Iran Has Earned its Regime Change, but Will it be Worth it?

US and Israeli attacks are underway on the Islamic Revolutionary regime in Iran, and there are all the usual constitutional and political concerns with this action. A president is once again ignoring the War Powers Act and the constitutional role of Congress in declaring war. Moreover, the administration has made little if any effort to make its case to the American people for why this action is necessary and in America’s interests.

That said, both Iranians and the world will almost certainly be better off with the removal of the Ayatollah regime. In addition to all the ways in which the people of Iran have been oppressed by Islamists, including the recent slaughter of 10s of thousands of protestors, the Iranian regime has been one of the premier bad actors on the world stage.

Iran has waged proxy war against the US and Israel for decades. It has engaged in state-sponsored terrorism through Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Palestinian territories, Houthis in Yemen, and various Shi’ite militias in Iraq and Syria. These groups have engaged in terror campaigns that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Americans.

Iran routinely targets US networks and infrastructure for cyber attack and wages propaganda and disinformation campaigns online with large bot networks. It has also been a major supplier of drones for Russia’s attempted conquest of Ukraine.

So no one should cry for the potential collapse or defeat of a truly evil regime. The various online grifters and anti-western activists online who shill for this regime, often simply because it stands opposed to America, are morally grotesque.

But none of that means this action is well-conceived by the administration. Aside from its disregard for constitutional responsibilities, we have to seriously wonder whether it has fully weighed the costs of taking on regime change in Iran. Trump seems to have little appetite for directly involving US troops, for good or for ill depending on one’s point of view, and it’s not entirely clear whether air strikes alone are sufficient to dislodge such a deep-rooted regime, even one deeply unpopular among its populace.

There’s also the question of what takes the regime’s place. The odds of something even worse seems low, but it’s not zero. Moreover, what might be the downstream effects in the region, including the potential spread of conflict beyond Iran’s borders or a new contest to fill a potential power vacuum? Perhaps the administration has satisfactory answers to these questions, but absent Congressional oversight, if even behind closed doors, we don’t even know if these concerns have been thoroughly considered.

By all appearances, President Trump backed himself into a corner with an imprudent promise that “help is on the way” during the recent protestors, along with threats against the use of violence by the regime. We simply lacked the resources in theater to step in and deliver on these threats, and so the regime brutally repressed the uprising without consequence. Trump is loathe to tolerate the sort of weakness this reflect on him and so he’s not going to stop until he gets what he can consider a sufficient “win” to justify the initial threat.

Because the precise goals of this campaign are unclear, at least to the public, we can only wait and see how high a cost, in terms of resources or lives, the administration is willing to accept. But regardless of whether it is wise or worth the cost, the Iranian regime thoroughly deserves what it is getting.