and advance their own agenda.
The danger we face now, then, is twofold: not just retaliation from Iran and its terrorist proxies, but machinations by establishment neocons and our corrupt intelligence apparatus to embroil us in a regime-change war in the Middle East. If Trump wants truly to embrace a Jacksonian foreign policy and advance his America First agenda at home, he’ll resist that temptation.
If he does, then we’ll hear no more talk of regime change or “making Iran great again,” which has nothing to do with America. There’s a reason that talk of regime change is politically toxic on the right, and Trump would do well to remember why that is.
It’s a contradiction. Unless you get regime change, the war (and presumably, Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program) will simply continue
They say the smoother the parking lot, the safer it is to park
The US, Israel and Saudi Arabia all have the military means to destroy Iran's mullah regime, through air attacks on its Karg Island oil export port. 90-95% of Iran's oil exports go out of there. We could do it with a blarf! of 1.5 - 2 Tomahawk loads (@ 200 Tomahawks) from the Ohio-Michigan-Florida-George class of cruise missile submarines without risking any pilots.
No oil income for the mullah regime means no pay for its regime protection forces, who'd have to find other jobs. The Iranian people will then string up the mullah regime on lamposts. That is regime change.
Sure Iran would be a mess afterwards. The only threat to us there would be of loose nuclear weapons, which the Israelis have pretty well already taken care of. But we've had trained and always ready-to-go special operations teams for years targeted for insertion into a post-mullah regime chaotic Iran to look for, find and nab any remaining loose Iranian nukes. And they'd all get out once they find the nukes.
Plus there are probably 500+ Mossad personnel there right now ready for the same mission. So any danger of loose Iranian nukes after forced regime change is probably as low as it can go, and no extended stay by US ground forces would be necessary.
Iran prospered under the royal reign of the Shah while maintaining a strong presence in the Middle East. While US protest sign read No Kings, I would expect Iran’s back to the future revolution to kick off with protest signs reading “More Kings, Please”
LOL, Making Iran safe for Democracy.
That’s like Making Democrats avoid hypocrisy.
Well there’s Democracy and then there are democracies of various flavors. In this case, a return of the Shah might need to savor of early Pinochet.
Just kill all the mullahs and those ICRG savages, break all their toys, and walk away.
Not one dime of government aid.
L
The culture police(Guidance Patrol) will have to be dealt with. They bought into the bs and any new government will have to decide what to do with them. They should not be allowed to disburse and blend into the population. There are thousands of them, mostly in the cities.
Why? They have no tradition of democracy, representation by the people, etc. Whether the reason is religious, historical, cultural or whatever, they won't or can't embrace individual rights and freedoms.
In six months it would return to tyranny of some kind. The best we can hope for would be a despot like Pahlavi --- one who's not actively belligerent, at least.
Let me repeat that for emphasis...
I'm been asking how did these parliamentarians get to hold that office?
Either they were all hand-picked by the old dude with the towel on the head, or they were perhaps - elected (dare I say?).
Seems no one is able to answer that question...
... or give accurate damage assessments in Israel.
...or why stealth was needed even though our ally reported they had total control of the skies
Sorry for speaking out of turn, I'll shut up now and go back to just working to pay taxes to 'protect democracy'.
just my $0.02.
jimjohn
Iran has shot missiles recently at most people in the area.
This does need to stop.
And they need to stop making war on their neighbors by proxies.
That probably will not happen but the missiles raining down on their neighbors can be stopped.
Are you suggesting we put troops on the ground, foment a regime and nation build?
“nation-building that had dominated American foreign affairs for nearly two decades.”
Obviously, John Davidson is a young punk that knows nothing of modern history.
Yeah, but I am not for painting the lines. Just pave it and let anarchy reign!
We've tried regime changes for decades in the middle east and have never killed or bombed our way into a Western friendly democracy.
The definition of insanity is going the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
And, let's set up another 9/11!
We can't kill or bomb our way into a Western-friendly democracy in a Muslim nation.
It's waste of money and, more importantly, a waste of political capital for Trump, who has a mandate to implement his domestic agenda.
How did regime change work in Iraq and Afghanistan?
When has it every worked in a Muslim nation?
The definition of insanity is doing the same over and over again and expecting a different result.
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