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I’ve been warning for several weeks that war with Iran was likely. It wasn’t hard to read the signs: OSINT showed assets moving to the theater weeks ago. Trump’s MO is that when he puts military assets into play, he uses them. And the three major players—Trump, Israel, and Iran—all seemed to think that war was in their best interests.
And here we are.
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1. It’s a Mystery!
No one knows what the end state in Iran will be. Today we’re going to talk about the universe of “likely” outcomes, but let’s stipulate that none of them is >50 percent.¹
Keep your mind open to all the glorious possibilities. 🤯
A. The Happy Place
Maybe it all works out in the end I’m Ron Burgundy?
President Trump said that the Iranian people should rise up and overthrow the government. This is not going to happen; the Iranian people have no means to overthrow the government. The Iranian regime controls both the military and the police. Full stop.
Even if the Iranian people did overthrow the government, there is no process by which to establish a new government. There are no pre-existing governing structures to be co-opted. There is no endoskeleton of civil society to prop up the country while new governing structures emerge.
Trump told Iranians, “Take over your government. It will be yours to take.” He did this for one reason only: so that if/when this war goes pear-shaped, he can blame the Iranian people.
What a coward.
That said, there are a few of scenarios in which Iran becomes a less repressive place.
(1) A leader emerges who manages to hold the country together in the short term while positioning Iran to become more stable and less despotic in the long term. Maybe this looks similar to the nascent democracy in Iraq; maybe it looks more like the modern, “benign” autocracy of Saudi Arabia.²
(2) The United States and/or some coalition steps in to provide internal security while the Iranian people organize a new regime.
(3) The United States and Saudi Arabia remove economic sanctions on Iran and help the Iranian economy strengthen. This economic expansion creates enough prosperity to buy internal stability while the next regime emerges.
These are overlapping scenarios, all of which seem quite unlikely. But you never know.
B. Life in Iran Sucks, But There’s Greater Regional Stability
From the perspective of America, Israel, and the Gulf Arab states, liberalization in Iran is great, but unnecessary. Stability in the Middle East can be increased through the elimination of the Islamic Republic of Iran even if what replaces it isn’t very nice.
Iran is the primary regional antagonist. It undergirds the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah; it antagonizes Saudi Arabia; it seeks to destabilize Iraq and destroy Israel. The removal of this cancer could bring down the temperature everywhere, even if life for Iranians remains more or less crappy.
I suspect this outcome is what Israel and Saudi Arabia are hoping for.
It’s important to understand that you could get to this point through a variety of outcomes inside Iran because it’s not a permanent end state. The idea is simply to shake the Etch-a-Sketch and see what happens. Because even if something dangerous emerges, it could take several years.³
In fact, from Israel and Saudi Arabia’s perspectives, having Iran become a chaotic, failed state might be the most desirable outcome.⁴ If Iran’s conventional military is “totally obliterated,” its stores of missiles and rockets are emptied, and its capacity to develop and manufacture complex munitions and delivery systems is destroyed, then having the region’s preeminent expansionist power reduced to a failed state might be an attractive outcome.
C. Instability Everywhere
Or maybe instability in Iran spills over to the rest of the region. You may have noticed that none of the governments in the Middle East has an abundance of popular legitimacy.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are gangster states. Iraq’s democracy is fledgling. Afghanistan and Pakistan are taking pot shots at each other. Turkey’s dictator is only a decade removed from a serious attem