The great theme of international affairs in the 21st century (so far) has been America’s failure to appreciate the implacable, ideological hostility of Russia, China, and Iran to the American-led world order. The “Russia reset” was laughable in retrospect, China’s admittance to the WTO, among other forms of international integration, did not moderate the CCP, and the JCPOA was never going to stop Iran from developing a nuke or otherwise being a sower of chaos across the Near East.
The common thread across different theaters has been an inability to recognize and appreciate the distinctly non-Western, non-liberal values according to which our adversaries operate. That Iran’s theocratic regime desires not peace with the West but perpetual conflict to legitimize itself should always have precluded the possibility of a nuclear deal except under the most stringent conditions. The Iranian regime’s unique combination of apocalyptic Shi’a theocracy, postcolonial Marxist anti-imperialism, and fascist-style authoritarianism necessitates a constant struggle against the Great Satan (America) and the Little Satan (Israel). Though many Westerners believe peace to be possible because governments such as Iran’s, despite violent rhetoric, must ultimately be concerned with matters like public health and economic growth, this epicly misses that the Islamic regime’s interests are far removed from that of the general population because the mullahs’ raison d’être is conflict with a decadent, capitalist, liberal-democratic West.
Bearing in mind that the mullahs’ aversion to normalized relations with America and Israel is structural rather than incidental, the United States faces a set of unpalatable options when it comes to Iran’s nuclear ambitions: (1) full-scale regime change that could entail the deployment of Americans to Iran, (2) attempts at another détente, likely to reproduce the present crisis in a few years, or (3) a policy of maximum pressure and, if necessary, targeted strikes to delay Iran’s acquisition of the bomb indefinitely. Only the third option is viable, yet it demands endurance for long-term, low-intensity conflict that the American public has never possessed.
Beginning with the first option, American-sponsored full-scale regime change seems fantastical at the moment, though such wishful thinking reemerges every time protests break out in Tehran or Qom. Yet the truth is that the Islamic Republic has endured decades of unrest, crackdowns, and sanctions. The Green Movement of 2009, the fuel protests of 2019, and the women-led uprising after Mahsa Amini’s death in 2022 all prompted Western commentary about the regime’s imminent collapse, yet actual regime change seems unlikely as ever. There is simply no coherent political opposition capable of mounting a challenge to Ali Khamenei and the IRGC. Regime change would thus inevitably be a highly messy process that the US would probably become entangled with. Such a campaign would make Iraq and Afghanistan look modest by comparison.
The second option, letting Iran get a bomb, is worse. A nuclear-armed Islamic Republic would likely unleash a cascade of proliferation across the region. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt have all flirted with nuclear ambitions in the past and would see an Iranian bomb as intolerable. Israel would face the nightmare scenario of a genocidally anti-Zionist regime gaining nuclear capabilities.
This leaves us with the third option: maintaining and intensifying the maximum pressure campaign begun under the first Trump administration, including limited strikes on essential Iranian nuclear facilities if an arrangement cannot be made with Khamenei. Such a policy would not resolve the decades-long conflict the US and Israel have had with Iran, but given the regime’s remarkable resilience and apparent longevity, it is the best we can hope for.
Even if the United States was to collaborate closely with Israel to destroy as much of Iran’s nuclear capacity and political/military leadership as possible, it would not change the long-term trajectory of Iran as a powerful, malign actor. The hard reality we face is that no matter how many deft operations Mossad can execute or bunker busters the US can drop, the threat from Iran is simply not going away because it is an oil-rich nation of 90 million whose sole political center of gravity is the mullahs and IRGC.
That the Iranian regime, regardless of its leadership, is committed to waiting out the US in the knowledge that Americans hate “forever wars” is the real strategic asymmetry Iran hopes to exploit. Even when it comes to the nuclear negotiations, it seems increasingly plausible that the Iranian regime seeks neither to fully give up their nuclear program nor acquire nukes soon, but rather use it as a bargaining chip indefinitely. This allows the religious hardliners to present themselves as battling the West while avoiding a nuclear showdown and forcing America to engage in a protracted struggle, which, in a generation, the American public may no longer have patience for. This isn’t a strategy that needs to work forever, but just long enough to frustrate the American voting public.
I’m afraid this strategy will work. Despite many in the US national security establishment having argued for decades that we should attack Iran, whether for regime change or to stop nuclear proliferation, the truth is that Americans have minimal appetite for what they perceive as far-afield foreign entanglements. This is especially true of low-intensity wars, like the Cold War until the late 1980s, which seemed likely to go on forever. Both the far-left and far-right now see military engagement abroad as evidence of conspiracy or corruption, whether it’s the military-industrial complex, the Elders of Zion, or both driving America into endless conflict.
This discomfort with imperial maintenance is understandable and deeply American. We are a revolutionary republic that mistrusts standing armies and foreign entanglements. But, by the work of Providence, we have become a global power with friends, enemies, and borders to separate them around the world. Rome had Dacia and Germania; Britain had the Northwest Frontier and Suez; we have the Straits of Hormuz and Taiwan, the Gulf of Aden, and Eastern Europe. These are not places that threaten us directly, but that serve as the staging grounds for those who would. There is no scenario where China, Russia, or Iran acquire further power and do not use it to undermine or counteract American security and prosperity.
All of these factors considered, Iran’s determination to wait the US out, the infeasibility of regime change, and the limited tolerance of the American public for direct US intervention, mean that a strategy of maximum economic pressure and, if necessary, limited strikes on essential Iranian nuclear infrastructure is the only realistic plan of action. The remaining question, then, is whether or not the American people can be persuaded that a nuclear Iran would be so intolerable as to warrant another generation of muscular US engagement in the Middle East.
