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chrisCA That’s my January 10 2026 Similar Worlds post on the subject
How to turn Iran‘s protests into an era defining event for the Middle EastLast year, Israeli and US operations jointly neutralized Iran‘s nuclear program, diminished the regime‘s ballistic missile capabilities, took out the highest echelons of the country’s military and scientific leadership and removed all air defense obstacles that might’ve impeded that operation or any future military strike in the near term.
At that point, I was arguing for a prolonged series of surgical strikes to not only break the regime‘s military back but to aim for the corrosion of its internal security organs, the IRGC, the morality police, the cyber police and the Basij, a paramilitary militia that specializes in the brutal suppression of protests. This in turn, was supposed to enable large scale protests to remove Ali Khamenei, his sinister retinue of fanatics as well as the theocratic system itself.
While Israel did take advantage of the 12 day war to hit internal security nodes in Tehran, these attacks fell short of any sustained and vigorous attempt to dislodge the Mullah regime from power. The strikes were clearly secondary to the goal of destroying Iran‘s nuclear program but Israel might’ve been willing to exploit that historic window of opportunity to topple the regime had the Trump administration not cut short the 12 day war by announcing a premature cessation of military operations.
Despite the disappointing reticence in the face of a monumental strategic opportunity, I felt reassured by my faith and confidence in the Iranian people who have demonstrated again and again that they’re willing to risk their remaining material possessions, their physical freedom and their own lives and well-being as well as the lives and well-being of their friends and family to challenge the farcical legitimacy of the theocratic Iranian state.
It is their courage and bravery, despite many other geopolitical and national security considerations, that can explain the imperative behind the use of military force to keep Iran as far away as possible from obtaining a nuclear umbrella.
With such an umbrella in place, Iran‘s domestic situation would‘ve been reduced to a mere black box for the rest of the world. The predicament of the Iranian people would thus resemble the plight of the North Koreans. Any degree of suppression could be employed by the regime to deal with the resistance from the Iranian people while pro-democratic forces outside Iran would be forced to watch Iran‘s final descend into a country-sized gulag in an utter state of paralysis.
Without a nuclear umbrella, missile or air defenses or strong proxies, like Hezbollah as a deterrent, however, Iran‘s skies are open to US and Israeli efforts, if either of those countries or both should decide to aid an Iranian revolution.
The case of Iran holds promise for a different approach than the traditional regime change strategy. Instead, regime collapse seems like a more viable option. Rather than invading Iran, occupying it and engineering a transition from within as a military administrator, the United States can destabilize the regime enough to effectuate its collapse. In the event of a regime collapse, the responsibility to govern and democratize Iran‘s political system would fall to the Iranian dissidents, 2.000 of whom have been executed just in the last two years to give Iran the national rebirth it so desperately needs and deserves.
Military strikes on internal security forces or installations, the targeted killing or capture of regime officials, or a no fly zone are not the only instruments of power that ought to be weaponized to erode the regime‘s grip on power. A cyber offensive could cut off communications between different loyalist forces inside Iran while digital assistance can ensure open communications among the protesters and with the outside world, in spite of an internet crackdown. Strike funds can be established to paralyze the Iranian economy even further, combined with additional sanctions and maritime interdiction efforts, akin to the quarantine around Venezuela, to stop Iran‘s oil exports, thereby denying the regime its crucial oil revenue.
A new dawn for the Middle East is now in reach for the United States, if this administration proves capable of learning from the failures of past administrations when they met pivotal Iranian protests in 2009 and 2023 with inexcusable inaction, if not
