By Eric S. Edelman, Reuel Marc Gerecht, & Ray Takeyh
Tuesday, May 26, 2026
The Islamic Republic isn’t a problem that can be wished
away through quick fixes. Countering Iran, which is a far less challenging foe
than the former Soviet Union and communist-turned-fascist China, is,
nonetheless, a demanding prospect. And we know what doesn’t work: Arms-control
agreements laced with financial dividends didn’t transform the Islamist regime
into a responsible state. If anything, Barack Obama’s nuclear deal provided the
cash that allowed Tehran to intensify its malevolent behavior. Washington’s
exclusive focus on Iran’s nuclear threat also told Tehran that its proxy-war
strategy against Israel wouldn’t encounter any serious American opposition. Any
new nuclear deal, if one is even possible today, will likely recertify all the
crippling weaknesses of the first accord and possibly add more.
Donald Trump appears on the cusp of an agreement to
demilitarize, at least temporarily, the Hormuz Strait. Ancillary to this may be
certain Iranian nuclear promises and U.S. sanctions relief. Whatever the actual
details of this accord are, no matter whether it later, in part or entirely,
falls apart, this agreement flows directly from Tehran dueling Washington to a
standstill. Iranian tenacity, not the acumen of the regime’s diplomats and
statesmen or the feebleness of their American counterparts, has led to this
point.
An indisputable truth: A massive bombing campaign by
Israel and the United States has allowed Tehran to see the incomparable utility
of the Strait of Hormuz as a weapon against the global economy and its primary
enemies. Donald Trump may have finally “TACOed” because he’s unwilling to take
the military risks that would surely accompany any serious effort to open the
strait. A reanimated Islamist regime—and we don’t doubt that senior commanders
in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps now think they are winning—might even
refuse a generous nuclear deal because it’s having so much fun humbling its
foes. In the past, the clerical regime often overplayed its hand. This war, and
the one last June, probably wouldn’t have happened if Tehran had been less
zealous in supporting its proxies, expanding uranium enrichment, and increasing
missile production. It’s possible it will overplay its hand again.
Yet a victory in the strait for Iran offers the promise
of almost everything: a defeat of the United States and regime-buttressing
shockwaves coming from that failure; the ever-present prospect of money from
tolls on Persian Gulf shipping; restarting the export of Iranian oil to China
and possibly to others for hard currency; a potential check on overt Israeli
attacks on Iran and greater American hesitancy—possibly even discord between
Jerusalem and Washington—about Israeli actions against Iranian proxies; and
Iranian dominion over the future of Arab Gulf states. The Islamic Republic has
been desperate for a win since the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023,
unleashed a sequence of events that shredded so many of the regime’s
accomplishments. It looks now like it could be on the cusp of a big one.
Though we can still imagine a containment strategy
against the clerical regime, if the Islamic Republic can hold Hormuz hostage,
Tehran will severely wound America’s self-confidence, reputation, and capacity.
Even if some arrangement can be made to
allow commercial traffic to pass without paying tolls, which appears to be part
of the current agreement between Tehran and Washington, once most of the U.S.
armada returns home, the odds of the warships returning aren’t good. The odds
of the Islamic Republic demanding tolls later are a near certainty. Freedom of
navigation ends unless Washington can find the military means and the will
necessary to sustain convoys, even under hostile fire. This frustrating
denouement, which would ensure shipping remains far below pre-war levels, may
be enough, however, to avoid $150-plus-per-barrel oil and a global recession. It
could conceivably allow Washington to maintain regime-crippling pressure on
Tehran. Take away the U.S. armada, however, and Washington will lose most of
its leverage.
All nations have their breaking points. It’s possible
that the theocracy may succumb to the contradictions of its own making. Yet the
regime’s resilience has been impressive. Bound together by ideological
conviction, the regime’s elite remains deeply entrenched and multilayered.
Though battered, the regime still appears to retain the capacity to mobilize
its core supporters, make decisions, and enforce them.
***
In January, Iranian security forces killed with brutal
efficiency. This uprising was one of the most consequential and sobering in the
history of the Islamic Republic. This was the first time the clerical oligarchs
faced popular protest after losing a war in June. The sight of Americans and,
more humiliatingly, Israelis blowing up nuclear installations and killing
generals in their homes was a bad look for a regime that rules by force and
fear. Both President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sensed in the
regime’s defeat last June the prospect of its collapse. This undoubtedly nudged
them toward launching another campaign in February.
But that campaign has yielded a more unpredictable
regime. The new powerbrokers are drawn largely from the Revolutionary Guards,
with the still-hidden Mojtaba Khamenei, the putative, wounded supreme leader,
taking his cues from the enforcers. These men are not necessarily more
militant, but in some ways they are bolder. The American and Israeli killings
precipitated a shift within the regime, elevating those who had grown weary of
what they regarded as Ali Khamenei’s nuclear timidity in the face of mounting
danger.
