Regime Change Is Not the Answer

Surprising no one, Danielle Pletka wants the US to seek regime change in Iran:

Rather, it is the Reagan doctrine and the collapse of the Soviet Union that should guide a policy for change in Tehran. Like the Soviet Union and its satellites, Iran’s regime is deeply unpopular with its own people. Three major uprisings took place in 2009, 2019, and 2022, despite the government’s increasingly repressive police state.

In none of those instances, did any Western country provide more than token support for the Iranian people.

Regime change is a misguided and destructive policy. If it “worked,” it would be destabilizing for the wider region and it would probably trigger civil war in Iran. The current regime would not go quietly. That could create a disastrous conflict like the one that engulfed Syria, but on a much larger scale. If the Reagan Doctrine’s record is anything to go by, the US would be plunging Iran into years of bloodshed and atrocities committed by death squads, but the casualties and the number of refugees would be far greater than in Nicaragua or Angola.

If the US managed to bring the current system down, there is no guarantee that it would lead to a better government. It is not at all certain that it would lead to the changes in Iranian foreign policy that many Westerners want to see. The assumption that this “solves” anything is baseless. More to the point, the US has no right to interfere in Iranian affairs, and I suspect most Iranian opponents of their government would want nothing to do with Washington’s “help.”

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.