Applying Iraq’s Hardest Lessons to Iran

By Michael Baumgartner

Friday, March 06, 2026

 

For more than 45 years, the Iranian regime has relied on nuclear brinkmanship, proxy militias, and missile and drone proliferation to destabilize the Middle East and project power beyond its borders. Iran and its proxies have kidnapped and killed Americans in Iraq, Yemen, Israel, and in countries as far-flung as France and Argentina.

 

In recent days, as U.S. and Israeli strikes have targeted key elements of that system, I have heard the same phrase repeated in the halls of Congress, in member briefings, and on cable news: Iraq 2.0.

 

Colleagues I respect are sounding the alarm. They see airstrikes in the Middle East, hear talk of regime change, and conclude we are sleepwalking toward another 2003.

 

I understand the instinct. I served at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad during the first year of the surge in 2007. In Iraq, I saw the follies, the successes, and most of all the bravery — and I learned hard lessons. Don’t confuse battlefield success with political outcomes. Don’t dismantle institutions you can’t replace. Don’t invade without a plan for the insurgency that follows. And never enter a conflict the American people cannot clearly understand.

 

Those lessons argue not for passivity, but for discipline. In Iraq, I also saw up close the hand of the Iranian regime: its proxies and its operatives armed with IEDs and rockets that killed and maimed Americans while we bore the burden of ownership.

 

What is unfolding against Iran is not Iraq 2.0. And if you look closely, you can already see some of Iraq’s toughest lessons being applied — even as the hardest work still lies ahead.

 

In Iraq, we toppled a regime and then sent troops and civilians in to govern the country we had just shattered — without a plan to confront the insurgency that followed. We dissolved institutions and discovered that rebuilding them was far harder than defeating them.

 

This campaign is structured differently. There are no American divisions massing for Tehran and no American interim government waiting to run the country. The goals are narrower: Stop a nuclear breakout, degrade the proxy network, limit the missiles and drones that carry Iran’s reach, and fracture the regime’s war-making core to compel verifiable restraint. That means targeting the launch network and strike apparatus — launchers, crews, command links, and missile and drone supply lines — and sustaining pressure long enough to force behavioral change.

 

If that pressure exposes fractures inside the regime, that is a consequence of coercion — and potentially an opportunity — not a blueprint for American management. The objective is behavioral change backed by concrete capability loss: no nuclear weapon, no proxy war machine, no unchecked missile and drone proliferation.

 

That objective preserves options for U.S. interests. If sustained pressure produces verifiable restraint from Iran’s current leadership, that is a success. If it accelerates internal fractures that lead to a different Iranian leadership willing to accept those limits, that too is a success. The United States should not promise regime change, but neither should it close off outcomes created by pressure.

 

The broader possibility — one only Iranians themselves can determine — is that as we degrade the regime’s war machine, we also damage its internal police state to an extent that long-suppressed voices can rise into leadership. That outcome cannot be engineered from Washington, but neither should it be foreclosed.

 

Iran’s response is calculated. For Iranian hardliners, survival is victory. If the regime endures, it claims success. Their playbook is familiar: Widen the fight, raise costs, squeeze oil traffic, and wait for political will to weaken. Part of that strategy is to burn through our interceptors and strain regional alliances. That vulnerability is real. And this will not be resolved in a news cycle. Even President Bill Clinton’s air campaign in Kosovo required 78 days of sustained bombing. Technology has advanced since 1999 — but so have hardened targets and countermeasures.

 

There are no guarantees. Escalation risks are real. The translation of military leverage into durable political outcomes is never automatic.

 

Iraq also taught us something that matters just as much as sequencing and restraint: A campaign the public cannot understand will not be sustained. This is a test of endurance, and Iran’s strategy is to raise costs and fracture will. Americans deserve a plain explanation of purpose and limits.

 

The purpose is clear: Destroy the missile and drone arsenal Iran uses to terrorize the region, and gain leverage to reduce its capacity for proxy war and prevent a nuclear breakout. The limit is equally clear: This is not an invasion, not an occupation, and not an open-ended promise to govern Iran’s future.

 

We are in the early phase of a difficult campaign. The only responsible course is to keep options open, aligned with core U.S. interests. Iraq taught us the cost of confusion and shifting goalposts. Iran presents a different challenge — one that demands discipline and strategic patience.