In 2002, the Bush administration was met with scant resistance from the mainstream media or wider establishment as it drummed up the case for toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. But there were a handful of dissenters, above all Brent Scowcroft. The two-time former national-security adviser (under Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush) urged the nation to consider the law of unintended consequences — and to open its imagination to nightmare scenarios.
A similar imagination is desperately needed today, as hawks in Washington and Jerusalem gleefully fantasise about collapsing the Iranian regime. It’s a bewildering replay of the same overconfidence that gave birth to the Iraq catastrophe — with some of the same figures who pooh-poohed counsels of caution and restraint back then doing the same thing today.
An invasion of Iraq, Scowcroft argued early on, would distract Washington from the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the actors behind 9/11. Drawing on his experience as the elder Bush’s adviser during the Gulf War, he warned that regime change would mean “occupation of an Arab land, hostile Arab land”. Not for months, but for years. In short, Scowcroft predicted everything that went wrong with Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The war’s advocates quickly dismissed his warnings. Reuel Marc Gerecht, the ex-CIA officer turned uber-hawk writing in 2002 in the now-defunct Weekly Standard, insisted that “these fears for the war on terrorism are unfounded”. While William Kristol, speaking to the New Yorker in 2005, “laughed” about Scowcroft’s emphasis on foreign-policy realism and Middle-East stability: “When things go bad, realists look good, until things look really bad.”
By the time Kristol made those remarks, optimism about regime change in Iraq had begun to curdle. An insurgency, incipient at the time, would grow to expand Iran’s influence in Iraq and give rise to what became the Islamic State. This new jihadist group would go on to carve a vast swath across Iraqi and Syrian territory, massacring and enslaving Iraq’s Christian and Yazidi communities, and prompting America to extend its presence in the region, where it remains still.
“It’s folly to believe that the current regime can be collapsed without American forces having to descend to prop up a new state.”
More than two decades on, all but a few unreconstructed war boosters consider the project a costly, colossal mistake. Contra Kristol et al, the realism of Scowcroft — his anticipation of potential nightmare scenarios — was on the money. Yet here we are, in 2025, poised to attempt the same in Iran: a country that is vaster, more populous, and significantly more complex than Iraq. And we’re doing it with even less planning and forethought.
Over the weekend, according to Axios, the Israeli government formally requested that the United States intervene in its operation against Iran. This comes despite insistence from some Israeli hawks that their state doesn’t need US assistance — and, indeed, should learn to go without it, since American taxpayer money means American constraints on Israeli action. But whether or not Washington joins the fight, it will inevitably be drawn into the vexing aftermath.
Should Israel continue on its current trajectory, including the targeting of the Islamic Republic’s civilian and energy infrastructure, it will break the Iranian state. But the Israelis are neither capable of, nor inclined to, pick up the pieces afterward. Rather, they will “internationalise” the problem. Which means: Uncle Sam, roll up your sleeves.
For be in no doubt, without boots on the ground, regime collapse — Israel’s now-stated; now-disavowed war aim — will generate a massive crisis destabilising the Middle East and regions far beyond it. The crisis will have dimensions that will be ferociously entangled in ways that we can only vaguely discern right now.
Foremost will be the crisis of state authority, the one that will contour all the others. The central problematic in Iranian history, going back millennia, is the fraught relationship between state and society. Optimists may note that Iran isn’t Iraq — an ethno-sectarian hodge-podge cobbled together within artificially drawn borders. Unlike Iraq, Iran’s ethnic constituents have long related organically as Iranians.
But while this is true, even this innate coherence couldn’t ease the deeper struggle: the difficulty of rebuilding order in a context of profound, culturally ingrained tension between state and society. At the heart of Iran’s political tradition lies estebdad — arbitrary rule. A hallmark of this system, going back to its origins, has been state ownership of all land; economic life revolves around favour from the state, not legally defined rights and duties.
As the Oxford historian Homa Katouzian has observed, “social classes did not enjoy any rights independent from the state”, and, “there was no law outside the state”, which “stood above society”, shifting rules at will. Unlike in Europe, legitimacy rested not in law or consent, but in raw power. And power itself was self-justifying: rulers wielded divine grace because they ruled, and they ruled because they claimed divine grace. Succession was brutal. Given the lack of primogeniture, blinding, castration, or worse would await the heir’s male rivals. Rebellion was a valid path to power, if successful; and if not, the rebel had better be prepared to drink boiling oil.
Estebdad etched itself into Persian culture. Poetry reached sublime heights precisely by expressing elliptically what couldn’t be said forthrightly. Conversation turned indirect — a mask against repression. The ornate manners of Iranians relate to this, as well. The result: brilliance in individuals, but chronic distrust in society. Without lasting institutions or principles, Iran’s politics swing between bursts of idealism and long stretches of cynicism. Justice depends not on systems, but the temperament of rulers.
In short: upholding a state in this context is a hell of a problem. I don’t have an answer to it. But the Israelis and some American hawks seem to think they’ve found it in Reza Pahlavi, the exiled heir to Iran’s final dynasty — before the 1979 revolution put an end to a monarchic tradition which had stretched back some 2,500 years. You can see why they might be keen on a monarchic restoration. A shah, as I have argued in the past, can serve as a visible symbol of unity and continuity amid a transition.
The problem is that Reza Pahlavi doesn’t inspire much confidence. Some who have collaborated with him describe a spoiled dauphin, intellectually incurious and indolent. One doesn’t detect much of the Cossack officer’s austerity and steel that allowed his grandfather, Reza Shah, to forge a modern nation-state out of the malaria-ridden has-been Persian Empire in the early 20th century.
