There’s a raging debate on the right about whether the Trump Administration should back regime change in Iran or not. After holding off on killing Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (reportedly at Trump’s behest), Israel seems quite open to taking him out along with any remnants of the rest of the regime. Some figures on the right (Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens being two, though each have being moving, at various speeds, to the right’s fringes for a while now) are absolutely dead-set against regime change in Iran.
Over all of this, of course, hangs the specter of the Iraq War(s), in which the United States expended trillions of dollars and thousands of soldiers lives in order to gain very little (deposing Saddam and sorta, kinda, stabilizing post-Saddam Iraq). And for all this we got to endure three decades of heightened terrorist attacks due to having U.S. troops in “the land of the two mosques.” So it’s understandable that Americans would want to avoid another long slog of nation-building in a failed Middle East state to prevent it from becoming a haven for transnational Islamic terrorism.
Understandable, but not applicable to Iran, for the most basic of reasons. Iraq was an Arab state with Sunni minority leaders ruling over a restive Shiite minority. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a Persian nation currently ruled over by a Shiite theocratic dictatorship that is already one of the region’s main (if not the main) financial supporters of terrorism. There’s no danger of an Arab Sunni terrorist group like the Islamic State taking hold, because the population of Sunni Arabs in Iran is too small for such an insurgency to take hold. And there’s no nation in the Middle East that seems likely to pick up the mantle of funding Shiite fundamentalism in the region. (Qatar’s ruling family is Sunni, as is the overwhelming majority of Pakistan.) Ali Khamenei is the head of the snake, and when his regime dies, the snake dies as well.
If Israel can finish off Khamenei’s regime, what follows it will not be something worse, or even a failed state like Somalia. There is every sign that ordinary Iranians are weary to death of being under the heel of the Mullahs, and what will follow more likely to be more secular and western-oriented state than what is there now (which is, to be sure, a very low bar.) And though Iran is somewhat multi-ethnic, the minorities there (primarily Kurds and various Turkish ethnicities) are too small compared to the ethnic Persian majority to seriously contend for control of the Iranian state. (The Kurds could, in theory, launch a bid for independence (or, like in Iraq and Syria, quasi-independence), but without U.S. support are unlikely to make much headway. Their best play may be to negotiate broad autonomy with any new government.)
Could there be a civil war power struggle to rule post-theocratic Iran? Possibly. Still a better outcome for us than a theocratic, terrorist-supporting Islamic state with nuclear weapons. Ditto a military dictatorship, as long as they allowed an end to the nuclear weapons program. Ditto any number of other possible political outcomes, from a modern, secular democratic state to a (deeply unlikely) restoration of the Pahlavi monarchy. All are almost certainly improvements over the fanatical, institutional hostility to the west shown by the mullahs. (Not to mention the fanatical, institutional hostility to Israel. Historically, Persians and Jews have gotten along well, both being outsiders to the Turks and Arabs running the Ottoman Empire.)
There’s no reason to fear a post-theocratic Iran because we won’t be the one having to do nation-building or pick up the pieces.
Getting rid of a government than ritually chants “Death to America” and funds terrorists that have killed numerous Americans throughout the life of the regime must be considered a desirable outcome. The Abraham Accords indicated that a number of Sunni Arab states are abandoning their institutional hostility to Israel and the west, and toppling the mullahs will dry up funds for Shiite terrorism across the world as well. The result will not automatically make the Middle East peaceful and prosperous, but will probably calm things down enough to measurably move the region a bit closer to those admittedly very distant goals.
Tags: Ali Khamenei, Iran, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Kurds, Military, nuclear weapons, Shiites, Sunni, terrorism
“There’s no reason to fear a post-theocratic Iran because we won’t be the one having to do nation-building or pick up the pieces.”
I’ve heard that before.
NY Post this afternoon, in their lead article:
“Trump’s fear of Iran becoming ‘another Libya’ stalls decision on nuke site strikes for two weeks: sources”
“President Trump’s wariness over bombing Iran is due in part to concerns about creating “another Libya” if Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is toppled, administration insiders told The Post — as Trump shelves his decision for up to two weeks.”
“The president in recent days has specifically mentioned the oil-rich North African country’s decade-long plunge into anarchy in 2011 — after the US joined a NATO bombing campaign to oust dictator Muammar Gaddafi — three sources close to the administration said.”
Best case (for the West) would be for the restoration of the Shah, Reza Pahlavi as a constitutional monarch. Not as a complete figurehead, but with enough powers to prevent the government from going off into the weeds. He could play the same role restoring a representative government to Iran as King Carlos did in Spain following his restoration after Franco’s death.
That outcome is as likely as finding the end of the rainbow, I fear. Still, it offers advantages. Iran has more in common culturally with Europe than with the Arab world, so representative government isn’t a cultural impossibility. And maybe, just like Europe at the end of the Thirty Years War, the Persians are simply tired of religious wars.
My understanding is that since 1979 the mullahs have instituted mass-indoctrination for the military to become Shiia fanatics. I have read that any officer (from lieutenant on up) must show devotion to the concept of eliminating Israel and all Jews on the planet.
That’s going to be a tough row to hoe for any secular leadership to revamp. Without control of the military and police forces they may exercise titular control, but not actual physical control. They’ll be overturned as soon as the Republican Guards can go subterranean, organize, and stage a coup.
I just don’t see any US involvement turning out well.
[…] Don’t Fear Regime Change. “Could there be a civil war power struggle to rule post-theocratic Iran? Possibly. Still a […]
“There’s no reason to fear a post-theocratic Iran because we won’t be the one having to do nation-building or pick up the pieces.”
