For years, policymakers and analysts have obsessed over how the Islamic Republic of Iran might fall.
Far less attention has been paid to the more important question: whether it should.
To many of the several million Iranians who have fled their homeland since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the answer is obvious — and deeply personal.
Before the mullahs seized power, Iran was a modern, secular state. Women enjoyed far greater political and social freedom. Western culture was welcomed, not criminalised. Oil wealth fuelled economic growth instead of terror abroad. By any honest measure, what replaced that Iran has been an unmitigated failure.
For some, the case against the regime is moral. Iran’s Shia theocracy enforces a medieval interpretation of Islamic law, brutalises women, executes dissidents, and rules through fear. It seeks to export its extremist ideology far beyond its borders. That alone makes it a threat to all freedom-loving people.
But the most compelling argument is strategic — and it aligns squarely with the principles of America First.
The Islamic Republic is not merely a repressive domestic dictatorship, now widely suspected of killing thousands of demonstrators during the largest popular uprisings since the regime’s founding. It is the world’s most aggressive state sponsor of terrorism — the central node of a proxy empire stretching from Yemen to Lebanon, and from Gaza to Venezuela.
Over four decades, the regime and its proxies have killed and maimed thousands of Americans, from Beirut to Iraq and beyond, making Iran one of the most lethal adversaries the United States has faced since World War II.
Even today, Tehran is threatening renewed militia attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, reconstituting its nuclear weapons program and building a massive missile arsenal — including an expanding intercontinental ballistic missile capability that threatens the American homeland, Israel, U.S. forces, and key regional allies — while supplying Russia with Iranian-made drones to fuel Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
These are not isolated acts. They are components of a single, coherent Iranian strategy: to bleed American power, destabilise U.S. allies, and reshape the regional order in Iran’s favour. As long as the mullahs rule in Tehran, the United States remains under constant threat.
No diplomatic agreement has changed this reality. Sanctions relief did not moderate the regime’s behaviour. Engagement did not empower reformers. On the contrary, every outreach to Tehran strengthened the Revolutionary Guard and expanded Iran’s external aggression.
After four decades, the lesson is unmistakable: the problem is not Iran’s policies. It is Iran’s regime.
Critics warn that calling for the end of the Islamic Republic risks chaos or a nationalist backlash that could prop up a wobbling government. This fear rests on outdated assumptions.
For almost two decades — since 2009 — Iranians have flooded the streets, chanting ‘Death to the dictator’ and ‘Our enemy is right here.’ A majority have rejected clerical rule that has delivered only economic collapse, repression, and international isolation. The mullahs remain in power through violence, censorship, and fear — not popular consent.
Supporting the Iranian people is not about imposing a Western system or engineering a revolution. It is about aligning American policy with the clear aspirations of a population that overwhelmingly rejects theocracy. Importantly, Iran’s democratic opposition abroad has spent years developing a detailed, credible plan for the day after the regime’s fall — addressing governance, economic recovery, and relations with the outside world — undercutting claims that collapse would mean chaos.
What would come after the mullahs? No one should pretend the transition would be easy. But the choice is not between a perfect democracy and the status quo. It is between a collapsing theocracy that exports terror — and a post-Islamic Republic Iran that, at minimum, no longer wages permanent war against its neighbours and the United States.
A post-regime Iran would not need to become a Jeffersonian democracy to represent a dramatic strategic improvement. A government more accountable to its people would have powerful incentives to rebuild an economy shattered by corruption and sanctions — and to redirect resources from foreign militias to domestic needs.
For the first time in decades, regional de-escalation would become possible.
Until recently, Hezbollah’s arsenal of more than 150,000 rockets threatened Israel, Hamas’s war machine hung over Israel like a sword, and Houthi terrorists endangered global shipping lanes. A combined U.S.–Israeli response after October 7 severely degraded these threats. The world is safer for it — but only temporarily. Given time and space, Iran’s proxies will rebuild.
The United States does not need to invade Iran to end this menace. But it must abandon the illusion that the Islamic Republic can be reformed or indefinitely managed.
A strategy of targeted military and cyber strikes, maximum financial pressure, diplomatic isolation, information support for the Iranian people, and clear political alignment with their demands for change is not reckless. It is overdue.
Ending the Islamic Republic is not about revenge or ideology. It is about removing the single greatest driver of instability, terrorism, and nuclear risk in the Middle East.
The truth is uncomfortable but unavoidable: as long as the mullahs rule in Tehran, the Middle East will remain a factory for terror, missiles, and nuclear blackmail. Every delay buys the regime time. Every illusion of reform prolongs the danger. The Islamic Republic has spent 45 years declaring war on the United States and its allies — and it has never meant peace.
History will not judge America by how carefully it managed this regime, but by whether it finally had the resolve to end it. The moment is coming. The only question left is whether Washington has the courage to act before the next catastrophe forces its hand.
Mark Dubowitz is the chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
