But the military outcome and the political outcome are almost never the same thing, and the gap between them is where wars fail.
The lesson, then and now, is not that empires cannot destroy. It’s that destruction and governance are entirely different enterprises. And confusing them is how empires exhaust themselves.
The U.S. military can destroy the Iranian regime. The question that the Iraq precedent answers – with brutal clarity – is what fills the power vacuum when it does?
The fundamental misunderstanding at the heart of American regime-change strategy is the assumption that destroying the existing order creates space for something better.
It does not.
It creates space for whoever is best organized, best armed and most willing to fill it. In Iraq, that was Iran.
The question now is who fills it in Iran itself.
You cannot leave the Revolutionary Guard in place without leaving the regime’s coercive core intact. There is no clean surgical option of dropping bombs, killing certain people and declaring it a new day in Iran.
Who governs 92 million Iranians?
Approving or rejecting candidates from Washington requires a functioning political process, a legitimate transitional authority and a population willing to accept an American imprimatur on their leadership — none of which exists.
Washington has no answer to any of these questions – only a theory of destruction.
