President Donald Trump began the war with Iran to end the Islamic Republic, which rules that country. Rightly, however, Trump is no longer pursuing that grand objective. Instead, the president is using force to pressure Iran to return to the negotiating table in good faith.
This reduced ambition is sensible. But it does not mean that the nature of the Iranian regime has changed. Indeed, under an ascendant class of ultra-hardliners associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, more moderate voices in the regime (extreme as they themselves are) appear to have lost influence. In short, Iran will remain a dedicated American enemy.
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Seeking to dominate the Middle East, eradicate Israel, and destabilize Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the Sunni-Arab monarchies, Iran’s agenda is structurally opposed to that of the United States. That opposition has seen Iran pursue decades of terrorism against the U.S., shedding the blood of many hundreds of Americans. Two historic records help illuminate Iran’s deep anti-American malevolence.
One is David Finkel’s grotesque description of what an Iranian-enabled explosively formed penetrator attack did to U.S. Army Specialist Joshua Reeves in 2007 Iraq. Many thousands of others suffered as Reeves did, many saved only by the courage of their comrades and the skill of military surgeons. Another example comes from Beirut CIA station chief William Buckley. Kidnapped under Iranian auspices by the Lebanese Hezbollah in 1984, Buckley was tortured over many months. Gordon Thomas reports on a video that Hezbollah sent to the CIA: “Buckley was close to a gibbering wretch. His words were often incoherent. He slobbered and drooled and, most unnerving of all, he would suddenly scream in terror, his eyes rolling helplessly and his body shaking.”
My contention, then, is not that Iran is not a moral enemy; it is. Instead, I believe Trump has correctly realized that the obvious benefits of ending this despicable regime are significantly outweighed by the costs and risks that doing so would require.
The major concern here is that the Iranian regime has proven itself to hold a far stronger grip on power than had been hoped for. Even amid the heavy destruction of its leadership and military, the regime has remained resolute. No significant or even minimal resistance movement has risen to challenge the regime. And while Iran’s economy has been utterly crippled by the war and renewed U.S. Navy blockade, the regime has retained the support of the conventional armed forces and security forces. To change this dynamic, the U.S. military assesses that many months more of air strikes would be required. Air defense munition expenditures, already highly problematic in the context of Chinese war contingencies, would also worsen further. And at least a few thousand ground forces would also be required.
Some commentators argue that the U.S. can strangle the regime by destroying its energy facilities and Iran’s domestic infrastructure. The problem is that these strategies would far more likely cause state collapse rather than the displacement of the Iranian regime. Destroying this infrastructure would cause great harm to the regime but also to the Iranian people. That might be worth it were there a good prospect of the regime falling and an improved government replacing it in short order. But that just isn’t the case.
The people are imprisoned by their regime without effective mobilization or means of resistance. The U.S. could provide relevant support, but victory would likely take years, massive effort, and investment, and, as in the CIA effort to arm anti-Assad rebels in Syria, would involve highly uncertain outcomes. And again, the regime would still have millions of armed fighters and the deep expertise of terrorism to battle out the civil war. But amid such state failure, we would see soaring rates of starvation, disease, and refugee flows among Iran’s 90 million-strong population. We would see fanatical splinter groups pursuing utterly unrestrained violence. And we would absolutely see the U.S. being forced to dedicate ever-increasing military and economic resources to mitigate these challenges and boost a (almost certainly divided) resistance.
It’s understandable why Israel supports this choice of escalation against its nemesis. Israel believes a civil war would distract the regime and reduce its ability to threaten the Jewish state. It also believes that the regime would eventually fall. But Israel’s choice is an easier one because, as it well knows, the U.S. would bear the outsize burden of securing a positive outcome.
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As Trump has now recognized, the probable costs for the U.S. of persisting in the pursuit of regime change are grave. Even in the very best-case scenario, it would further deplete the already gravely degraded U.S. priority interest of deterring China. Considering Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping’s salivating gaze over Taiwan and what China is doing near daily to U.S. treaty ally the Philippines, this is no small concern.
Hence why Trump is using military force against Iran for a narrower objective: to persuade the Iranians that they can either cut a deal they can live with, or they can face continuing punitive destruction of a kind they can endure, but only with great and escalating pain. Trump knows that just as state failure would harm U.S. interests, it would also obviously harm regime interests. Which is why he believes his calibrated military pressure will ultimately see Iran cut a deal.
