America Has No Stake in the Islamic Republic

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, July 03, 2025

 

Among those who fancy themselves the conscience of the nation, a peculiar sort of motivated reasoning is making the rounds. It maintains that Donald Trump thoroughly rebuffed and discredited the “warmongers,” who covertly control American foreign policy, by executing the very strike on Iran’s nuclear program they had advocated for the better part of the last 20 years. It is a preposterous argument — a transparent face-saving maneuver — that does not merit further attention.

 

What does, however, is the argument’s accompanying contention that the Trump administration should live in fear of the prospect that the Iranian regime could still come apart.

 

The fallout from the joint U.S.-Israeli war against Iran’s nuclear program is still settling. The Israeli campaign did not limit itself to Iranian nuclear targets. Its strikes on the symbols of Iran’s regime as well as much of the military and intelligence leadership cadre have created cracks in the Islamic Republic’s foundations. It may not be an imminent or even likely prospect, but the potential for those cracks to expand and topple the edifice of the regime cannot be ruled out.

 

Those who argued against Trump’s strikes in the first place have pivoted to arguing that Trump should become a jealous guardian of the devil we know. “The vacuum left by the regime’s collapse would not be filled by democratic forces, but likely” by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), “the military organization dedicated to regime control and survival, or violent power struggles,” read the analysis produced by Tanya Goudsouzian for the Quincy Institute.

 

In her estimation, the best-case scenario to accompany the fall of the Iranian regime is a “regional war fueled by proxy militias.” The more likely outcome would be an Islamist military dictatorship in which the moderation of the mullahs is snuffed out. The only way to avert that scenario, former State Department adviser Thomas Warrick told Goudsouzian, would be that “outside forces intervene” (e.g., regime change, occupation, insurgency — the whole works).

 

We can thus deduce that the only rational course left for Donald Trump is for him to somehow invest in the health and longevity of the odious theocrats in Tehran. Whatever comes after them would certainly be far worse.

 

What hogwash. The American president should not succumb to the delusion that the United States benefits from the existence of the millenarian cult in power in Iran. It is the font from which most of the world’s state-sponsored terrorism springs. It has killed thousands of Americans. A de facto state of war has existed between the United States and Iran from the moment the revolutionary Islamic republic came into existence. These are not conditions Washington should hope to perpetuate.

 

The American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin wrote, “Some regime change is inevitable.” And that should not inspire panic:

 

Even prior to the 12-day Israel-Iran war, the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, 86, is in poor health as he has had cancer and is partially paralyzed. Iranians were openly discussing his succession. Sudden hand-wringing that a further extremist Islamist regime might replace Khamenei is not realistic and is meant to derail support for regime collapse. At worst, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shares the same ideology of the clergy without its theological claims to legitimacy. To rescue the Islamic Republic, a state sponsor of terror and nuclear aspirant, would be to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

 

Whatever comes after the Islamic Republic will present challenges to the United States, but it is not outside the realm of possibility that those challenges will be desirable compared to those that the Islamic Republic presents. Just look at the rapid evolution Syria is presently undergoing — an outcome that many who now say the Iranian regime is too precious to sacrifice failed to envision.

 

There will always be bad actors and dishonest brokers who equate the full flourishing of liberty among the the oppressed Iranian people with the Iraq War. Theirs is an intimidation campaign. Don’t fall for it. They want you to believe that you have to buy into the notion that the Iranian regime is somehow legitimate — indeed, that the United States must take ownership of and steward the Islamic Republic — lest America wander into the terrible unknown.

 

Well, the known is pretty terrible, too. Maybe we should take our chances.