Who will do it then?
Because the notion that this will go smoothly just because the majority are Shia seems utter nonsense (would the Iraq Shia militias who hate us enter to try and seize power?)
Finally, a sensible comment on this bogey man. I agree completely with Lawrence on this. Israel’s intervention gives them the opportunity to weaken the stranglehold of the IRGC and the Basij. As I’ve posted elsewhere: I remember November 1989. No one (except Reagan) thought something like that could happen peacefully, especially in East Germany. It couldn’t happen—until it did. Remember the film of The Incredible Lightness of Being? The secret police ended up jiggling their key chains like everyone else in the crowd.
Israel funded Hamas to the tune of one billion dollars.
By that fact alone, Israel financially supports terrorists.
So, the only ” theocratic, terrorist-supporting state with nuclear weapons” is Israel.
By OP’s logic, we should overthrow the government of Israel.
A lot of Jews would be very supportive of eliminating Israel from the world. Anti-Zionism is a perfectly reasonable (and for most of the 20th century majority Jewish) view of the situation.
I picked up on exactly the same phrase in your piece, “we won’t be the ones having to do nation-building or pick up the pieces.” You have a lot more confidence in your powers of prognostication than I do. No one will miss dead mullahs, but there are several hundred thousand revolutionary guards and militia thugs with a vested interest in the existing order, where they are at the top of the food chain. In a chaotic collapsed state, I would put my money on a well-armed warlord coming to power if it doesn’t degenerate like Libya into competing warlords. And there is absolutely no reason to think any successor would be friendly to the West even if they’re less religiously fanatical and less obsessed with hating Israel. With all the nuclear expertise and accumulated enriched uranium, they would be well advised to get a nuke as soon as possible. If rogues learned anything from Qaddafi, it’s get a nuke and never trust the U.S. if you don’t want to end with a bayonet up your ass.
“My understanding is that since 1979 the mullahs have instituted mass-indoctrination for the military to become Shiia fanatics. I have read that any officer (from lieutenant on up) must show devotion to the concept of eliminating Israel and all Jews on the planet.”
This may well be true, but the thing about any ideology is that when you make its profession compulsory in order to advance up the ranks, you’re going to get a lot more lip-service platitude-mouthing box-checkers than you will True Believers; that’s just human nature. Even among the sincere hardliners, a significant fraction will likely be more interested in preserving what they can of their own power than in throwing away everything for the greater glory of Allah.
While there no doubt will be enough core fanatics among the IRGC to go underground and start organizing to regain power, it seems a quite plausible bet to me that there won’t be as many of them as we fear and they expect. (That said, it’s a lot easier to talk about the plausibility of a bet when, as a Canadian, I’m unlikely to be ponying up the stakes for it.)
compared to Afghanistan our failures in Iraq now look heroically successful
a lot of problems but still holding elections instead of raining missiles on Tel Aviv right now
and Syria’s new regime looks surprisingly moderate, enough so for Trump to lift sanctions
take the theocrats out of the equation and the Mideast might actually be peaceful for a minute or two
“but there are several hundred thousand revolutionary guards and militia thugs with a vested interest in the existing order, where they are at the top of the food chain.”
maybe, we’ll see how loyal they are when the oil money dries up
a few more oil terminal hits and the food chain is going to start at the aid trucks
I didn’t say it would go smoothly, I said it would be an improvement because the current regime is already one of the biggest funders of transnational Islamic terrorism, and because the populace is naturally hostile to existing Sunni transnational terrorist networks like the Islamic State. Even if a radical Shiite faction came out on topic, it would likely start from a much, much weaker position than the Islamic Republic of Iran started from before Israel blew up their military assets.
fwiw the NCRI has been around a long time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Council_of_Resistance_of_Iran
if enough of the regular army deserts or defects, there might be sufficient local Iranian revolutionary support to coordinate air support, mullahs can’t run the country from bunkers
but there are quite a number of competing revolutionary groups with varying agendas and Israel probably can’t pull that off alone
and then of course there are the 10M Kurds whose nationalist factions are doubtless already plotting how to turn this mess into Kurdish statehood
There will be unintended results. There always is.
No boots on the ground. Limit the military activity. Iran is a self-profesesed enemy of the US.
Let Israel do the dirty work as they are at an existential risk from Iran.
“Iran has more in common culturally with Europe than with the Arab world.”
The Crown Prince, rather than assuming the throne could serve in a different capacity as a Minister of Culture. This role would allow him to redefine the religious and social realm in terms of Iranian/ Persian values. How will houses of worship.be governed and financed? What will the university curriculum look like? Who will be eligible to teach?
Assuming the establishment of a Republic, the Minister of Culture proposes judicial nominations to the Legislature. This ought to put a firm stop to sharia law.
Between the re-establishment of non-Islamic religious institutions, non-Arabic learning centers and a judiciary independent of and superior to sharia law, Iran will be able to recover its national character and function once more as a free and independent state.
” we won’t be the one having to do nation-building or pick up the pieces”
Hahahaha!
“A lot of Jews would be very supportive of eliminating Israel from the world.”
A lot of Arabs embrace the same program. Yet we see Netanyahu, outnumbered 12-to-1, prevailing against a militantly hostile theocratic warlord. The IDF has largely smashed through Iran’s Ring of Fire to attack Iran on its own territory.
Israel has emerged as the dominant military force in the Middle East., “a lot of Jews” Gentiles and Arabs notwithstanding. When considering why this is, remember that Haman was equally supportive of “eliminating Israel from the world”.
Haman became crow bait and Israel celebrates Purim.