A series of articles in Javan, a mouthpiece of the
Revolutionary Guards, introduced a new doctrine dubbed “offensive deterrence.” The
series began by taking a swipe at the martyred supreme leader: “Iran’s previous
doctrine was defined in controlling tensions below the level of war, but the
forty-day war was the starting point for deterrence through expanding the
geography of crisis.” The new crew highlighted the geographical weapon that the
regime had always boasted about in its propaganda but never attempted to use:
“The Strait of Hormuz overlooks the coast of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and
it is natural that, as a coastal country, we have the right to monitor and
exercise sovereignty over our coastal waters. … The world economy’s critical
dependence on this route makes this source of income absolutely unsanctionable
and transforms the structure of Iran’s political economy from crude oil sales
to sustainable transit income.” Ali Nikzad, the deputy speaker of Parliament,
went so far as to declare, “The Strait of Hormuz is Iran’s atomic bomb.”
It is an exaggeration to claim that nuclear arms have
lost their centrality in the regime’s strategic calculations. The bomb is still
important for ensuring Iran’s regional sway. But the nuclear infrastructure is
far too battered to deliver nuclear weapons soon. By contrast, control over the
waterways offers immediate, simpler power.
President Trump’s failure to gain control over Hormuz
undoubtedly in part flows from the realization of how much effort would be required to hold
the strait after the battle to clear it. Containing the Islamic Republic will
necessitate a radical review of the prevailing assumptions that have
underpinned earlier national-security strategies—both Republican and
Democratic. The Trump administration’s 2026 National Defense Strategy
suggested, “[Department of War] will empower regional allies and partners to
take primary responsibility for deterring and defending against Iran and its
proxies.” The United States has sought to move away from involvement in
“forever wars,” relying on Israel and Arab Gulf states who were supposedly
“increasingly willing and able to do more … against Iran and its proxies.” More
U.S. military assets and defense spending were supposed to be shifted toward
China.
Although U.S. partners in the region have been increasing
their own indigenous defense capabilities, this war has shown that neither the
Saudis nor the Emiratis are comfortable on offense, despite reports that they
launched clandestine strikes of their own against Iran. Only American
involvement can provide key military capabilities–for example, continuous
technically gathered intelligence, persistent reconnaissance, surveillance,
command and control, and the sheer firepower necessary for degrading the Iranian
military. We know already that nearly 40 days of bombing has not yet provided
us with deterrence since the regime still is capable of shooting at ships and
our Gulf allies. That could change since the Revolutionary Guards might prefer
to absorb less damage. In any case, we do know that the U.S. would need to
maintain in theater a lot of firepower to have any chance of dissuading the
Guards from further violence.
Patrolling the Persian Gulf to keep the Strait of Hormuz
open post-ceasefire would be a mission of uncertain duration, depending on the
regime’s ability to survive the unresolved crises it faces. At a minimum, it
would demand a large, sustained, multi-domain, layered, multinational defense
presence. The U.S. will need to rebuild or relocate the many bases it has
operated in the region in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and
Iraq, as they appear to have sustained serious damage. Some of the cost,
estimated to be between $15 billion and $25 billion, will presumably be borne
by host nations. But not all of it. Beyond the facilities, the cost of
replacing and/or repairing the 40-plus manned and unmanned aircraft that were
damaged or destroyed will likely to fall on the U.S. taxpayer as will the costs
of replenishing America’s depleted munitions stocks—an effort that is already
creating ripple effects in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
The ongoing requirements would likely mean that the U.S.,
which in recent years has had no or just one carrier strike group near the
Middle East, will likely in future require two. An Amphibious Ready Group or
two would also be necessary, as well as up to six to 10 guided-missile
destroyers, two attack submarines, and a guided-missile submarine. The force
would also require several P-8 Poseidon maritime surveillance and RC-135 Rivet
Joint reconnaissance planes and unmanned MQ-9 Reaper aircraft for continuous
surveillance. We would need to maintain E-2D Hawkeye and E-3 Sentry aircraft
for command-and-control purposes, as well as a variety of rotary-wing aircraft
for coastal and search-and-rescue operations.
Also needed are ground and sea-based fighter aircraft,
several Independence-class littoral combat ships for demining operations, and
unmanned autonomous vehicles and manned aircraft for persistent surveillance.
Augmented land- and sea-based aircraft would add striking power to the mix. The
force won’t need to be as big as the current buildup, but it would be
significant, and the cost would be considerable (perhaps $5 billion to $10
billion dollars annually). It would also entail geopolitical costs as well,
since it will limit the ability of the U.S. to move its forces to other
theaters. Allies would be necessary to supply some capabilities like frigates,
which the U.S. Navy lacks, for escort and additional mine-sweeping to
supplement America’s limited resources for counter-mine warfare. Our European
allies have long had the bulk of the West’s mine-sweepers.
In short, this would be a considerable military mission,
more redolent of the “forever wars” that the president and vice president have
decried rather than the “right-sized” presence envisaged by his administration
in 2024.