Moreover, Reza (the grandson) has made a grave mistake, in my estimation, by appearing a little too eager to be parachuted onto the Peacock Throne by an Israel Air Force F-35. In his initial statement on the intervention, he didn’t express any concern for, or sympathy with, his compatriots inside. He merely called on them to rise up against the mullahs — a feat that became increasingly implausible as the bombings intensified and images proliferated of dust-covered fathers fleeing with bloodied infants in their arms.
Nor can we fully comprehend how Iranian society’s perception of the throne has shifted after nearly five decades of rule by a theocracy with republican elements. Anyone who confidently declaims that “Iranians await their king” is larping. Some surely do; others don’t.
But Pahlavi’s character, capabilities, and popular perception are finally beside the point. The real issue is that, even if he were the second coming of Cyrus the Great, he would need massive outside assistance to even begin to assert control over the capital region, let alone a sprawling country of 90 million souls.
Which brings us to the second major crisis: separatism. Although Iran was called “Persia” by the ancient Greeks, Persians make up only a bare majority of the country. About a quarter are Azeri or Turkic people, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. There are Kurds, Lors, Baluch, Arabs, and smaller groups of Jews, Assyrians, and Armenians. And again, it’s true that Iranian identity binds these peoples together in a way that wasn’t true of “artificial” states Iraq or Lebanon.
But even so, partly as a result of the Islamic Republic’s mistreatment of the minorities, that organic identity has frayed. And various external actors, such as the Baku regime in Azerbaijan and Kurdish militant movements, are bent on carving out ethnic fiefdoms from Iranian territory: in effect, Balkanising the country. These groups will capitalise on the instability that shadows regime collapse.
Perhaps you are tempted to say: “Who cares! Let Iran get dismembered.” But this would be to forget the importance of maintaining a legitimate central authority that relates in a stable way with its society. Whether the West installs Pahlavi or a social democrat or a reformed regime officer, the central authority can’t be seen to compromise on Iran’s territorial integrity. If it does compromise, it risks deligitimisation. If it doesn’t compromise, it will require military support to maintain territorial integrity.
Here, then, is a recipe for a civil war — in all its ethnic, sectarian, and ideological dimensions — that would radiate instability into Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and elsewhere: all places where the United States has serious interests, troops or personnel, or both. An outbreak of ethno-sectarian conflict, then, would put pressure on Washington to intervene. For Europe, the civil-war scenario would almost certainly mean a massive migrant wave, potentially dwarfing the 2015-2016 exodus from Syria.
Accompanying this is the problem of regime remnants. The hawks insist that only a tiny minority of Iranians support the regime; everyone else, in their telling, is a mini-skirt-wearing, rave-attending spiritual denizen of LA or Miami, who just happens to be living in Islamic Iran.
What nonsense. There is no way to accurately poll Iranian society. But we do know that the Islamic Republic enjoys a core of support among a not-insignificant share of the population, either as a result of ideological commitment or the material benefits they and their family members have drawn through membership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or the basij paramilitia. Otherwise, no amount of repression would have kept the regime in power for nearly half a century.
In any case, even the secularist-minded opponents of the regime are by most accounts rallying to the flag as we speak. The impression I got from numerous telephone calls over the weekend was that the nezam (system) and the populace are being drawn closer together as a result of the Israeli actions. Some cheer the outcome, it’s true, but as a whole, the mutual alienation between state and society is dissipating somewhat, as popular athletes make military salutes in solidarity with the armed forces and artists publish illustrations extolling resistance and generally people rally to the flag.
Maybe that effect won’t last as the invasion intensifies. Still, we must wonder: how likely is it that this new, post-Islamic Republic regime will have to confront a reactionary rump of some size? The answer: highly likely. Which is another reason why it’s folly to believe that the current regime can be collapsed without American forces having to descend to prop up a new state.
Let’s not forget the nuclear program, either. Among the separatist groups are hard-core Sunni Islamists inspired by different shades of al-Qaeda or Isis ideology. Now, keep in mind that Iran is also home to a near-completed nuclear program. Who is going to secure said programme against the Islamists? That’s right — the United States.
Iran also sits on the Strait of Hormuz, through which travels 20% of the world’s energy. If radicals seize it, then who will be tasked with dislodging them and securing the vital route? The French? The Germans? The Malaysians?
Or maybe Washington can truly shirk the aftermath, thus encouraging other actors to step into the breach. Maybe it will be China, given its dependence on Iranian energy. But that would allow Beijing to extend its footprint into the Middle East, which defeats the logic of the “pivot to Asia” — the ostensible aim of American strategy, under both Republican and Democratic administrations since Barack Obama.
So while it is true that the era of American unipolar hegemony is fading, I simply don’t see the US being able to stay away. The Persian Gulf states and others will demand its presence, and they have enough sway within the US alliance architecture that their pleas won’t fall on deaf ears.
Some hawks in Washington insist that if called to shoulder these burdens, America can simply decline. But this would assume a degree of sovereign distance within the alliance structure that doesn’t exist. Not yet anyway. We aren’t talking about a fight between two small African countries that America can ignore. We’re talking about Israel, Qatar, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. The most compelling evidence for why Washington won’t be able to keep away has already been supplied by Israel: in shifting from a demand for a green-light, to asking for direct involvement.
Proponents of intervention insist that sceptics have “overlearned” the lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan; that the United States mustn’t be paralysed by a fear of instability and unpredictable consequences. Maybe. Then again, given the stakes, overlearning is surely better than under-learning.
