Liberating Iran

Iranian Americans demonstrating outside the White House (rnz)

There is no doubt in my mind that the regime governing Iran - one that has terrorized its own people for more than four decades - must be overthrown. Even if that were the only reason, it would be sufficient to justify action.

But Iran’s ambitions extend far beyond its borders. Its primary and most immediate target is the State of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants. That goal is not symbolic or rhetorical; it is explicit. And Israel is not the end of the story. Iran understands it could never defeat the United States in a conventional war, but it would eagerly wage a clandestine one - through cyberattacks, propaganda, and terrorism - potentially on a scale that could make 9/11 look like a rehearsal.

At the most basic humanitarian level, a regime that routinely kills thousands of its own citizens for protesting cannot be allowed to endure. Iran has repeatedly demonstrated that this is exactly what it is. Each time its people rise up, the response is brutal and lethal. In the most recent protests alone, credible estimates suggest that between 3,000 and as many as 16,000 Iranian civilians were killed by their own government.

That regime must be brought down. There is no just alternative to ending its 46 year reign of terror.

The real questions are how this should be done, what the human costs will be, and what happens afterward. Should the United States act if the American people oppose it? And if the regime falls, who governs Iran next? Should we even consider nation-building after the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan?

Iran will not collapse quietly. Resistance will be fierce. Martyrdom is central to the regime’s ideology, and the Revolutionary Guard glorifies dying to preserve the Islamic Republic. These are serious and difficult realities. But they cannot override the moral imperative to free an entire people from a murderous theocracy...

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