With an American failure in the strait, demands on
American intelligence are going to increase since Tehran will likely want to
push the envelope and try to hurt us even more—regardless of what is in Trump’s
agreement with the clerical regime. War or no war, all of the mundane
intelligence tasks aren’t disappearing. Washington will have to monitor the
bombed nuclear facilities closely, and the bombed underground military bases
and factories involved with ballistic-missile and drone production. We will
need to know how many and what kind of missiles and drones the Islamic Republic
will be able to build, and how quickly, given the damage to factories and
supply lines, and whether the Russians and Chinese will meaningfully help the
effort. With a U.S. defeat in the strait, it’s a very good bet that both Russia
and China will see greater strategic value in an axis that is already
well-established. Moscow, which benefits enormously from higher oil prices and
is increasingly under stress in the Ukraine war, may be tempted to rearm Iran
with better weapons.
All of this U.S. intelligence effort will unavoidably
keep us thinking about regime change in the Islamic Republic; we would be
foolish not to do so since, ultimately, the collapse of the Islamist government
is the only answer to all of the problems that started with Ruhollah Khomeini’s
triumph.
***
Iran’s internal problems remain enormous. This war has
made most of them worse. The unpleasantness of an Iranian triumph in the
Gulf—and the Islamist hubris that it will generate in Tehran—may be enough to
finally shake Democrats out of their engagement fantasy. There may be enough
liberal internationalist sentiment left among Democrats to explore ways of
helping the Iranian people and keep Democrats on the congressional intelligence
committees from killing clandestine programs. We also assume that Republicans
won’t go belly up, that isolationism and the Iran-is-no-threat rumination that
Tucker Carlson and his ilk sometimes express, won’t gain more ground.
The Trump administration and much of the right are
allergic to the phrase “regime change,” seeing it as a negation of the
“realism” favored by many in the America First crowd. But the ugliness of what
may well happen globally after freedom of navigation ends in the Persian Gulf
may be enough, combined with the enforced frugality that is surely coming
because of the size of America’s national debt, to encourage folks on the right
and left to seek relatively inexpensive options for countering an Islamic
Republic doped up on victory.
And the ongoing intelligence war between the United
States and Iran will surely complement the intelligence war between Israel and
the Islamic Republic. Intelligence cooperation, because it doesn’t usually
happen openly, has a certain resilience that defies the passions of the day.
Intelligence—operational—success is inevitably tied to
how much risk clandestine services and their political overlords want to
endure. The Islamic Republic is an existential threat to the Jewish state; to
the United States, the clerical regime has been a non-existential but deadly
foe. These differences in perspective
and fear are sufficient to explain why the Israelis have had the patience and
fortitude to work the Iranian target in ways that have been impossible for
American or European intelligence services. But that disparity, besides
producing a certain jealousy and sometimes anger inside CIA headquarters at
Langley, offers advantages to Washington if it decides to get more serious
about aid to the Iranian people.
Jerusalem may well try to do things that Washington may
object to: first and foremost, the delivery of large quantities of weaponry to
resistance groups inside Iran. The Israelis wanted to do a delivery to the
Kurds, who apparently were willing to take the fight to the dominant ethnic
group, the Persians, on whom the regime depends. Trump, possibly motivated by a
call from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, limited the operation. As a
rule, Washington wants to imagine that Iran can come out whole, ideally
democratic, after the collapse of the Islamic Republic; the Israelis, as a
rule, are far more pessimistic about the evolutionary political possibilities
of Muslims. Ethnic warfare inside Iran may appeal to them since accessing
minority groups on Iran’s borders is operationally much easier; it would be
payback for all of the proxies that Tehran has unleashed on the Jewish state.
Moving arms into the hands of Iranians who really
matter—and who would know how to use them—would be a long-term project for
Jerusalem, or Washington, since there are now, so far as we know, no organized
Azeri or Persian opposition groups that could even use this weaponry against
the Revolutionary Guards and the street-level security service, the Basij.
Delivering weapons to other Iranian ethnic groups that do already have
organized, armed outfits—the Kurds and the Baluch—can’t possibly topple the
clerical regime. Only the Azeris and Persians, if they rebelled in large
numbers, can overcome the status quo. Until such organized outfits exist, any
effort to deliver weaponry to where it matters most would just end in
delivering arms to the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian intelligence
ministry. It would be quite the trial-and-error process for any foreign power
to develop something that the natives haven’t so far figured out how to
establish.
America and Israel can weaken Iran, but the task of
displacing it will surely be up to the Iranian people. All revolutions, at
core, are psychological phenomena. Before a decisive mass of people take to and
stay in the streets, they must perceive weakness in the regime and a measure of
immunity for themselves. Significant defections and dissension within the
ruling elite are the necessary precursors to any successful insurrection. Thus
far, the Islamic Republic has gone wobbly, but it hasn’t lost its bearings.
Still, little operational successes—baby steps for both a foreign intelligence
service and Iranian protesters who must prove that they can organize and not
get shattered—may open up larger opportunities hitherto unseen.
None of the above should offer any immediate hope to the
United States, or to the Iranian people. We are now stuck in a predicament
where Washington may have already lost a war against a Middle Eastern power
that has defined itself in opposition to America. Lost wars always have painful
repercussions. But unless the United States is leaving the Middle East with its
tail between its legs, a bloody struggle with the Islamic Republic will
continue. Iran’s revolutionary elite knows that. Do we?
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