The end of a dictator like Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is a good thing and freedom for Iranians is an admirable goal. But as U.S. regime wars in the Middle East since 9/11 have shown, removing leaders is one thing, while strategic successes are quite another. The longer the strikes continue, the greater the chances that more U.S. troops will die and the United States will be dragged into a bigger war.
The Trump administration has offered handfuls of reasons for launching the strikes, but none that is vital to U.S. national security. There is no intelligence showing Iran is anywhere close to developing missiles that can hit the United States. Iran’s nuclear program has been “obliterated,” according to President Trump, and regardless is not a direct threat to the United States. The U.S. doesn’t depend on oil from Iran or the Middle East.
Trump needs to take the victory of killing Khamenei and wind down military force against Iran. The American experience in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan have shown that taking out leaders is the easy part; it’s what follows that turns into a disaster.
Despite the Bush administration’s detailed plans for a new government in Iraq, that country descended into sectarian chaos after U.S. forces removed Saddam Hussein from power in 2003. The war became a nightmare for the United States, leading to a long military occupation (U.S. troops are still there today) and the rise of ISIS, among other problems.
Wanting to avoid Bush’s mistakes, Barack Obama tried a different strategy in Libya. Rather than put boots on the ground, he just bombed from the air, like Trump is doing today with Iran. The strategy unseated the dictator Moammar Gaddafi, but it unleashed chaos across North and West Africa. Libya became a failed state and a hotbed for international terrorism.
There are no indications that regime change in Iran will go any better. There are a couple of likely scenarios here, neither of them good.
First, Iran might spin into the same kind of chaos as Iraq and Libya. Due to five decades of harsh repression (which was on full display with Iranian protests in January), there is no organized opposition to take power if the regime collapses. Like in Libya, government collapse would likely bring civil war and a failed state, only this time there would be highly enriched uranium added to the mix.
Second, regime collapse might bring to power, as U.S. intelligence agencies predict, an even more radical, hardline government led most likely by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Whether this is happening now in the wake of Khamenei’s death remains to be seen, but signs of a more hardline position from Tehran are already showing up.
Since Khamenei’s killing, Iran has unleashed a torrent of missiles, striking elevencountries across the Middle East. This stands in sharp contrast to its delayed, highly choreographed, and restrained military response in last summer’s 12-Day War.
Tehran’s current strategy is to inflict pain on the United States and its allies to get them to back down. Six U.S. servicemembers have already died, a number Trump expects to grow.
As that happens, pressure for the United States to go even bigger—perhaps with boots on the ground in Iran—will grow intense inside the Trump administration. Trump has already said he’s not ruled out a full invasion of Iran.
The Trump administration has repeatedly acknowledged that the United States has few strategic interests in the Middle East and needs to pivot out of the region. Trump’s Iran war is setting the stage for even deeper U.S. engagement in the Middle East for decades to come.
Reports indicate Trump has no idea how to finish his Iran war, but he actually does know what to do. Last year, he vowed to “completely annihilate” the Houthis, but after burning through munitions—as the U.S. is doing today in Iran—and realizing that he’d need U.S. ground troops to do so, Trump smartly declared victory and brokered a ceasefire to end the conflict.
Killing Khamenei is a big win. Trump should take that win and cut a deal to end this war. Americans will thank him for that. They didn’t want this war before it started and haven’t rallied in support of it since it began. Today, 59 percent oppose what Trump is doing.
If he’s smart, Trump will stop this war before it spins into something disastrous that no one – including the president—wants.
