Iran Is the Problem

Danielle Pletka

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We’ve spent the last three weeks talking about Iran’s proxies and their savage assault on the people of Israel. About the risk of Hezbollah widening the Israel–Hamas war. About Iran-backed Iraqi and Syrian attacks on U.S. military targets in the Middle East.

Now, it’s time to talk seriously about Iran itself.

Since 1979, the United States has sought to contain or propitiate the regime in Tehran. In those 44 years, the Islamic Republic and its proxies have murdered thousands of Americans in Iraq, Israel, and elsewhere abroad; developed a group of proxy terrorist armies that now threaten the Middle East; advanced a nuclear-weapons program to the point of breakout; and perfected a ballistic-missile program that will soon be able to deliver those nuclear weapons to the American homeland.

As the Iran-sponsored, Hamas led-war on Israel has made clear, there is no negotiation, no sanction, no threat, and no containment strategy that will rein in the ayatollahs. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, said just days ago that, “When you chant ‘Death to America!’ it is not just a slogan — it is a policy.”

It’s time to believe Iran’s leaders, and to respond in kind. It’s time to think about how to remove this regime from power.

Taking such a path will require an admission that even the most earnest efforts to limit or roll back Iran’s nuclear-weapons program have failed. It will also require some tough soul-searching about U.S. history in regime decapitations, most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. But America’s experiences in both these countries are unique, coming as they did in the wake of the worst attack on U.S. soil in history, and thus may have limited application to the question of Iran.

Rather, it is the Reagan doctrine and the collapse of the Soviet Union that should guide a policy for change in Tehran. Like the Soviet Union and its satellites, Iran’s regime is deeply unpopular with its own people. Three major uprisings took place in 2009, 2019, and 2022, despite the government’s increasingly repressive police state.

In none of those instances, did any Western country provide more than token support for the Iranian people. Barack Obama took two weeks to note the 2009 protests, fearful that doing so would derail his planned outreach to the regime. Neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden performed much better, convinced that their management techniques would serve best in containing Iran.

The last time there was a serious effort to underwrite the Iranian people against their tyrants was in 1995, when then-speaker Newt Gingrich added $18 million to the secret intelligence budget for covert operations against the Islamic Republic leadership. Reportedly, that money was never spent.

The first step will be a statement of policy from the U.S. government: “U.S. policy is to support the Iranian people with a view to a transition to democratic governance in Iran.” That would end the Biden administration’s ongoing dialogue and “understandings” with Tehran. The next step will be to assess the Iranian opposition inside and outside the country. Right now, opposition to the regime outside Iran is riven by internecine feuds; a more serious Washington effort could finally heal those rifts.

Inside Iran, the task is harder. There are students, labor groups, and ethnic factions, as well as Kurds, Azeris, and Baloch opponents of the Islamic Republic system. There are regular attacks on regime forces, and more anti-regime demonstrations than any website can track. Mapping such groups and understanding whether they represent a serious alternative to the ayatollahs is a critical task.

Once a viable group of opposition parties is identified, the next task will be to support them, covertly and overtly. The United States should provide diplomatic and economic support where possible — as was done, for example, for labor unions in the former Soviet empire — and make clear its preference for a viable new government. Dialogue about the future of Iran should take place with potential successors, not with the regime.

The United States must further discredit the Iranian government with its own people. It shouldn’t be hard, given that Iran’s leaders are deeply unpopular. There are many things the Iranian people don’t know: exactly how corruption has enriched Iran’s clerical elites and their families, who hold bank accounts all over the Middle East and Europe and real-estate investments in swank locations, and who indulge in thoroughly un-Islamic party-going and designer shopping sprees. Surely our intelligence services are up to the task of finding and sharing these damning facts?

Is this a recipe for regime change? Not immediately, but the goal must be evolution, not revolution. We must take the time to empower the people against the dictatorship, and use U.S. economic and diplomatic power to once again tighten a noose around the leadership.

The idea will be far from universally popular, but consider the problems it solves: Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units, the Assad regime, and too many others live on Iranian largesse and support. Many of Iran’s proxies would not survive and thrive without their sponsor. Absent this evil regime, the fear of nuclear breakout and missile advancement could disappear, allowing the United States to finally turn to the threat of China and Russia, secure in the knowledge that the Middle East will not be the scene of yet another war.