I don’t foresee boots on the ground unless it’s a limited special ops to secure the enriched uranium if Iran is unwilling to turn it over.
The New Lounge
- Thread starter hpnole
- Start date
Agree they all wanted to do more, but more than likely went with sound advice and rationality of particular outcomes imo....and to swalwell, if true he deserves the highest consequences under the law
I’ll start with what I agree with you on. The IRGC is bad, and the world would be a better place if Iran had a different form of government from a U.S. perspective. The same can be said for North Korea and Russia, though their systems are significantly different. Concerning Iran, any government rooted in religious fundamentalism is dangerous, regardless of what religion they prescribe to. It’s not a rational, logical form of government. Religion is often used to justify terrible things by bad actors who seek power.
But that doesn’t mean the conclusion you’re drawing is correct.
There’s a big difference between weakening a regime and actually toppling it. Sanctions, bombing campaigns, and economic collapse have been applied to Iran for decades, and the regime is still standing. If economic collapse automatically led to regime change, Iran would have fallen years ago under existing sanctions. Authoritarian regimes don’t collapse the way people expect. They often consolidate power internally when external pressure increases.
The idea that you can collapse a regime like this without boots on the ground isn’t supported by recent history. Even if you do put boots on the ground,Iraq and Afghanistan show that removing a regime is the easy part. What comes after is where things fall apart. What replaces the IRGC if they fall tomorrow? That’s the question that actually matters. There’s no clear mechanism here for a stable transition of power, which is why this assumption is risky.
Calling a regime evil doesn’t tell you anything about what comes next if it collapses. If the outcome is instability, civil conflict, or a more extreme faction taking control, it’s arguably much worse.
To understand Iran and the situation we are in today, you have to go back before 1953 and look at what existed in Iran before the U.S. and the U.K. launched Operation Ajax to topple the government. We’ve actually done this before, and it paved the way for the IRGC to take control. Regime change historically doesn’t work in our favor.
Prior to the coup in 1953, real political power in Iran had shifted from the Shah to a democratically elected government run by Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh was extremely popular in Iran and well respected throughout the world. He was even named Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1951. He also wasn’t anti American. He actively sought U.S. support as a counterweight to British control, which makes the decision to remove him even more tragic.
His platform was simple. It focused on three pillars: national sovereignty, constitutional rule, and economic independence. He believed Iran should control its own resources, especially oil. He worked to strengthen parliament and reduce the Shah’s authority. Most importantly, nationalizing oil from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was central to his agenda.
That was a nonstarter for the U.K., as they were the ones who profited from the AIOC. This led to Operation Ajax, which I encourage you to look up. Mosaddegh was arrested by pro-Shah forces, and his government collapsed. Iran then shifted from a constitutional monarchy to an authoritarian monarchy.
The U.S.-backed Shah took power and proceeded to run the country into the ground for the next few decades, which paved the way for the revolution in the 1970s. The Shah’s rule after the coup relied heavily on repression, particularly through the SAVAK, which deepened public resentment over time. Allowing this to happen was one of Eisenhower’s biggest mistakes in an otherwise strong presidency. Unfortunately, we’re still dealing with the ramifications of that mistake today.
When people talk about unintended consequences in foreign policy, this is one of the clearest examples.
The U.S.-backed coup that toppled the government in 1953 led directly to the government that Iran has today. Had we not done that, Iran’s government would have almost certainly been more friendly, and the country would have been much better off than it is today.
My point is that wars with the goal of regime change do not work out in our favor in the long run.
We’ve seen this same pattern in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, where removing a regime created instability that was worse than what existed before. There is a consistent overestimation of how quickly power vacuums can be filled by stable, pro Western governments.
This war was ill advised for a variety of reasons. The idea that was pitched to Trump was that the regime would easily collapse under pressure. That has been proven false. The idea that pressure alone would collapse the regime ignores decades of evidence showing how resilient it has been.
It was also painfully obvious that Iran’s best card to play would be to immediately close the Strait of Hormuz, which would spike energy prices all over the world. This was done, and the economic fallout is still playing out worldwide.
The fact that the Trump administration didn’t even bother to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve before launching this war shows how little thought they gave to the consequences of their actions.
American soldiers have been wounded and killed because of the lack of planning that went into this. The U.S. stockpile of interceptor missiles is now dangerously low, to the point that we are having to remove missiles from Asia and ship them to the Middle East to try to protect our assets. It will take years to rebuild that stock while simultaneously weakening our position in Asia.
Now the Trump administration is scrambling to end this war any way that it can. They know that the economic situation they’ve created is unsustainable, and that they have to end this war as quickly as possible.
But what will they gain from it? The IRGC will still be in control of Iran. They will still have the ability to close the Strait whenever they want. While they have suffered significant damage, I think, strategically, they will walk away from this war with more power than they had before it started.
I anticipate they will reach some sort of deal that looks very similar to the JCPOA that Trump pulled out of in his first term. Walking away from the JCPOA removed constraints without replacing them with anything more effective. That decision reduced visibility into Iran’s nuclear program at the same time it increased their incentive to expand it.
He’ll pretend that his deal is some big success, but it will be a strategic defeat for the U.S.
I think this is the best case scenario we can hope for at this point. Escalating the situation further will only result in higher prices, more damage, and a longer time to return to the prewar status quo.
The reason we are in this war today is because Trump pulled out of the JCPOA in his first term. Had he not done that, Iran would not have the uranium stockpile it has today. Inspections and monitoring would have continued, and Iran would not have been able to enrich uranium to the levels it has today.
Actions have consequences, and Trump’s actions on a variety of issues are all catching up with him at the same time.
So if the end result of all this is a similar deal, a stronger IRGC, and a more unstable region, what exactly did we gain from it?