How Should the Americans Hasten the Fall of the Iranian Regime?

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How should the Americans hasten the fall of the Iranian regime? They must tighten the economic screws. They must not lift sanctions, but double down on sanctions. The Iranians, with one-third of them now living below the poverty line, are in despair. They realize how many tens of billions of dollars their despotic regime of fanatical Muslims has spent on Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Assad’s Syria, only to see it all — tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons — go up in smoke. The Iranian exiles want the Americans to end the current negotiations, and to present Iran with an ultimatum: either Iran hands over all of its uranium enriched above a level of about 5% (approximately the level needed to run a nuclear reactor), destroys its centrifuges, and destroys its ballistic missiles, or the Americans will put more sanctions on the regime, including putting a blockade the port of Bandar Abbas through which 80% of Iran’s exports, including its oil, pass, preventing the oil sales on which Iran depends for its survival.

Were Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, Iranian dissidents believe, it would not only threaten Israel, but also the Sunni Arab states of the Gulf. Iran could threaten Israel’s existence, but also could destroy the oil production facilities of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and the LNG facilities in Qatar, sending oil prices sky-high and causing untold damage to Western economies. Nor would the danger be limited to the Middle East. With nuclear weapons, Iran’s regime could threaten to hit American bases not just in the region — in the UAE, in Qatar, in Bahrain,Saudi Arabia — but targets in America itself if, for example, Washington were to refuse to reduce or cut off altogether military aid to Israel.

One Iranian dissident said that “blanket military action against Iran will not work and that ‘foreign powers cannot impose sustainable regime change; it must emerge from within. It cannot be forced through war.’”

Here I beg to differ. Why wouldn’t “blanket military action against Iran” work? Perhaps she means that such military action would lead Iranians, who had been dissidents, to now support the regime in an outpouring of nationalist fervor prompted by those foreign attacks. And instead of the regime collapsing in the face of such attacks, she fears it would be given a new lease on life.

Another dissident said: “We will do the work from within to rid the world of this barbaric, tentacled, terrorist regime.” And “all they ask is that the Western world stop saving the regime.” In other words, she believes that Iran’s regime is economically and militarily on its uppers, with most of the Iranians having lost any faith in the government’s ability to reform itself. All that the dissidents want is for the West to stop “saving the regime.” That means completely cutting off Iran’s oil sales by blockading the port of Bandar Abbas, and other exports as well. It means stopping Iran from importing Western goods, everything from MRI machines to Smartphones to helicopters. It means putting sanctions on many hundreds more of Iran’s senior officials, cutting off their ability to travel anywhere in the West, or to send their children for study in the West , which is important to so many of them.

Were Iran to manage to produce a few nuclear bombs, this would greatly enhance its prestige at home, and lessen the domestic opposition to the regime. It would also mean that the regime would now believe itself impervious to attack, either by the Great or by the Little Satan, out of their fear of Iran retaliating using nuclear weapons.

All of these Iranian dissidents feel keenly that their fate is being decided not just by foreigners — the American negotiating team led by Steve Witkoff, but by foreigners with little understanding of the Iranians’ ability, and intent, to deceive. They want hard-headed American negotiators, who will consult with them and with the Israelis at every step, and who will make clear to Iran that nothing can be achieved, no sanctions lifted, without Iran agreeing to give up all of its stockpile of uranium enriched beyond a level of 5%, and the centrifuges it has used for such uranium enrichment. And if Iran does not agree, then not only will the current sanctions remain, but many more sanctions will be put in place, driving Iran’s economy into the ground.