Trump should step back from the brink with Iran

One can be excused for wondering why the Islamic Republic of Iran has consistently beaten accusations of near-death since its inception in 1979. The regime in Tehran has held onto power through successive internal and external crises regardless of doomsday prophesizing in Washington or Tel Aviv. As the Iranian government faces one of the most difficult moments in its brief existence – both internally and externally—the question now, as the US sends a second aircraft carrier to the region is will this time be different?

Much has changed in the Middle East since the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023. Nowhere is that more apparent outside of occupied Palestine than in Iran and its now-deflated “Axis of Resistance” militia network across the region. Israel’s ability to weaken major non-state actors aligned with Tehran, including Lebanese Hezbollah and Gaza’s Hamas, opened the door for direct hostilities between the two archrivals. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria and clear checks on Iraqi militias have also played a role, alongside increased US support for Israel’s military actions – including conducting direct strikes on Iran with Israel that largely wiped out the country’s air defense capabilities while deeply weakening its nuclear program and ballistic missile production capacities.

In Tehran, long-standing corruption and repression on the part of regime officials, worsening environmental dynamics, and the economic components of Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign drive domestic strife. The economic malaise impacting Iran initially set off the protests that spanned the end of 2025 and beginning of 2026, eventually evolving into widespread anti-regime protests on par with the country’s largest protest movements of the past.

That movement was brutally crushed in mid-January in arguably the worst act of repression the country has witnessed since the 1979 revolution and its post-revolution purges. Human rights organizations have confirmed thousands of protestor deaths as a result of the crackdown in a clear violation of the most basic universal human rights principles and international law. Simply put, no government willing to enact such a high degree of pain on its people for exercising such rights – especially peacefully – should be treated as a normal country.

The painful truth is that the means do not justify the ends in the scenario of regime change achieved through externally-directed violent means in Iran – especially when those ends are hardly guaranteed. As many other analysts focused on Iran have routinely argued, any strike on the Islamic Republic would likely be counterintuitive, lending more legitimacy to the regime in its efforts to stifle internal dissent under the guise of “foreign interference.” It has already used this excuse numerously in recent months, blaming “foreign agents” for attacks on security officials and infrastructure across the country ahead of its crackdown. It is similarly detaining leading figures of the country’s relatively moderate reformist movement for even daring to speak up about the issues plaguing the country.

While some argue that the so-called Venezuela model can be applied to Iran, the comparison is more of an oversimplification than any astute analysis. The Iranian regime is a theocratic autocracy controlled by religious figureheads and hardliners fully committed to the system that enriches and bestows power upon them today. The more moderate reform movement, while critical, is still largely aligned with regime survival through internal change.

The widely sanctioned Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is unlikely to turn on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the backs of Israeli and US missiles. Its role as the only economic player in town – the result of crushing sanctions further criminalizing the regime to the point of creating and sustaining a black market economy run by the group – leaves its leaders disinterested in turning their back on such a system. Recent regime efforts to arrest reform figures suggest that Tehran is closely watching other influential players for signs of dissent—with what happened in Caracas top of mind.

The more likely outcome of strikes on Iran, then, is that Tehran moves closer to a North Korean hermit state model predicated exclusively on brutal repression and seclusion, even if this approach is hardly sustainable for the massive and diverse country with a substantially longer political history of civic engagement, political opposition, and internationalist revolutionary principles. That outcome could very well lead to a civil conflict with far reaching implications, including widespread, sectarian-based human rights violations, the Balkanization of the country, and massive migration flows as refugees seek safety amid the chaos.

As most of the states of the region have stressed, that outcome is not only undesirable – it is catastrophic. The Trump administration should take note, stepping back from the brink before enmeshing itself in a massive quagmire of its own making.

Alexander Langlois is a Contributing Fellow at Defense Priorities.