There’s a peculiar habit among exiled intellectuals: mistaking the regime that exiled them for a misunderstood uncle rather than what it is—a sadistic cartel running a prison camp called Iran.
Arash Azizi, in a recent Washington Post piece, insists the Islamic Republic must not be toppled by foreign pressure. He pargues that Israel’s airstrikes are harming the cause of internal reform, that outside help will fracture Iran, and that with just a bit more patience, the regime will evolve once Khamenei dies.
That’s not a strategy. That’s theology.
Azizi isn’t presenting a plan.
He’s lighting candles in a mausoleum.
Fantasy Is Not Foreign Policy
Azizi speaks of internal reform as if it’s a menu option if only the West would step aside and let Iran’s people order freedom.
But Iran’s people have ordered freedom. Again and again.
And every time, the regime has answered with bullets, rope, and silence.
In 2009, millions protested. They were clubbed.
In 2022, women removed their hijabs. They were gassed.
In 2024 alone, Iran executed over 1,000 people, many for daring to dissent.
Azizi believes this same regime will mellow if we just wait for the next supreme leader, as if tyranny has a reform switch built into its DNA. It is as if the IRGC will retire quietly and open a food truck.
That’s not geopolitics.
That’s Disney.
Waiting for internal reform in Iran is like asking a cartel to unionize. It’s delusion elevated to doctrine.
The Luxury of Distance
Azizi is not in Tehran.
He’s not on the ground, dodging the Basij, hoping his daughter comes home unmolested.
He’s in the West, writing think pieces in English, flinching at the idea that the West might dirty its hands to help the people it left behind.
That brand of polite academic restraint doesn’t sound noble. It sounds cowardly. It’s the luxury of distance disguised as wisdom.
Azizi might say he’s worried about unintended consequences.
So are we all.
But here’s the difference: when his strategy fails, Iranian protesters die. When ours fails, at least someone made an effort.
“Foreign Intervention Will Break Iran”
That’s the heart of Azizi’s warning. Outside pressure, he says, could fragment Iran. Civil war. Ethnic chaos. And he’s right if we invade. But no one’s calling for that. Not even Israel.
This isn’t about storming Tehran. It’s about pressure—covert, diplomatic, economic, technological, and, when necessary, kinetic.
And foreign involvement isn’t always a disaster.
It broke the Soviet Union.
It built a democratic South Korea.
It turned the tide in Ukraine.
Without Reagan, without NATO, and without outside pressure, most of Eastern Europe would still be rotting behind an iron curtain.
But here’s Azizi, writing from comfort, asking the West to hang back. To do less.
To wait. For what?
For the next ayatollah to be gentler? For the IRGC to take up flower farming?
There’s no soft landing here. This is a death cult with nukes and missiles, and the clock doesn’t stop because we close our eyes.
Iran Isn’t a Victim, It’s a Predator
Here’s the most galling omission in Azizi’s worldview: the idea that Iran is a victim.
That its suffering is isolated.
That if the West just leaves it alone, it will stop bleeding.
Wrong.
Iran is not some tragic hermit kingdom. It is an arsonist.
It funds Hezbollah.
It arms Hamas.
It equips the Houthis.
It runs terror cells from Iraq to Argentina.
It shells U.S. bases, assassinates journalists, and still dreams openly of wiping Israel from the map.
This is not a regime trying to survive. It’s one trying to expand.
It is not defensive. It isn’t inherently respectful.
And if the West follows Azizi’s lead, it doesn’t just abandon Iran’s people.
It endangers its own.
What Moral Clarity Looks Like
Azizi wants evolution. But history rarely evolves without force.
When tyrants are in charge, peace is not the default state. It’s the brief silence between atrocities.
To claim that the mullahs can be waited out is like claiming Stalin would’ve mellowed if only Roosevelt hadn’t made him nervous.
No. These regimes are not tamed. They are stopped.
What’s required is:
- Sanctions that strangle the regime’s finances at their source: energy, banking, and proxy networks.
- Covert aid to dissident leaders, secure communications, VPNs, safe houses, and press amplification.
- Broadcasts over firewalls, radio, satellite, and the internet that can’t be jammed.
- Targeted airstrikes when the regime crosses the red lines, especially nuclear ones.
Not full-scale war. Not a regime change by invasion. But relentless pressure until collapse becomes more appealing than survival.
Final Thoughts
Arash Azizi claims to be offering caution. What he’s offering is paralysis.
Worse, he’s offering a world where we moralize from a distance while others pay the price.
Waiting for Khamenei to die isn’t a plan. It’s a surrender on a delay timer.
The people of Iran have stood up again and again.
They’ve screamed for help in the streets, posted their deaths on Instagram, and painted their courage across prison walls.
And all Azizi can offer them is patience.
The next time a schoolgirl is dragged off for dancing, the next time a protester is blindfolded and shot, remember that some in the West said we should wait. That we shouldn’t interfere.
That change would come eventually.
It won’t. Not unless we make it.
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